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- Copyright
- Preface
Section One The Way of Discipleship
Section Two “Acceptable Sins”
Section Three Elevating Our Life Toward Christ
Section Four Change for Reward

Appendix A
Notes

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2021 by Monte Robinson All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

Monte Robinson has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book and on its cover are trade names, service marks, trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publishers and the book are not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. None of the companies referenced within the book have endorsed the book. Contact: monte-corp@protonmail.com

Scripture noted with (ESV) are quotations from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Second edition

Preface

I confess that reading the Apostle Paul’s letters to troubled churches seems to be easier to handle in my devotional life; I often look pretty spiritual when I read 1 Corinthians! However, when I read Jesus’ teachings, I am reminded that He primarily taught the Disciples who were already more committed to the life of faith. Sure, they made plenty of mistakes and said unseemly, untimely things often—but they were committed. When I read Jesus’ teachings, I feel that I have not even gotten a good start in my walk toward Him. I feel like one of the bumbling Disciples.

Jesus was obviously intentional in all He did while walking on this earth in flesh and blood. The focus of this book is to be a primer of what Jesus taught His Disciples as He mentored them to think, teach, and work like He did. Following after the Disciples, each Christian is supposed to grow in their understanding of the Lord’s ways and respond to life the way He did. This takes quality time (devotion) and consistent commitment to deeply understand what it means to be a committed follower of the Lord, to seriously apply what we learn, and then in turn to teach others what it is to be a committed follower. Many Christians know that Jesus’ last command to His Disciples, recorded in the Book of Matthew, was The Great Commission. It’s in the continuation of the Great Commission that the Church gets its mandate to be a disciple and to disciple others. The main point of the Commission is taken from the verb “make.” The exact procedure that the Twelve Disciples experienced through Jesus’ ministry was to be repeated for others. That is, the Disciples were to accomplish “the making” as they interacted with others (the “go” in the Great Commission), as they baptized people, and as they taught all of the very same things that Jesus taught during His earthly ministry. Jesus instructed them to repeat the ministry exactly as the Disciples had experienced. Thus, there is an exact way of discipleship. What were the Disciples to teach? Everything. Many Christians are missing a keyword in the Great Commission—“everything.” He commanded a purposeful thoroughness in the teaching. Much “discipleship” material that has been written is not thorough. Many Bible study guides are noticeably deficient in the hardest things Jesus taught on (e.g., die to live, carry your cross, suffering, the extreme and radical following of Christ above all other relationships and pursuits). When an author writes about carrying a cross, that author must come face to face with his own mind, heart and life. “Am I carrying my cross?” he must ask. “Since suffering is an honor, do I avoid it at all costs?” he must continue.

What to Expect

In this book, one will find guided study questions to selected Bible passages. If you are a brand new Christian and you have never interacted with the Bible before, I recommend you start with a wonderful little Bible study by NavPress, Growing in Christ. The comments and explanations to the principles that follow in the book are not exhaustive; for the Word of God is infinitely profound. Instead these words are intended to be starting places for one’s self-examination and depth of commitment to Jesus, The Way of Discipleship. Also, I hope it adds some insight as to what to expect in life due to one’s relationship with God as well. The first part of the book deals with the foundations of the faith. The middle addresses sins that have a tendency to be a part of our lives and therefore, keep us from being fully committed to Jesus. The third part of the book will challenge any Christian to follow Christ to the highest degree.

May you maximize the potential that is yours in Christ!

1
Discipleship

Discipleship: a loving, spiritual, selfless,
growing commitment to God and all
others by God’s power.

We need to pay close attention to terms as we study the Bible; context always determines the meaning of a word (a term). For an illustration, if one were to say the word “trunk” and ask you to define and describe it, what would you say? You most likely would ask a follow-up question: “What kind of trunk are we talking about, a car trunk, a tree trunk, a moving trunk, or something else?” Many words do not have much meaning outside of a phrase or context. “Disciple” is no different when used in the Bible. The word was used for the 12 men who walked with Jesus 3+ years, of course. It was used to describe students of other teachers also (e.g., John the Baptist). It is used to describe larger groups of people and people of faith in general as well (cf., Acts 6:7). Here, I will use the terms “disciple” to mean a committed follower of Jesus.

Similarly, “discipleship” may mean different things to people. Here, I will use this definition, discipleship: a loving, spiritual, selfless, growing commitment to God and all others by God’s power.

Discipleship is loving. The two greatest commands are summed up most concisely with “Love God and people—completely.” Humankind was created by a loving God. Jesus died for us because of love. Christians have the ability to love in selfless, sacrificial ways due to God’s work in us. Love is the supreme Christian virtue. Importantly, love is also the “glue” that binds all other Christian virtues together (cf., 1 Corinthians 13). Therefore, love cannot be overstated; without it we have nothing.

Finally, we should admit here: one cannot stay in neutral with God. Either we are growing in our relationship with Him, or we are becoming more distant from Him. The focus of our lives should be—and must be—growing intense desires to love God and others, and to grow in the applications of those desires. Remember, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’” (Mark 12:30, emphasis mine). Desiring to love God with every part of our being has always been the mark for people of faith. Acting on those desires is another mark often missed.

Discipleship is spiritual, because it cannot purely intellectual information. Remember Colossians 2:2-3, “My goal is that their hearts, having been knit together in love, may be encouraged, and that they may have all the riches that assurance brings in their understanding of the knowledge of the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (emphasis mine). Wisdom and knowledge are found in Christ (inside of Him), so a spiritual relationship is both necessary and central to learning and applying the Bible to life. Therefore, the gaining of true knowledge and wisdom that translates into measurable Christian living—the doing —is found in committed, growing, serious spiritual dependency on God and deepening our relationship to Him.

Discipleship is selfless. Matthew 16:25 reads, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” To be a disciple of Jesus, we must get our minds off of ourselves and place our focus on others. Selflessness is a must to discipleship. Our lives must be lost.

Discipleship is a growing commitment to God. Believers readily confess that we don’t act like Jesus much of the time (Perhaps many would say most of the time!). We should always be growing through our relationship with Jesus, but we regularly fall short. God will do His work in our lives if we are willing, if we become staunchly committed to discipleship. Make no mistake, discipleship goes against everything in our fallen natures. Therefore, discipleship is the most challenging process that we will be a part of. There will be setbacks for sure, but the more we are committed, the more we will experience God.

Discipleship is a growing commitment to others. Mark 10:43b-45 reads, “Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Disciples give up their rights to their lives and instead turn toward living as a servant to others (or even daring to live as a slave to them).

Discipleship is by the power of God. God is the first cause of all things. He caused us to have life by creating us. And He caused us to have eternal life through His Son Jesus. Furthermore, when we look like God it is because He lives through us and is doing His work in us. Remember Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control […]” (emphasis mine). These loving attributes have their source in the Spirit’s work, not in human effort. We have a part in the process (as we will discuss later), but we do not transform ourselves; God does.

Finally, we should take heed here: one cannot stay in neutral with God. Either we are growing in our relationship with Him, or we are becoming more distant from Him. The focus of our lives should be—and must be—an intense desire to love. Remember, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’” (Mark 12:30, emphasis mine). Love God with every part of your being; this has always been the mark for people of faith.

2
Love is Motive

He will bring to light the hidden things
of darkness and reveal the motives of hearts.
Then each will receive recognition from God.
-1 Corinthians 4:5 b

Love cannot be overstated. It is one of the two virtues absolutely necessary for us to have a “good work” before God (faith is the other). There are many Christians, unfortunately, who believe that love is merely our actions. Many wish it were that simple; it isn’t. The precise point Paul made in 1 Corinthians 13 is that love cannot be only our actions. Paul’s focus was on communicating to the church that our lives’ events (thoughts, words, actions, and faith) must consist of something more than the existence of those specific events. Paul’s biggest illustrative idea in what is commonly called the “love chapter” is this: without love one could give up all of one’s possessions and be willing to be martyred and get zero benefit (i.e., no corresponding reward in Heaven). One cannot take more action than willed poverty and martyrdom. “Are the motives there?” is the point of the chapter. Actions only count when driven by proper motives. Without love everything is counterfeit.

Look at these truth statements of 1 Corinthians 13:

If I speak words better than anyone, I talk about nothing of value without love. Our words are useless without love.
If I understand all mysteries and all knowledge in the world, I am nothing without love. Our thoughts don’t benefit us without love.
If I have faith that produces miracles, I am nothing without love. Even the second most important Christian virtue—our faith—adds no value to our lives apart from love.
If I willfully give away everything I own—even my own body to be martyred, I receive no benefit without love. Our actions will not be rewarded apart from love.

Love is the proper motive with motivated actions. Love is genuine concern for others coupled with genuine care for them. Love desires the best for others. That is what “love your neighbor as yourself” is.

Judge Not the Quality of Actions nor the Motive of the Heart

We are no the final authority and judge regarding our motives either. Take a look at Proverbs 16:2, “All a person’s ways seem right in his own opinion, but the Lord evaluates the motives.” Notice that a person’s ways “seem right.” We often believe that our actions rise above the crowd’s. We frequently think that the decisions we have made are the best that could have been made. But we have built-in biases regarding the decisions we make and the motivations that go with them. It is God who will be the quality checker. We will not be the final evaluator of why we do what we do. God decides the quality and genuineness of our words, thoughts, and deeds. That is why we must stay close to Him in a purposeful relationship. Our flesh will tell us lies, tell us we are doing ministry the right way, tell us our motives are pure. Paul understood Proverbs 16:2 when he cautioned himself and the Church at Corinth regarding being their own witnesses,

“Now what is sought in stewards is that one be found faithful. So for me, it is a minor matter that I am judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not acquitted because of this. The one who judges me is the Lord. So then, do not judge anything before the time. Wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the motives of hearts. Then each will receive recognition from God” (1 Corinthians 4:2-5).

Paul knew that it is only after Christ will critically look at each individual’s motives does one receive recognition from God.

Recognition from the Lord is worth living for, so we must have a proper motive in our actions to be judged worthy of recognition. So we would do well to remember this sobering reality: every moment, of our born-again lives, is headed to a motive trial. At that trial, the Lord will judge and cut through all of our pretending and self-deception and get to the root of what drove our lives’ actions and purposes.

We Must be in Love to Love

Books could be written commenting on the numerous Bible verses that explain our dependence on God. Humankind’s desire to live apart from God started in Genesis 3. Adam and Eve’s fall happened in part due to their suspended reliance on God and what He said.

While our future is secure in regard to Heaven by faith in Christ, we would do well to learn from Adam and Eve’s mistakes. One must be disciplined to stay in close relationship with God to be useful to God. God is a person, and as with any other person there must be quality time spent for that relationship to flourish. Paul taught, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). “Behave” is stoicheō in the Greek. It means “to proceed in a row as the march of a soldier.”1 An old expression of this idea in English would charge us with, “we need to be in lockstep with the Spirit,” step-for-step. We are to march through this life alongside God. He then guides us in our circumstances, leads us in our specific actions, and guards our consciences against false motives.

Paul explained this to the Corinth church in 2 Corinthians 1:12, “For our reason for confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that with pure motives and sincerity which are from God—not by human wisdom but by the grace of God—we conducted ourselves in the world, and all the more toward you” (emphasis mine). Pure motives are from the grace of God.

Be very cautious and watchful against shortcuts and substitutes to cultivating a deeper relationship with God. Some Christians believe that all they must do to act like God is know the Scriptures. The Pharisees and the scribes thought that. Learning the Bible is important, but it is only a part of what is necessary to have our hearts changed toward people. Love demands application of truth. The key to application is relationship with God and people. To have and act in love, one must be in love.

Trials Test Love

Jesus told us that we would have many trials (cf., John 16:33). To that truth, we say “Amen!” We know God’s greatest will is not making our life events easy, but instead, He empowers us to respond like Christ during the trials of our lives. It is during our trials that we struggle the most with motives and godly responses. Trials test the quality of our life with the Lord; each is an opportunity for our sin nature to win or for us to overcome. When the former wins, we must be willing to “take a brutally honest look in the mirror and see who we truly are”2 apart from Christ and confess where we did not hit the mark. This must be a continuous practice of our lives as we remind ourselves that the only way to succeed in the moments and accomplish the work of God is to “remain” in Jesus. The Lord said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing” (John 15:5). God does the work for us as we remain in Him (or live closely and in love with Him). Our actions will produce spiritual fruit if we remain in Him; rotten fruit is harvested when we work alone. We never look like God apart from God. For the “fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control…” (Galatians 5:22b). Whose fruit is it? The Spirit’s. When God is producing fruit, our life and motives are perfect in those moments, events, days, and therefore those parts of our lives. Holy actions are part of God’s work in us; this work of God is called sanctification (God saving our love actions). But amazingly we will receive rewards for His work! So humbling ourselves to God’s will, word, authority, and power, and believing that God is the One who is saving our moments is our only hope to live for Him. He does the work; we rest in and rely on Him.

These sentences are easy to write and understand, but in practice, we all know it is harder than it sounds. It takes a daily humbling and denying of our old natures—our selfish nature—our “flesh”— and our egos. This type of humbling is drastic and can only happen with daily, repeated “executions.” Paul’s letter to the Colossians put it this way: “When Christ (who is your life) appears, then you too will be revealed in glory with him. So put to death whatever in your nature belongs to the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, shameful passion, evil desire, and greed which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:4,5 emphasis mine). Every day we wake up something is dying. It’s either our spiritual life or our earthly natures. We must make daily choices.

Scripture Passages

Mark 7:17-23
1 Corinthians 13

Questions

Circle the fruits of love that are most missing from your life. Love is …

patient

kind

bears all things

believes all things

hopes all things

rejoices in the truth

endures all things

Circle the indicators that show that you are not displaying love:

I am envious.

I brag about what I do or what I have.

I am puffed up.

I am rude.

I am self-serving.

I am easily angered.

I am resentful.

I rejoice in injustice.

What motivates you instead of love?
Knowing that God will show us the motives of our hearts, what would He say are the motives of your life right now?

Aim Point

Love needs to be the main thought that dominates our lives. Write a prayer each day for the next seven days in a notebook. These prayers should strive to confess your shortcomings in loving your neighbor as yourself (keeping in mind specific people) and asking for God’s help in raising the standard of love back to its rightful place.
Ask God to bring you back to a heart set towards renewing your love for people. We must be proactive in starting—and often restarting—every day with renewed trust in God to rein in our corrupted lives.
Continually ask yourself this week, “Am I loving people as Christ loves me?”

3
Love God

“Loving God with all of our heart, mind,
strength, and soul” is seeking the highest
good and glory of God, in all circumstances,
at all times, by God’s power.

If Christians had to pick just one verse of the Bible to be written to us, we would undoubtedly respond, “I’m glad we have John 3:16.” In it, we have the plan of God, the expression of the plan, and the execution of the plan to save us. We have the Good News—the gospel. The verse teaches three key things: 1) God loves people. 2) Love prompted God to sacrifice His Son for us. 3) Through love, God saves believers from perishing.

With His saving gospel, God has dealt with our utmost problem: our sin problem. This problem of ours gives each one of us a death sentence. People of faith are freed from death and become entirely secure because of what God did out of His love.

But God didn’t stop at just getting us to Heaven; God continues daily to emphasize love in everything He does. In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus taught that all of the Old Testament commands flowed out of the two greatest commandments. The Bible teaches,

Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they assembled together. And one of them, an expert in religious law, asked him a question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:34-40).

The 613 commands of the Old Testament may be categorized into moral laws, civil laws, and ceremonial laws. However, all of these commands that the Jews were accountable for were summed up by Jesus with, love God with all of your being (Deuteronomy 30:6) and love your neighbor as yourself.

God’s Secure Love

How have you loved God last week? How about last year? When I look at my own life, I am usually disappointed. I never feel like I am “loving the Lord as well as I should.” Instead, I empathize with Paul, “For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want!” (Romans 7:19).

While we will continue to fall short every day, we should strive to have daily, renewed commitments to holiness and love. Jesus taught that, obedience is the way in which we express love to God. Specifically He said, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” (John 14:15). Consequently, the two greatest commandments should be our regular focus. We should not allow ourselves to become complacent in our weakness, but instead continue to keep holy love with obedience as our continual goals.

At times, as we live our lives, we will make big mistakes and may even fail in a way we never imagined possible. We then may wrongly allow our emotions to ask the question, “Does God still love us?” We should be on guard for this. Our emotions do not determine God’s love; He does love us. How much? 100%. For “No one has greater love than this—that one lays down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). We need to be convinced that we cannot earn more of or all of His love. For “He saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). His love and gift of eternal life are not based on what we do. These are given to us even in our unmerited, undeserving attitudes and actions. “God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Roman 5:8b).

Are you trying to work for and be “good enough for” God’s love? The love He has for His people was demonstrated for us in His Son’s death. He cannot—nor will He—prove it more! “Because Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18a; emphasis added). We have God’s love; be loved! Feel love if possible. Listen to the words of Spurgeon,

“Some Christians […] when their spirit is lively and their hopes bright, they think God accepts them, for they feel so high, so heavenly-minded, so drawn above the earth! But when their souls cleave to the dust, they are the victims of the fear that they are no longer accepted. If they could only see that all their high joys do not exalt them, and all their low despondencies do not really depress them in their Father’s sight, but that they stand accepted in One who never alters.”3

Love Results in Actions of Obedience

Think about someone you love deeply. When we love someone, we do things out of joy for them; it is not a chore to do what that someone desires when we have loving feelings toward them. “Love loves to love.”4

Likewise, our willingness to obey God will be directly associated with our love for Him. Our lack of obedience always reflects our lack of love. John 14:15 is the proof text for this truth, “If you love me, you will obey my commandments” (emphasis mine). Notice, love comes first, then action. The verse explains the cause and effect between love (our motives and desires) and actions (the evidence and expression of our love). We continuously need to recommit to loving God; we can lose this drive quickly due to our fallen nature.

Live to Please God

God communicates with us through our minds, our wills, and our emotions.5 All of these are the parts of our being which we line up to God’s will—through His power. When we line up our lives to God’s will, the Bible teaches that we please God.6 Paul wrote, “Therefore I exhort [or command] you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1-2, emphasis mine). “So then whether we are alive or away, we make it our ambition to please him” (2 Corinthians 5:9, emphasis mine). Also, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30, emphasis mine). The Bible is replete with commands for us to please God. It should govern our thought life and actions.

The first step to pleasing God is to better understand what He wants us to do. We need to love God—yes. We must also learn from God the specifics or the “how to” of those expressions.

It is best—in my view—that we should pursue aligning our lives to please God by starting each day reading the Bible and praying. This early, disciplined approach seems to focus the mind and heart toward the most Loving Person right away. Through the living words of the Bible, God prioritizes our human interactions on love throughout the day.

Some may say, “I don’t have time.” We simply need to be a disciplined person (and maybe wake up earlier). There is no better time. We have time for what we make time for. Reading a chapter a day takes five minutes; do it. It doesn’t take much to fall out of love with Him. It is not easy to stay aligned with God. By contrast, satisfying our selfish selves feels natural and much easier. Our old nature, our flesh, desires everything that pleases it, so setting our focus each morning on God helps us to orientate our thoughts and activities away from self and toward the loving selflessness.

Setting our minds on God in the morning, however, is not enough. We must focus on, “How do I please God in this situation, in this moment?” As our focus becomes persistent, as the love for God becomes a disciplined priority, we will see the impact in our lives. We will see all the tangible ways in which the love of God forms meaningful thoughts and actions with others. We will begin to think of God more concretely and be more convinced in the faith. To quote Spurgeon here again:

“We should not be satisfied with a superficial hope that Jesus loves us and with a bare trust that we love Him. The old saints did not generally speak with ‘buts’ and ‘ifs’ and ‘hopes’ and ‘trusts,’ but they spoke positively and plainly. ‘I know whom I have believed,’ said Paul. ‘I know that my Redeemer lives,’ said Job. Get definite knowledge of your love for Jesus, and do not be satisfied until you can speak of your interest in Him as a reality.”7

Our love will grow towards God as our concrete beliefs in Him and His ways grow.

Scripture Passage

Luke 10:25-28

Questions

What is keeping you from loving God with all of your being right now? Confess those things now.
Are there any long term issues that are keeping you at a distance with God?
Are you living in a sacrificial way with God? How?

Aim Point

Confess where you have fallen short to God in your love toward Him. Be honest. This is what Tozer wrote about in regard to the necessary, naked honesty with the Lord: “Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of the deceitful heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord.”8
Make God’s word a priority; it is essential to life. If you are skeptical, give it a try for a month or two. I believe you will see the impact quickly. Put your Bible on the breakfast table; read the Bible out loud (to your children if you have them). If you have family members living with you, make His word a priority in the family home. Lead.
If you feel abandoned by God right now, read the Psalms in the mornings over the next week. What you will find is people throughout time have had a hard time understanding God’s ways. At times they felt abandoned by God (Psalm 9:12), even rejected (Psalm 27:9), they felt that God was not listening to them (Psalm 30:10), etc. However, these Psalms always end with not losing hope or faith in God. They always turn to faith and praise.
Pray. Talk to the Lord as you do any other person—especially to Him. We are hoping to fuse our personalities with the Great Personality. We forget that God is a person with whom we should regularly be interacting with. Instead, we choose the lesser relationship; we often are just learning about Him.
Let us never lose our love toward the Lord, but when we do, let us get back in His word quickly and get to praising God in song and prayer. Let us set our hope on The Day that we will all rejoice together with Him as the Apostle Peter taught the Church.
A great, classic book is A.W. Tozer’s, The Pursuit of God. I wholehearted recommend it for rethinking or remembering our love for God.

4
Love People

“Love your neighbor as yourself”
is seeking the highest good,
for all people, in all circumstances,
at all times, through the Spirit’s power.

Let’s admit here, people are the source of most of our frustrations in life. While loving God is the greatest commandment, the greater challenge is the second greatest commandment: love people like ourselves. Even though we know we are forever family, as Christians, we generally find it difficult to love people as we do ourselves. It is often easier to love God apart from people. But we must understand that God desires us to show love to all others even when it is difficult and complicated. Jesus taught that when we love others as we should, we show love toward Him as well (cf., Matthew 25:40). “Love your neighbor as yourself” is a substantial opportunity to demonstrate personal holiness and obedience to God. This commandment must flow out of our lives to include the numerous, daily interactions with co-workers, family, friends, and even people checking us out at Walmart. Loving our neighbors as ourselves requires dedicated, day-to-day commitments both large and small.

People do all kinds of things that intrude into our emotions. However, with that said, I am reminded that I am a “people;” therefore, I am a source of frustration to others! When we think about our actions with others, we know that we have let others down in numerous situations and moments in our lives. We blow it as children, teenagers (especially), young adults, adults, and seniors citizens. It is in our fallen nature to do so. At the heart of our shortcomings is self (or our selfishness). We tend to care about ourselves to the highest degree, but we don’t place people on the same level. Hence, God has commanded us to bring others up to the same level as we treat ourselves.

Also, love your neighbor as yourself is the minimum standard for God’s people, not the highest. “Be the servant of all” is a higher standard. “Be the slave of all” is the highest standard of all (cf., Matthew 20:26, 27). (These are covered later in the book.) To live out the second greatest commandment, we must “treat others better than they deserve.”9 Isn’t that how God treats us: better than we deserve every moment of our lives?

Why is it so difficult to treat our neighbor as our self? What stands in our way of walking in equality with our spiritual family? What bad habits do we fall into that keep us from living this out? Let’s cover a few of them.

Setting the Ideas of Love Too Low

We often set “Love your neighbor as yourself” to a comfortable, recognizable, common, worldly standard of love. For example, love of family. Loving our family is good, but it is not exceptional or unusual in God’s kingdom. Read what Jesus said about these matters while paying particular attention to verses 32 and 33 of Luke 6,

“But I [Jesus] say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 To the person who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well, and from the person who takes away your coat, do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your possessions back from the person who takes them away. 31 Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you. 32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same” (Luke 6:27-33).

Jesus taught that “sinners” (lost people) love their families and people who love them back. This kind of love is comfortable, recognizable, and a humanistic, common standard of love.

Holy means to be set apart from the common. In other words, holy is the opposite of common. Until our love exceeds the commonness of everyday experience, it is not the transformational, holy love.

Furthermore, let us not think that we will receive a special reward from Jesus for loving family and friends. For it is of no “credit” to us as Jesus taught (v.32). The love of family is excellent but universal, a duty not exception. By contrast, the love of our enemies is an uncommon love indeed; a Christian duty by and through the power of God.

Setting Our Own Value Too High

One bad habit most of us struggle with is an inflated opinion of ourselves. These bloated opinions keep us from having a proper view of ourselves, therefore, hindering us from a loving attitude toward others. God wants us to rise above our inflated self-worth and our base humanistic, common thoughts. When we are determined to live our lives in puffed up and proudful ways, we are limiting, often fully demising, the spiritual actions and attitudes Jesus desires us to live by.

Many Christians are spending great portions of their lives choosing to daily live in their base natures and human egos. These lower natures of ours demand human respect, honor, and recognition. Instead, we need to identify these bloated attitudes, confess them, and turn away from them with a renewed commitment to humility. Often, we are guilty of only “giving a brief smile” at the second greatest command and then continue to live our lives indifferent to the highest ideas in the Bible. As a result, we continue to move in the opposite direction of God’s directives. Paul taught, “For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you not to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think, but to think with sober discernment” (Romans 12:3a). As we proceed in this life, we need to evaluate ourselves continually, not according to our education, family name, or the accolades of others or, as we so often do, according to the worst Christians around us, but instead according to the Person of Perfection, Jesus. It is when we evaluate ourselves according to His perfection that we can then evaluate how we are doing in our walk of loving holiness and love. When we do this, we are humbled anew and reminded that we are no better than anyone else apart from God’s grace and power. If we do not stay humble, then the command, “love your neighbor as yourself” is impossible. Love and haughtiness cannot coexist.

Paul most clearly reintroduced this clear thinking to the Church by articulating our condition apart from God. He wrote, “Just as Isaiah predicted, ‘If the Lord of armies had not left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have resembled Gomorrah’” (Romans 9:29). Talk about a humbling truth. We must conclude that we are not morally superior to anyone. It is God who has delivered us from the potential evil that lives inside of each one of us.

Setting Our Value Too Low

While most of us go around with an inflated image of our value and worth, others do not think enough of themselves. This, too, is another detriment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Most of the people I have met in life that carry a low value of themselves have a terrible testimony of pain. Evil entered their life, usually when they were a child or in adolescence, and their life recovery has been elusive. Most often, this type of pain involves a felony crime(s) (often unreported), but it can also stem from parents that possessed no skills whatsoever at raising children. Some of these hurting people have not been proactive in finding solutions and healing for their emotional wounds. Others prefer their pain instead of confronting it. Instead of dealing with it to receive closure, they prefer to embrace the “victim” role for the duration of their life! They use past events as a crutch and excuse for being spiritually unproductive.

(Note: Dealing with deep-rooted emotional problems resulting from past pain is beyond the scope of this book, but if this describes you today, please seek out professional counseling from a licensed Christian counselor. At times, we need experienced people to help us work through tragedy. If you need help finding a trusted counselor, advice on doing so is given in “Appendix A” at the end of this book.)

Some pain is very significant and will never be forgotten, but it should never mold our lives into low living as it often does. Christians must take action to heal. Jesus is our healer. If hurt Christians don’t deal with the mistreatment they have endured—in a biblical way—then they may form an unbiblical self-image. The doctrine of, “Life hasn’t been good to me; why should I be good to others?” will govern the thoughts and actions of the “victim.”

Value has been placed on us by God and through His Son’s death and resurrection. Jesus, in speaking to people of faith, reminded them of their value. Jesus taught, “Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will. Even all the hairs on your head are numbered. So do not be afraid; you are more valuable than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31). At times, we may be prone to forget the value God places on us. Christian, you are valuable.

Separating the Love of God From the Love of People

There is a fundamental flaw, too, in our thinking at times: we attempt to separate the love of God from the love of people. Separating these loves is impossible; they are permanently bonded by God. There are sinful ways that we attempt to divide our love of God from our love of people.

One common way is through good old-fashioned ignoring people, along with an attitude that people are not needed or don’t matter much. This belief is both familiar and unequivocally wrong. Christians are to live in community, as family. Paul taught that all believers are needed, for we make up “one body”—the Body of Christ. We cannot look at each other and say, “I do not need you” (1 Corinthians 12). Every Christian has at least one spiritual gift given by the Holy Spirit to make the Body work properly. We dismiss our brothers and sisters to our own detriment. Each Christian has a role and is a valuable part of making a difference in others’ lives (1 Corinthians 12-14).

John also taught us that we cannot show love by ignoring people’s physical needs. “But whoever has the world’s possessions and sees his fellow Christian in need and shuts off his compassion against him, how can the love of God reside in such a person?” (1 John 3:17). Love of neighbor is proactive and physically tangible.

God wants our desires, will, and actions to be directed toward Him and others. We are all linked together spiritually. When we love people, we love God. The Lord said, “‘I tell you the truth, just as you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of mine, you did it for me’” (Matthew 25:40b).

These are a few healing truths to consider:

All people have been hurt by others; therefore, we all carry the consequences of the sin of others in life. Our experience may vary by degree, but it is not unique.
We have all hurt others; we have all sinned against others.
God loves us in these damaged lives of ours. He has proven His love through His Son’s death and resurrection.
God cannot love us more; He loves us perfectly. Everything He does, He does to perfection.
We should love others as ourselves, for we have great value to God. To accomplish this, it may involve forgiving ourselves for a serious crime(s), or it may require us to forgive others who have caused us great pain.
We must have a balanced, biblical view of ourselves. We should not think too much of ourselves with our ego driven self-worth or too little of ourselves discounting God’s sacrifice for us.
With a proper belief in these foundational truths, we can start practicing living lives that treat our neighbors as ourselves.

Scripture Passages

John 13:31-35

John 14:15-21

Questions

What is the mark of a loving Christian according to John 13:35?
Read John 14:21 again. Write the opposite of what Jesus taught.
Are you loving your enemies as Christ loved you as His enemy? Yes or N0
Do you desire to restore broken relationships fully and completely? Yes or No
If “no,” what sin(s) are you allowing to take root in your life to keep you from love?
If “yes,” what steps will you take today to restore these relationships?
Have you withheld forgiveness toward someone—anyone? Be honest. Yes or No
Do you hate someone now? Yes or No
Galatians 5:22-23 , “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Below are the displays of love of the Spirit. Circle which answer applies to your actions most frequently below.

Love…………….…always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Joy…………………always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Peace………………always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Patience…………always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Kindness…………always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Goodness…….…always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Faithfulness……always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Gentleness………always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never

Self-control……always—usually—sometimes—rarely—never 10

Aim Point

Look at question 9 from above. Ask the Lord to help you with the fruit of the Spirit that you circled that is “sometimes, rarely, or never.”
Ask the Lord to bring to your mind people you are keeping at a distance. Think about it carefully; write an initial below of all the people you would prefer not to be around. Pray for these people.
Ask the Lord to bring to your mind people that you think may be keeping you at a distance due to your actions and/or poor choices. In other words think about the people you have hurt. Think about it carefully; write an initial of all the people you think would prefer not to be around you below. Pray for these people.
Confess to the Lord these things.
Take time to call or write to someone from your past to help facilitate forgiveness. Set things right. Only you can forgive; others may not forgive you, but that is not your responsibility. Take action.

5
The Audacious Potential of Faith

Start by doing what’s necessary;
then do what’s possible; and suddenly
you are doing the impossible.
—Francis of Assisi

The Bible teaches that love and faith are the two essential virtues for Christians to do any good work. “Now without faith it is impossible to please him” (Hebrews 11:6). Therefore, we must live lives of faith—daily faith. It is a requirement for anything eternally good, a necessity of God’s glory. Therefore, faith is a “line in the sand.” Our minds, hearts, and actions must be governed by it. If we are maturing properly in the Lord, every one of us should become more conformed into the image of the Son. As we trust God for this conformity, growth and maturity will result. With maturity, we will place more trust and faith in God. Our aim is the complete transfer of trust and faith from ourselves to our loving Creator God, because “our only qualification is, We need Him.”11

Armed with this understanding, we can accomplish the grandiose, the audacious things of God (cf., Ephesians 3:20). Jesus described this faith to His followers as mountain moving faith (cf., Matthew 17:20). Do you believe this today? Have you stopped believing it? One of the most heart wrenching experiences is to see Christians who don’t believe they can accomplish wonderful things for God. Some have never learned to have faith that God could work through their lives to do the unimaginable. They don’t believe that “with God all things are possible!” (Matthew 19:26). They have not bought into what William Carey believed, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”

Recorded in the Gospels are two instances where we read Jesus was “amazed” at people. One instance was by witnessing great faith and the other by the lack of faith (cf., Matthew 8:10; Mark 6:6). As Christians, we will have doubts in our lives. These doubts usually spring up when: 1) we have failed morally, 2) when we are fearful of responding to God’s call on our life, or 3) at times of major stresses. Be aware of these times. These will be times for you to “press into” God with faith instead of doubt or fear.

Faith Must be Cultivated

We wish faith would flood into our lives with simple prayers; instead, it must be kept in its daily, rightful focus with great spiritual intentional energy. We must rely on God every day. Faith must be shored up daily and weekly through actively, purposefully involving God in our lives. We must also continually cleanse our minds of doubt through the Word, prayer, and humble living.

God Will Lead Through Faith

As our godly abilities and aptitudes increase in our lives, faith must increase all the more. Faith must remain ahead of our experiences, educations, talents, networks, charisma, and every other humanly developed characteristic. If our faith doesn’t outpace our human abilities, there is a real tendency to continue to live in the safety of those abilities. We then may stop exercising faith. The more natural talent we have been given, the more intentional we must be in relying on God. We need to agree with Paul, for we are “the ones who worship by the Spirit of God, exult in Christ Jesus, and do not rely on human credentials” (Philippians 3:3b). There is no room for faith for those who will keep their confidence in their achievements, pedigree, personality, and abilities.

Faith in God is a Key to Joy

One can find no more joy in the world than when he is in the center of God’s desires for his life by faith. Ask people who know these things and learn from them. Then take courage to give your life to God in faith. The things God may do with a person committed to Him through bonds of love and faith are incomprehensible.

Faith must be “hard-wired” and purposefully thought about in all of our plans and actions. What are you trusting God to do right now that is impossible for you to accomplish? If you cannot answer that question, are you really living in daily faith? “Now to him who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21). We should ask God for things that require faith and trust Him for things only He can accomplish. This demands we think about “impossible” things (humanly speaking), for nothing is impossible to God (Matthew 19:26).

By faith we must continually strive to be utterly dependent on Him. We need to be in constant consultation with God. We should be reading His word daily and praying the prayers that in hope, look for God to act through our lives.

The past great people of faith cared about the things of God: the gospel going to the nations, people being discipled, burdens being lifted, holiness being realized, revival in the Church, living in contentment and reliance. But they also thought not only of the grand but even the possibilities of life changing events that may come from simple gestures such as showing hospitality or visiting someone in the hospital. People of faith believed these things because they knew that God would use them for His glory and kingdom work far beyond their understanding. They knew that God could accomplish much—even in the little acts of grace that they did.

Let God write the history of your hopes and heart, and you concentrate on elevating your expectations in Him. A life of faith is waiting for you. Are you ready for it?

Scripture Passages

Matthew 8:5-13

Matthew 21:18-22

Mark 11:19-25

Luke 7:1-10

John 14:5-14

Questions

In what areas of your life do you experience continued doubt(s)?
What are you trusting God to do right now in your life? In other words, where are you exercising faith now? If the answer is “nothing,” are you living a life of faith?
Are you praying for things that will not be fulfilled in this lifetime? What are they?

Aim Point

List some things right for which you should be trusting God.
Pray for these things daily this week.

6
Hope

Therefore, get your minds ready for action by
being fully sober, and set your hope completely
on the grace that will be brought to you
when Jesus Christ is revealed.
- Hebrews 13:6

Christian hope is fully trusting in the biblical promises of God. Hope is one of the supreme Christian virtues along with love and faith. It focuses our attention on the proper person—namely God; it helps us prioritize our daily lives properly; it equips us for purposeful service.

We see examples of people exercising great hope throughout the Bible. In the New Testament, believers’ hope was what comforted and motivated them even as they were being chased around the known world, being beaten, imprisoned, deprived of their physical needs, and at times murdered. Hope in God and their future with Him is what they clung to. And it seems this hope was the fuel that kept them going through the roughest of times. Biblical hope continues to encourage, embolden, and motivate Christians around the world just as it did in the first century.

In my life, I realized hope was missing from many days of my life after I had known the Lord for many years. But while sitting in a class in seminary, I was given a “Hope Handout.” Dr. Micheal Svigel passed out an outline that contrasted worldy hope and biblical hope.12 It refreshed my hope in the Lord and His work in the world. Svigel included many Scriptures, and through them I was reminded of the benefits of godly hope. These passages challenged me to direct my hope from the earthly and common toward God in Heaven again. I have renewed my remembrance of the passages many times now and have shared the passages with many others. Following Dr. Svigel’s lead, I have included many passages of Scripture here in the latter part of this chapter to share with you. After you read the passages, my wish is that you come away with a renewed hope toward God.

Enlarged Vision

Paul’s earthly life looked plain pitiful—from a secular standpoint. He articulates just some of his challenges in 2 Corinthians 11:25b-27:

“Three times I suffered shipwreck. A night and a day I spent adrift in the open sea. 26 I have been on journeys many times, in dangers from rivers, in dangers from robbers, in dangers from my own countrymen, in dangers from Gentiles, in dangers in the city, in dangers in the wilderness, in dangers at sea, in dangers from false brothers, 27 in hard work and toil, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, many times without food, in cold and without enough clothing.”

But through all of this Paul was driven by his hopeful future. Hopeful promises have been revealed to all of us through the work of the Spirit and His Scriptures. Paul explicitly taught that God has allowed us to “see” (i.e., revealed) what He has prepared for us through the ministry of the Spirit. Paul wrote about some of these future realities when he wrote 1 Corinthians 2:9-10a, “But just as it is written, ‘Things that no eye has seen, or ear heard, or mind imagined, are the things God has prepared for those who love him.’ God has revealed these to us by the Spirit.” To illustrate: a lost person could stand on the moon while listening to the most moving music they have ever heard, but they still couldn’t understand what God has prepared for those that love Him. Our future would make a trip to the moon mundane. We are headed to things that—apart from God—we would never hear, would never see, or would never contemplate. These verses should motivate the Christian to live actively in hope’s promises in tangible and assured ways.13 We are headed to an unimaginable future.

False Sources of Hope

Idolatry is blatant in many parts of the world. People often carve and cast their gods with their own hands only to turn back and worship the very things they created. Ancient idolatry looked this way as well. But an idol is anything in which we place our hope. The world’s hopes are in money, armies, politics, the stock market, assets, houses, even “lucky shirts,” as well as numerous other things. We as Christians have fallen into these hope traps ourselves. As we live our daily lives, we are susceptible to placing our hope and trust in the exact same things the world places their hope in. This should not be said of us; our “help comes from the LORD, the Creator of heaven and earth. (Psalm 121:2b)

Material things can become chief sources of idolatry for Christians. When we are out of step with the Spirit, we find 401ks, homes, bank accounts, careers, goods and services are easy to hope in. We can go online and see how the 401k is going. We can go and look at past returns of our choices and predict the future—we hope. We take hope in what our company thinks of us and so on.

We may choose to have things in our lives, but we must not allow the pull of their false securities to take root in our lives. It would be easy to overgeneralize here, but most Christians would admit to placing too much trust in material wealth, homes, careers, and other things at some time in our walk with the Lord. Unfortunately, with that said, some have allowed materialism to steal their hearts away from God. Some are so caught up in materialism that it may be difficult for them to see the theft! Paul wrote: “For the love of money is the root of all evils. Some people in reaching for it have strayed from the faith and stabbed themselves with many pains” (1 Timothy 6:10). Who wants to stab their bodies? Apparently Christians. We are supposed to instead take the wisdom from Paul to Timothy: “if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Timothy 6:8b, ESV).

Human expectations can be an idol. Ask middle-aged people if their life turned out as they hoped. Some would say “exactly,” but many would say “no.” Life has brought us much disappointment. These disappointments cause many Christians much depression. But these frustrations, anxieties, and depression are caused by misplaced hope. We shouldn’t be surprised when life does not turn out the way we planned. We live in a fallen world; our hope is not here. God has called us to obedience through the power of love, faith, and hope and not to a “successful life” that a fallen world would define for us. For Christians, as well as the lost, placing our hope in what the world esteems will lead to absolute frustration. The Bible reads from Proverbs 11:7, “When a wicked person dies, his expectation perishes, and the hope of his strength perishes.”

Another side to human expectations is living life to satisfy earthly goals. We must work to pay our bills, but many Christians are addicted to making more and more money. Some are choosing to live every day to reach worldly, temporary goals and amassing stuff that will be left on this planet. These are the workaholics. These are folks that may prioritize their life in secular ways while just tipping their hats to the spiritual things. No one is immune from this. Watch yourself.

Methods can be an idol. This even happens in churches. The name of this idol is “my program.” When this is the case, some might hear, “We have never done it that way around here,” or “We always do it this way.” Methods change. Don’t idolize them.

The war horse may be an idol. The Bible reads, “Those who go down to Egypt for help are as good as dead, those who rely on war horses, and trust in Egypt’s many chariots and in their many, many horsemen. But they do not rely on the Holy One of Israel and do not seek help from the Lord” (Isaiah 31:1). Whether it is in politicians or the armies they command, Christians are not to place their hope in worldly power and militaries. God gives us governments; it is the way God administers justice (cf., Romans 13:1-7), but we place our hope in Him alone.

True Source of Hope

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are our hope. Christians know this, but how often would our lives testify against us in this matter? Many find it difficult to trust in God fully. Yet, Jesus, our Lord, led the way on how to trust. He trusted the Father to His death. Would we? When we have hope in God—no matter what we might face in life—in the end, we will not be disappointed. We then will see and realize that all outcomes, from our God of Hope are for the benefit of His people. “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28b). Therefore our hope is fully “anchored in our identity: God’s truth about us, reinforced through our relationships” 14 with Him.

Psalm 39:7

But now, O Lord, upon what am I relying?

You are my only hope!

Devices of Hope

God uses many events, devices, and plans to produce hope in His people.

Suffering produces hope. Romans 5:3-4 , “Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope.” A caution here: suffering may produce hope in God if one is walking with God, but it may produce bitterness toward God if one is not walking with Him. Pray for the former.

We become less focused on suffering and discomfort as our priorities change to what God’s are. When this happen, our discomfort begins to fade as a priority and our expectations of God change to the mature doctrines of the faith. The following diagram illustrates this truth.

^{Reproduced Slide, GACX Compelled Conference, Denton, TX, Sept. 25, 2019}

God gave us the Scriptures for hope, “For everything that was written in former times was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through encouragement of the Scriptures we may have hope” (Romans 15:4). Notice we must have “endurance” for hope to fruit. This life works against biblical hope; it looks to continually undermine it. If we endure, we will continue to hope. Don’t give up; hope must endure through trials to be hope!

The promise of Christ’s return is a device of hope. Paul wrote, “As we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Peter taught that Christians should, “Therefore, get your minds ready for action by being fully sober, and set your hope completely on the grace that will be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:13).

The hope of the resurrections of our bodies has not received the attention it used to. Some are very confused about the what, when and how of it all. Our greatest hope is that we will be with Jesus and we will be like Jesus. These hopes will be completely fulfilled after the resurrection of our bodies. Read 1 Corinthians 15 for a summary of this hope. Paul wrote,

Romans 8:23-25
“Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance.”

The Result of Hope

The results of hope are numerous:

Hope thwarts depression.
Psalm 42:5
“Why are you depressed, O my soul?
Why are you upset?
Wait for God!
For I will again give thanks to my God for his saving intervention.”

Hope focuses on God as the proper and only object.
Psalm 39:7
“But now, O Lord, upon what am I relying?
You are my only hope!”

Hope brings us joy.
Proverbs 10:28
“The hope of the righteous is joy, but the expectation of the wicked will remain unfulfilled.”

There are two types of joy from hope: earthly fulfilled and heavenly fulfilled. The first is joy we experience even in the most challenging times on earth. This type was available to Paul and Silas after being severely beaten for sharing the gospel. (Acts 16) . The other is when our hope is fulfilled as we know it, in Heaven.

Hope produces sanctification.
1 John 3:2-3
“Dear friends, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever it is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is. And everyone who has this hope focused on him purifies himself, just as Jesus is pure).”

Hope ensures boldness.
2 Corinthians 3:12
“Therefore, since we have such a hope, we behave with great boldness.”

Hope produces evangelistic answers.
1 Peter 3:15
“But set Christ apart as Lord in your hearts and always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks about the hope you possess.”

Hope can endure persecution
Acts 23:6
“Then when Paul noticed that part of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, he shouted out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am on trial concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead!”

The Bible is full of passages about where, who, and in what our hope should lie. It teaches that our future hope far outweighs even the beautiful, spiritual, earthly fulfilled hope we experience. In Heaven with God; that is where our greatest hope will be fulfilled.

Scripture Passage

Jeremiah 17:5-8

Questions

Honestly, what are you hoping in right now?
What insecurities are keeping you from placing full hope in God?

Aim Point

Suffering may diminish our hope at times. Taking the time to study the word “suffer” in the Bible is one of the best actions we can take to realign our thinking with God’s. So if you are going through a difficult time that includes suffering, I invite you to go to biblegateway.com and search the word “suffer.” The verses on suffering are numerous and the doctrine is rich. God does many things through suffering. Check it out.

2) Are you struggling to find hope in God? Go to biblegateway.com and search the word “hope.” Read the Scriptures, study them, reread them. Place them around your home, car, and workplace.

7
Grace

If none of God’s saints were poor and
tried, we should not know half so well
the consolations of divine grace.
— Charles H. Spurgeon

As my life’s renewal has continued, I am amazed at God’s ways and work. I am sometimes confused and even baffled by His interactions with me. But I am convinced and reminded that all of what we experience is due to God’s wisdom, grace and mercy toward us, and God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8).

All Christians receive grace and mercy from the Lord, so before I go any further, I want to use an illustration to explain the difference between the two:

“As Billy Graham was driving through a small southern town, he was stopped by a policeman and charged with speeding. Graham admitted his guilt but was told by the officer that he would have to appear in court.

The judge asked, ‘Guilty, or not guilty?’ When Graham pleaded guilty, the judge replied, ‘That’ll be ten dollars - a dollar for every mile you went over the limit.’

Suddenly the judge recognized the famous minister. ‘You have violated the law,’ he said. ‘The fine must be paid — but I am going to pay it for you.’ He took a ten-dollar bill from his own wallet, attached it to the ticket, and then took Graham out and bought him a steak dinner!” 15

Mercy is represented by the ten dollars the judge paid for Billy Graham’s fine. It was due for the crime. The steak dinner Billy Graham received afterwards was grace. Billy Graham was given benefits he didn’t deserve from the judge: mercy and grace. We enjoy both grace and mercy from the Lord. Jesus’ death on the cross paid our fine. We were guilty; we received mercy. Jesus gives us grace also. He gave us an inheritance, He gives us positions of authority and complete restoration in His kingdom.

Praise the Lord that:

We are justified (saved from the penalty of sin).
We are being sanctified (saved from the power of sin).
We will be glorified (saved from the presence of sin).

Put another way: By grace, God saved, is saving, and will save His people.

Receiving Grace

I love the refrain from the song “Grace Greater than Our Sin,”16 written by Julia H. Johnston.

Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that will pardon and cleanse within;
Grace, grace, God’s grace,
Grace that is greater than all our sin!

The song reminds me that grace has pardoned me in God’s court by reigning over our sin. And ultimately, grace will forever separate me from my sin when I stand before God. Completely will grace triumph.

The benefit of God’s grace has always kept up with humankind’s capacity for sin. Jesus’ death and resurrection caused a “superabounding”17 state of grace to flow to sinners in God’s creation! (Romans 5:20). In the Garden—grace triumphed. When the Mosaic Law was given and sin increased in the world—grace trumped. When Jesus explained that sin is committed in our minds, sin increased—grace trumped (cf., Matthew 5:28). Jesus is infinitely “full of grace” (John 1:14).

I took the time to remind myself of a few of my grace benefits here. They apply to you as well if you know Jesus as Savior.

I have everlasting salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9).
I am a friend of Jesus (John 15:15).
I am forever in the family of God (Matthew 12:48-50).
I receive constant assurance from The Spirit that I am a child of God (Romans 8:16).
I am at perfect peace with God (Romans 5:1).
My shame is removed (Romans 10:11).
I have great potential for great rewards (Matthew 20).
I am part of God’s demonstration of love (Romans 5:8).
I am equipped to love as God loved me (1 John 4:19).

Resting in Grace

Even with the accumulated benefits of grace, there are times when I struggle to be at rest in it, to embrace it as I should. I disbelieve because I get frustrated with my old sin nature hanging around. It seems like grace should stop my sin, but I remain frustrated in my inaccuracies of application. I sometimes, sinfully and erroneously, question God’s grace because of my sinfulness. My sinful heart testifies against me. But then I am reminded by John that, “whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20b, ESV). Even when I struggle to rest in grace, there is yet a grace for that! Hallelujah! I choose to remember that I should never attempt to “set aside God’s grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:21b). I remember, too, that we are not able to be perfected here on earth. “For God has consigned all people to disobedience so that he may show mercy to them all” (Romans 11:32). There will be no prideful person entering Heaven that became perfect on earth. No, we will all stand before God because of His all powerful will, as objects of His grace.

Giving Grace to Others

As I reminded myself of the love I have for God’s grace and remember that I also need to rest in it, I remember here that, I am not very good at giving grace to others. I doubt that I am alone in this struggle. An author poetically described this reality in his life this way: “I have barely tasted of grace myself, have rendered less than I have received.” By “barely tasted,” Yancey wrote that he had rarely experienced grace either at the churches he attended or at his Bible college where he graduated. He instead said he experienced “ungrace.”18 Later he would go back and explain to his old professors what he experienced only to be rebuffed. I doubt his Bible college was unique. Churches, ironically, are not great places to experience the expressions of grace. We often speak of and desire grace , but it seems that we don’t understand the application of the term. We love for grace to come our way, but we are often not much of a vessel of grace toward others.

I need grace. You need grace. The church needs grace and the lost need grace. Let’s show grace.

Not Abusing Grace

Especially as time has gone on, I tend to get comfortable with my “small” sins (there is no such thing as an acceptable or small sin). When I do this I take advantage of grace. I abuse grace. Let me explain: instead of confession and repentance when I am impatient, I choose to say, “Ah, grace.” When I am cynical, “Grace.” When I gossip, “Grace, grace.” I need grace daily, but I confess that I should take my sinning more seriously. Grace was not given to me for misuse. Peter admonished his readers against this improper use of freedom. He wrote, “Live as free people, not using your freedom as a pretext for evil, but as God’s slaves” (1 Peter 2:16). We are not to hide behind grace to commit evil.

We see this was a problem in the Roman church also. Paul reprimanded the church when he wrote, “What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). We easily realize how their view gained footing: put up with sinful views and tendencies and we’ll make more room for more of them.

Instead of excusing sin, grace is intended to break the chains of sinfulness. “For sin will have no mastery over you, because you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14). Due to grace, we are now free to choose the holy, the most excellent ways of love (1 Corinthians 12:31, 13:13).

Scripture Passage

Ephesians 1:3-14

Questions

How did you become complacent with those sins in your life?
What steps will you take to facilitate holy change in your life as you continue to grow closer to the Lord?
Think of the last time someone hurt or offended you. Write about it here.
Did you show grace to that person? If so, how did you show grace to them? If not, why were you unable to show them grace?
In your own words, define grace and mercy and explain the difference.
Why is grace not a “license to sin”?
What is the purpose of Grace?
How do we balance our need for daily grace without using it as a cover for sinful behavior?

Aim Point

Take the time to thank God for His grace.
Think of the most difficult person in your life right now. Ask God to fortify your mind and heart to be an agent of grace toward that person in the days ahead.
Pray, “ God please humble me; help me. Challenge me to give grace to those around me, yes, even to those that don’t deserve grace. Remind me in these moments that I don’t deserve grace; therefore, I can freely give grace to others.”
I recommend Philip Yancey’s book, What’s So Amazing About Grace (ISBN 0-310-21327-4) for further reading on grace and how to live it out.

8
Holiness

The stiff and wooden qualities
about our religious lives is a
result of our lack of holy desire.
– A.W. Tozer

If Christians are asked “What is holiness?” Often the responses would be things like “godly living” or “moral actions.” Technically, holiness is defined as “apartness,” sacredness, or separateness.19 Separated from the common behavior is a good way to think about holiness. We are holy, when we live according to what God desires from us because we are not responding to our circumstances the way the common world does.

As was written before, practically, sin is withholding love. Therefore, holiness may be thought about as loving thoughts, words and actions despite all consequences. Loving actions are always moral actions. Loving actions are always holy.

God is perfect in holiness. God is absolutely set apart—in every way. Due to God’s uniqueness and our sinful natures, we may only be holy due to God’s equipping. When we think, speak and act like God, it is because of God. God equips us for holiness. It was God’s will to make us holy. It is God’s plan to make us holy. God executed His plan to make us holy.

It is the Spirit who produces fruit in our lives. It’s because of Him that Christians have new desires and abilities to think like him, to speak as He would, and to act like Him. This is all due to what Paul identified as the key to Christian living when he wrote to two churches. To the church in Galatia Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). To the Philippians he wrote, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13, NKJV).

When Christians think of a “holy” person, we usually think of God. It is not a label we readily choose to use for ourselves. I don’t recall a person ever describing themselves as holy. But we must realize that, we have the ability for holiness due to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. We know our sin nature is always lurking in our minds and hearts, and we are familiar with its draw and power. Nevertheless, we are called to be holy in all we do. Whether we are a widow, layperson, garbage collector, pastor, banker, or whatever our position, if we are a Christian, we are called to holiness in our actions.20 Peter reminded the church of this when he wrote, “But, like the Holy One who called you, become holy yourselves in all of your conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). Peter gave no restrictions to holiness. It is to be broad in scope and therefore, impact our everyday behavior. It should affect every aspect of our lives, including work, family, recreation, church life, and more.

Unfortunately, just as with the other virtues, holiness slips quickly. Our natural self is in direct opposition to holiness. Often, we give ourselves free passes. Therefore, all of our conduct requires a constant holiness check-up. For example, we tend to allow a sin like gossip into our life easily. Left unchecked it may become a part of our everyday action. The Bible instructs us to, “… let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is beneficial for the building up of the one in need, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29b). We may also allow unforgiveness to live in our hearts, but the Bible teaches us, “… be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32). When we stop regularly looking at ourselves carefully, holiness will soon slip into the background of our interactions with one another. Also, when we are constantly evaluating others, we will be drifting from holiness ourselves. A constant critical nature towards others is much of our problem.

Apartness

Since Christians are supposed to be set apart, what is it we are supposed to be set apart from? The answers, generally speaking, are common behaviors, responses, immorality, and the world’s ways. “For God did not call us to impurity but in holiness” (1 Thessalonians 4:7). Cultures are filled with depravity, and press in on the minds and hearts of Christians daily, deteriorating our biblical doctrine and holiness. We witness this daily in cultural compromises of great denominations. We also see these compromises in our lives and our brothers’ and sisters’ lives as well. Compromises start slowly, but they gain speed and territory in our hearts quickly. They can start with ideas of, “Let’s go with the flow,” Let’s be accepting,” “Let’s not be intolerant.” All these may be okay in certain situations, but we should not be naive. The world desires to replace biblical holiness with its idea of kindness. Today this kindness can only be described as being categorically opposed to biblical doctrine.

James wrote about this to address the Church’s naivete in his day with, “Do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? So whoever decides to be the world’s friend makes himself God’s enemy.” (James 4:4 b). Many a local modern church has tried to have it both ways. The biblical doctrine states that we must choose who we are going to serve: the world (and its ideas and culture) or apartness from the world. The Church should be distinct. We, as individuals, must also decide. We choose in every situation.

Practical Holiness

God’s perfect holiness is static; it never changes. But too often, Christians are adopting common ideas from their cultures for their new, personal definitions of holiness. Some are beginning to deny a standard for holiness at all! They instead are succumbing to moral relativism that has prevailed in many institutions and media outlets in our society for many decades.

Some are shifting their moral compasses —at least publicly—so they are not ridiculed, singled out, or do not suffer in some way.

Christians must take heart and submit to God’s standards of holiness/morality as defined by the Bible. We as Christians will have to decide in the days ahead who we are going to follow: the world or God. We need to continue to speak the truth in love.

Dedicated/Consecrated

Holiness sets us apart for dedicated service.

Let us make no mistake: we participate in the process of holiness. God does the work, gets the credit, and, therefore, He gets the glory, but we are active in the process as well. We are as holy as we want to be right now.

Paul instructed the young preacher Timothy in this way,

“Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.” (2 Timothy 2:20-21, ESV).

Paul used a metaphor of a “great house” to describe Christians. We must continuously get rid of the wood and clay items of our lives—the unholy items—to be useful to God. Only the dedicated/holy items can make us useful to God. It is only the holy things we do that strengthen our usefulness to God. If we are actively choosing worldliness, we may rest assured that God will not use us as He would have otherwise. Our level of usefulness to God is directly tied to our commitment to our holiness.

All of our being and all of our actions should be the goal of holiness. One of Paul’s most quoted passages of Scripture is, “Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2). Our bodies (our entire self) are supposed to be a consecrated (set apart) sacrifice to God.

Serious Sanctification

Holiness sanctifies us. Sanctification is a broad topic and we have space here to cover one aspect of it.

The Bible teaches that all Christians are going to be judged. Every thought, word, motive, and deed will be evaluated (cf., 1 Corinthians 4:5; Revelation 22:12). Every word, thought, or deed brings either life and kingdom advancement and will be rewarded or is a dead work and will be “burned up” (1 Corinthians 3 :13-15). So our sanctification, as it is used here, are those collective, saved, holy moments from the time we were born again (when the Holy Spirit came into our beings) until the time of our deaths. These moments—again—are a product of God, but we participate in the process in essential ways. To increase our saved moments, or our sanctification, we need to learn and remember these things:

We quickly confess our sins to God (our worldly, fleshly participation).
We remember what God has said about His people, holiness and His kingdom that contradicts our base desires and lifestyles (Bible verses that speak directly to our sinful choices).
We repent (we change our minds toward our sinful choices again and commit to God’s standards).
We continually commit and recommit to holiness and humble ourselves.
We ask God to change our actions as we submit to the process.
We rely entirely on God to change us.
We need to add personal “exertion and work as well as faith” to the process.21 It is hard to die to ourselves.

Paul wrote to the Roman church, “For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” (Romans 6:19b). Only the words, thoughts, and actions that are holy honor God and shine light into darkness. “We must face the fact that we have a personal responsibility for our walk of holiness.”22 In addition, we are not to make excuses for our sin. “We must take our sin more seriously, expeditiously seeking to remove it from our hearts and minds” by confessing what is our sin and seeking God’s help for holiness.23

Adam and Eve took a bite of a piece of fruit in their disobedience. They almost assuredly thought, “How bad could it be?” Oh that they would have seen the consequences of their sin! Do we see clearly the consequences of our sin?

One of the persistent problems in our responsibility of being sanctified is that we put up with certain sins; we conclude through inaction that our sins “aren’t that bad.” Sin is bad…period.

The list of our sins we tolerate as individuals could be lengthy: things like unwholesome talk, bitterness, unforgiveness, gossip, deceit, porn, fornication, and adultery. What are the sins you are living with today? These are your opportunities for change.

Self-righteousness

We should not become haughty as God changes us. There is a real temptation to forget it is God who changes us. We don’t change ourselves. If we forget this we will begin to think and act like the self-righteous Pharisees. We start thinking we are better than lost people and even condemn them. This verse is all we need to put our thinking right in regard to our nature apart from God: “Just as Isaiah predicted, ‘If the Lord of armies had not left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have resembled Gomorrah’” (Romans 9:29). If the Lord were to remove Himself from the earth, all of humankind ends up in the same sinful situations. There is no room for pride in our holiness messaging. God makes us holy through His initiative, His work, His Scriptures, and His power. Therefore, humbly we should share the message of salvation with the understanding in all sinful things, “But by the grace of God go I.”24

Judging the Lost

Scripture commands us not to judge those outside the Church. Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, “For what do I have to do with judging those outside [the church]? Are you not to judge those inside? But God will judge those outside. Remove the evil person from among you” (1 Corinthians 5:12, 13). Constable’s comments are good here:

“Paul’s authority as an apostle did not extend to ‘judging’ and prescribing discipline on unbelievers (‘outsiders’) for their sins. He did, of course, assess the condition of unbelievers (e.g., Rom. 1; et al.), but that is not what is in view here. His disciplining ministry, and the ministry of other Christians in judging and disciplining sin, took place only within church life. ‘Judging’ here means more than criticizing. It involves disciplining, too, as the context shows.”25

Failure Awaits

All of our actions can be transformed by holiness. With that said, we remain daily susceptible to failure and immorality as we are housed in these mortal bodies. In these bodies, sin remains crouching and ready to wrestle itself back into play. We need God’s grace always, and yet, God commands us to be holy. We will need God’s grace at death as much as we need it now. But the right thing to do today and every other is to continue to ask for help from God daily to mold us into the image of His Son.

Scripture Passages

Romans 7:14-20

1 Corinthians 5:9-11

Questions and Exercise

Look at the Romans 7:12-20 passage. We are reminded that the flesh will have some weight in our lives as it did for Paul. There is grace for us in these moments. But Paul also wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:9-11, that we should separate from and not even have lunch with those that would call themselves Christians and are engaging in the sins he listed for the Church. Write out a short paragraph to balance these ideas.
Being honest, what are things you regularly do that you know are unholy. Write a number for every one of them or use tally marks.
What is your number one weakness in the area of holiness?
What could you do today to break yourself from these sins?

Aim Point

Go to BibleGateway and search the word holy. Print some verses that stand out to you. Place them where you will see and read them this next week.
If you would like to read more on the topic of holiness, I recommend Jerry Bridges’ book, The Pursuit of Holiness.

Section Two
“Acceptable Sins”

“Sober up as you should, and stop sinning!
For some have no knowledge of God—
I say this to your shame!”
— 1 Corinthians 15:34

In the middle of 1 Corinthians 15:34, we have one of the simplest ideas. An idea very often ignored by Christians: “Stop Sinning.” We tend to give ourselves a free pass on certain types of sins that we feel are acceptable.

9
Withholding Love

Sin is withholding love—the highest good—
from anyone, at any time, for any reason,
in any circumstance.

In a technical sense, when we sin, we “miss the mark.”26 While missing the mark is the technical definition of sin, the practical meaning of sin is withholding love. Withholding love is missing the mark. What is the target? Loving people (including God) perfectly. Love is the bullseye, and it is the only mark set out for us. God has commanded us to make perfect scores in the area of love. Oh that we would grasp this; how would it change the world? In what place would it not have the most profound impacts?

The Cross: The Greatest Expression of Love

Jesus taught that all the commands of the Old Testament are based on love (all 613 of them; cf. Matthew 22:40). Therefore, sin must be, in a practical outworking, withholding love; sin is the antithesis of love. Couple this truth with the definitions of the previous principles, and we should conclude that a helpful, day-to-day definition of sin to be: withholding the highest good from any person, at any time, for any reason.

We must daily commit to giving love not only to God in our thoughts and actions but also to people. People that annoy us, mistreat us, don’t like us, don’t understand us, don’t want to understand us, and even actively work against us. Christ expects—yes expects—love from His people to flow to others. Loving others does not mean that we cannot do things like correct and even rebuke in love when needed, but those seem to come easier to us than showing love to undeserving people as described in the Sermon on the Plain. Jesus commanded in that sermon, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27 b, 28). Paul told the Roman church, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” (Romans 12:17 a). It has been my experience that whichever act of love seems the most difficult to express in a situation is often the best one. In other words, at the point of delivery, the highest good directed to an undeserving person is the thing that is most difficult to do. Giving undue love to others only becomes natural when practiced for long periods of time. It falls out of practice faster than any good habit.

“Loving people perfectly” is such a short phrase, but it is something we fail at often. Love easily vanishes from our lives day after day. It’s hard to work back into life as well after long periods of absence; we seem to quickly get comfortable in our failings. We then begin to live long periods of our lives in cynicism, unforgiveness, pride, gossiping, criticizing and indifference towards people. It starts slowly, almost without notice, but sin’s goal is to steal everything good. If our flippant attitude regarding love persists, we run the risk of having our consciences moved utterly off the mark of love. We then substitute a human-made standard in its place. God’s standard is exchanged for a humanistic one, an easier one; one that is met with our human efforts alone, a sinful one. These personal, relative, and humanistic measurements “ease our minds” away from God and drive our hearts to the world. We begin to embrace a comfortable counterfeit, a relaxed replacement instead of the perfect standard of God. But these substitutes are not finished with just lowering the mark—that’s evil enough, but instead, they help to degrade other holy character traits too. They become a spiritual cancer to our lives as we get further away from God. These times add up and may culminate in a life spent with an unloving heart toward God and people. Ask those who have turned their backs on the way of the faith; often they allowed a hardness of heart to begin regarding a person in the faith (or a group of people). This hardness may facilitate a total turn from the Lord.

We must fight our entire lives for love. The unwillingness to do so is to live a life of sin. It may not “feel” that way, but it is that way. All of us will miss the mark continually. When we fall from perfection, we need to live in grace, forgiveness, and love toward one another. However, when we identify a move away from perfect love for others, we need to recognize it quickly and fearlessly. We need to confess, repair relationships, repent (change), and love again. If we choose the sinful attitudes, they will seek the goal of death of every interaction, relationship, marriage, and ultimately every second of our lives.

I will write about relying on God more than a handful of times. What does relying on God mean? To accomplish repentance (a change of mind) and behavioral change by living in love, we should place our hope “entirely” in the person of God. We look like God only through His work in us. Holiness is the work of God in our lives. We are to humble ourselves and admit, “God, I cannot do anything apart from you.” For this is what Jesus told us: “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me—and I in him—bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing” (John 15:5). We need to remember that we have access to the love Jesus loved us with: The Holy Spirit is working 24/7 in our lives—perfectly. There is no potential in God. In other words, everything He does is perfectly complete and cannot be improved upon. He cannot live in us more fully or work in us better.

You and I could be used to change the world in ways we cannot even imagine through the outflow of His love through us, but God will not use us in these ways if we refuse to be a vessel of love. Love must be found in our lives and aimed directly at others. Our refusal may thwart and keep us from our best and most useful purposes (cf. Ephesians 2:10).

Love…Really?

Many men in America think the word “love” is too “mushy.” Expressive love makes us feel “funny”; therefore, our lives are not governed by it. (So much for the idea that men are “not governed by emotions.”) Maybe the reason it feels so mushy is that it is so regularly foreign to us. When love attempts to come into our lives, we are quick to push it away. In contrast, Jesus, The Ultimate—The Supreme—The Perfect man’s Man, “felt” love toward people and he was motivated to be born on earth, teach, speak, live, and die for others (cf., John 3:16; Mark 10:21).

Also, the thoughts of living our lives motivated by love may feel just too complicated to us and, ironically, too simple at the same time. Too complicated because men want the facts and a corresponding to-do-list in life; men want to solve problems and to do it quickly and efficiently. But love is “patient.” It frequently demands much time, sacrifice, and long-suffering, and to a much higher degree than men are willing to tolerate. We prefer, as I used to say to my subordinate managers when I ran a business, “Make a list; work the list.” or “Set the goals; hit the marks.” Love will not lower itself to these managerial, business, earthly mindsets.

At a staff meeting, while I was working at a church, we reworked all of our ministries’ mission statements. We did this to help ensure that we were focused on the right ideas and ministry efforts. The elders revised the church’s mission statement to read, “We desire to equip the saints for the work of the ministry until we obtain the unity of the faith.”27 Being over men’s ministries, I reworded the men’s ministry statement. I came up with, “Equipping men to maximize their potential in Christ.”28 “Not bad.”, I thought in a staff meeting. I came up with it quickly and it was accepted even more rapidly. The quickness of its acceptability reinforced the idea that I must have been on target with my ministry intentions, right? A week later, I read this quote from Gayle D. Erwin:

“[Love] ‘is what the Bible is all about.’ Incredible! With this much prominence for love of God and love of one’s neighbor, I was shocked to find that such a statement was missing from the great doctrinal statements of denominations, missing from the great systematic theologies, missing from the creedal statements, and most unfortunate, missing from our daily lives.”29

I realized then that I did not focus on the mark! I did not have the right motivation for the men’s ministry. “Love” was missing from my mind, motivation, writing and actions as Gayle had charged.

I often leave love out of the equation, not by intention, but none the less, missing. If love is not in my direct lines of thinking, teaching, communications, thoughts, and heart, the evidence proves me out. Jesus taught on love. He was motivated by love. He loved. He is love. His most famous words of all time have the supreme idea of love in them. Why was it missing again from my thoughts that day?

If this seems real to you too, how then will we properly govern our personal lives and affairs and help in the lives and matters of others? We must be supremely purposeful in keeping love at the forefront of our minds. Love needs to become The Defacto Thought. It should be our first thought every day if we plan to lead like Christ. How could it be otherwise? “Jesus has given only one identifying mark of his followers [. …] It is only my love for other people that properly ‘brands me.’”30

A part of repentance is the confession of sin. I confess here to my fellow brothers and sisters (and other members of the world-wide Church) that love has not always motivated my actions; it just got away from me. I didn’t set out to forget about love; I just found it missing again. I plan to change in very purposeful ways in the future and ask for your forgiveness now. (I just updated the men’s ministry statement to read, “In Brotherly Love, Equipping Men to Maximize Their Potential in Christ.”31)

We know love falls out of its rightful place quickly. But what will our defense be when we give an account of our lives to The Most High? It is the most basic, fundamental, important idea in all of the Bible. Let us stop withholding it and start showing it. Showing love in concrete ways is our highest calling; to not do so is the most elemental of oversights and complacency in purpose. I think we must, in the days ahead, be in constant repentance for every act of withholding love from our neighbor. If we do not—yes nurture—love, most of us are going to see huge chunks of our lives and efforts wiped out for reward as we give our accounts to Jesus on That Day of Evaluation.

Scripture Passages

John 14:21

Luke 6:35, 36

Questions

What are the two things necessary for us to show love to Jesus, according to the first sentence in John 14:21?
Why are these things absolute?
What are the three things that will happen as we live lives of love toward Jesus?

Jesus taught us how to have a great reward in Luke 6:35. What is it?
Read part of the Sermon on the Plain from Luke 6:17-49. Name all examples (types) of people we are to show love to from the passage.
Think about the sins that he has forgiven you of—specifically—for a minute. God has forgiven you of all of these sins if you have trusted in Jesus. Which of those same sins—that you are guilty of—do you hold against others?
What sins do you take offense at the most? What sins do you hold against people the easiest?
Think about loving people outside of your family. Is love governing your life?

Aim Point

Confess if you have been withholding love from people. Be specific. This was covered in Principle 2 as well. If you are still sinning against your fellow man, confess that to God. Let Him know that you need His help to stop thinking sinfully of others.
Write the greatest commands verses (Mark 12:30-31) on paper and place them somewhere where you will interact with them everyday. Begin to pray everyday for God to make you an agent of His love to people outside your family. (Your family should be a given; if not, pray for that also.)

10
Forgetting Faith

Now without faith it is impossible to
please him, for the one who approaches
God must believe that he exists and
that he rewards those who seek him.
– Hebrews 11:6

All Christians have faith in Jesus. With faith, we are justified (declared righteous) before God. Placing our faith and trust in Jesus for the first time is the absolute beginning of what should be a lifestyle of faith. This lifestyle, described in the Hebrews 11:6 verse, after the title of this chapter, is the practice of faith: seeking Jesus, mirroring His thoughts and actions by God’s power. It means involving Him in the plans, direction, and the details of our lives.

There is no overcoming a faith deficit regarding good works. It is one of two necessities that must be in its rightful place to govern our lives. Most Christians know the importance of faith intellectually, but shockingly, most of us live much of our lives without trusting God for much of anything. We choose to live our lives not placing faith in God for the significant, amazing (to use an overused word), and impossible. We choose instead to keep our lives “in front of us;” the predicable Christian life is what we prefer. We live our lives inside our strength, mind, abilities, influence, education, etc. In other words, we have faith in ourselves most of the time.

Certainly, we will miss the mark of faith often in our lives. Even biblical heroes like Abraham and Moses did. They too had times where they were not secure in their faith; they instead doubted. Abraham demonstrated this when he feared for his life twice and lied about the relationship to Sarah (e.g., Genesis 20). But he had a heroic act of faith in offering his son on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22). We too, are living our daily lives, making faith and doubt decisions. Moses did not have the faith to go into Egypt alone (cf. Exodus 4:10-14).

Faith Fades Fast

Some of us have lived parts of our lives in faith. We know “how to do it.” But risk-taking with God is something that has faded from our realities. We instead live our lives settling in at the bell curve of averages. We settle there because there was a point in which faith began taking a backseat to replacement preferences: comfort, predictability, and perceived safety. By not having higher measurements of faith in God, we start and continue in our lives of faithless activities. Especially when we get older, we start managing faith so it doesn’t intrude into our safety nets too far or often. We should reexamine our lives for faith continually; we need to recommit to faith in measurable ways.

Selfishness

Our prayers of faith can quickly start focusing on us only. Even worse, our selfishness, left unchecked, will turn to pleas of the despicable: prayers for luxury goods, of fancy houses and pools, fancy cars and boats. We should be on our guard against fleshly, selfish prayers (prosperity gospel prayers). James reminded the Church, “You do not have because you do not ask; you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, so you can spend it on your passions” (James 4:2 b, 3). James explained, that spiritual motive (also necessary for love) is the requirement for certain types of prayers. How many of our prayers have been for material things instead of kingdom things? We must be attentive to our motives or faith is corrupted.

Pride

Pride and self-righteousness kill faith. “The danger to success is success.”32 The more God has used us, especially if He has done the marvelous in our lives, the more we must watch out for the pride that can effortlessly reveal itself. We may error at times and start to become like many of the Pharisees, filled with self-righteousness. God uses our committed holiness and actions, but they can become a source of pride. So we must remain humble as we see God working in our lives. His righteousness is our only righteousness (cf., Philippians 3:9). If we start taking pride in God’s work ourselves—like we did His work for Him—we will surely see Him take His hand off of our lives to re-humble us. Be wise; give God all of His glory and be thankful instead of prideful that He uses us for His will.

Naysayers

Listening to naysayers can result in faith’s demise. God does some of His most fantastic work while the sidelines are full of doubters, naysayers, and “bench warmers.” These are people who are in danger of never understanding the practice of faith, never submitting to God’s work through faith, never embracing faith for themselves. They don’t believe that God uses ordinary people in very uncommon ways to fulfill His desires. The determined will choose to not play it safe. They will be the ones who are determined to place faith at the forefront and to be in constant discovery of God’s work they participate in.

Uncommitted Faith

One must not give up on the faith. This idea doesn’t mean one must commit for life to a specific ministry per se; ministries come and go; methods come and go. But beginning a work of God and letting doubt creep into our commitments may put our faith on ice. Faith demands the passing of time. We need constant reminding that faith would not be faith at all if we received everything immediately. There would only be asking and receiving. Some of our prayers will not be answered in this lifetime; these will take much more patience. Let us not become tired or frustrated in these cases. Let us instead be counted among the faithful of Hebrews 11. God commends such patience.

“No”

The most challenging times for our faith will be the times God says “no”—especially “no” in a crisis. This is when our faith in God’s character must be meditated upon. We need to confess quickly and perhaps constantly if we begin to doubt God’s love or His power. There will be times when we will have strong desires, but God has other plans. This can be frustrating. This may even be heartbreaking.

Holy Huddles

Talking and meeting about having faith is a common practice. Churches and ministries are full of committees and boards which discuss to death their dreams of doing something. There has never really been a shortage of ideas on how to help and reach people. But as faith’s practitioners, we must take deliberate action in faith. Our faith intentions minus our faith actions don’t amount to much at all. “One intentional act will get more done than a thousand hopes and dreams.”33

Fear

Faith must overcome fear. Many Christians are terrified by what God may ask of them. Most of us know what it is like to have been somewhat timid in involving God in every area of our lives; God can be weighty. We know He has an uncanny ability to challenge us in ways we would shiver at (God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, for instance). We also know God will push us; He will demand more than the common goals of our humanness. During these times we may begin to be fearful that God is looking for something we do not stand ready to give. It is during these moments that we need to ask ourselves, “Why should I fear?” We should not allow the unknown to paralyze us in fear. We can trust God.

One of the saddest things to see is terror in the eyes of Christians while they contemplated the possibility of a life lived in faith. We need to remember that God will always take care of our basic needs: food and clothing (cf., Matthew 5:45; 1 Timothy 6:8). However, if we, as American Christians are being honest, we are often afraid that God may take our swimming pools!

Doubt

Doubt is cancer to faith. James told the Church, when asking for wisdom from God, one should, “ask God, who gives to all generously and without reprimand, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without doubting” (James 1:5b, 6a). James goes on to say that the doubter is “unstable” and “double-minded” (v 8). Pure faith, even in the smallest amounts, must be uncorrupted by doubt; for it cannot be genuine if doubt is at hand.

On the other hand, we shouldn’t think that we need a moon-shot dose of faith in life. Jesus taught His disciples, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20 b). Great Christians of the past were those able to trust God with child-like faith, handing more of their lives over to a loving all-powerful Father. A mustard seed will almost fit inside this “O.” That is enough to move a mountain. That is enough for God to use you as a faithful vessel to fulfill His vision for you.

Look for the Faithful

The Bible reads in Proverbs 11:14, “Where there is no counsel, the people fall; But in the multitude of counselors there is safety” (NKJV). However, be cautious who you pick to listen to. Make sure that you are looking for counsel from those who have walked by meaningful faith and yet still walk by it in measurable ways.

There are many well meaning Christians who look primarily at physical resources to give their recommendations. God is not broke. Others may say you don’t know enough, forgetting God is all knowing. I could go on but one should get the point.

Remember this: there may also come a time when you might stand alone in your convinced state of faith.

Scripture Passage

Matthew 8:5-13

Questions

When was the last time you took a “risk” for God? What motivated you to take that risk?
Be honest. Are you willing to sacrifice safety and comfort to live a life of faith? Explain your answer.
Are you trusting in God—right now—to do something above your educational background, experience, and talents?

Aim Point

Ask God to grow your faith.
Look for ways to trust God for things only He can accomplish and use you to those ends.

11
Unforgiveness

Just as the Lord has forgiven you,
so you also forgive others.
– Colossians 3:13 b

Forgiveness was the first thing Jesus taught after reciting the Model Prayer (The Lord’s Prayer; Matthew 6:14, 15). To conclude forgiveness to be important would be an understatement; the word forgive is used 56 times in the New Testament.34 God has much to say to His people in regard to forgiveness and lack thereof.

Charles Stanley defined forgiveness well when he wrote, Forgiveness “involves three elements: injury, a debt resulting from injury, and a cancellation of the debt. [… It is] ‘the act of setting someone free from an obligation to you that is a result of a wrong done against you.’”35 That is what God does when He forgave us. He set us free from our personal obligations of debt and placed those obligations on His Son. God in turn commands—yes commands—us to release others from their obligations of wrong actions toward us. (Note: God does not allow any level of unforgiveness for any sin committed against us.)

There is no unforgiveness “that fits all.” For some, it could stem from a failed business relationship, lousy parents, an abusive relative, a major crime, or even a sour look or sharp word. Unforgiveness can produce daily thoughts; it may be subtle and even forgotten about until it’s not. Unforgiveness may produce “in your face” actions and attitudes; it may be exposed during a heated argument or it may come to light after being “dormant” for decades.

We have the most trouble forgiving others who have sinned against us, but we also may struggle to forgive ourselves for something. Whether you are struggling to forgive others or yourself or both, know that unforgiveness is like a cancer to both your spiritual and physical conditions. A counselor, David Seamands, had this to say about unforgiveness:

“Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of the most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people….We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we live. The Good News of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.” 36

If you are harboring unforgiveness toward yourself or someone—anyone—you need to begin the process of forgiveness. Even in the case of a felony crime, Christians must forgive. At times Christians may need to seek out a close friend, pastor, or even a professional counselor. If you have unforgiveness in your life, begin to pray and ask God to give you the desire and strength to forgive. (See Appendix A if you need help finding a counselor.)

“Quantity” of Forgiveness

“The rabbis taught that a Jew should forgive a repeated sin three times, but after that there need be no more forgiveness.37 […] Peter suggested ‘seven times,’ and probably felt very [unselfish in] doing so. Seven was a round number, sometimes regarded as a perfect number, obviously exceeding what the scribes taught.”38 Look again at the exchange between Jesus and Peter:

Then Peter came to him and said, ‘Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother who sins against me? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times! (Matthew 18:21, 22).

How many times has the Lord forgiven you of sins like impatience or anger? Aren’t you grateful that He has forgiven you over and over and over—for the same sins? How many times can someone sin against you before you “write them off”?

There is no limit to the times we are to forgive one another. We instead are supposed to be marked by forgiveness as Christians. It should be one of the ways we stand out from unbelievers. I can’t help but wonder if we stand out at all in this area. Do you?

We are to forgive those that have sinned against us, “Just as the Lord has forgiven….” Allowing unforgiveness to remain in our lives is at the foremost of mistakes when one considers the associated harsh warnings and rebukes in the New Testament.

The Quality of Forgiveness: Back to the Table

The “Just as” phrase in Colossians 3:13 (the verse under the title of this chapter) defines the quality of the forgiveness we experience from the Lord and should model to others. When I think of my most grievous sins, I am grateful that God forgives even those. There is no limit to His forgiveness. This is how we are to forgive others.

Without forgiveness, there is no reconciliation. Forgiveness acts not only to stop the judgment of a wrong, but it works toward grace and full reconciliation.

“You can forgive someone, but you don’t have to be best friends with them.” Have you ever heard something like this? Or how about, “I will love you from a distance.” These are worldly teachings. Does a parent refuse for years to eat with his child after an offensive sin? Does a parent kick his 10-year-old out of the family for taking something from another family member? While it is true that we don’t have to be best friends with everyone; it is just as true that we are supposed to be family in the church.39

We are forgiven of billions of sins. Does God hold a grudge against us for our sins? No. The Father forgives us through Christ and invites us to dine and fellowship with Him. That is partially what we celebrate when we participate in the Lord’s Supper (Communion, The Table). God continually allows us back to the table of fellowship. We are to do the same thing. We are to put in the difficult work for reconciliation. Forgiveness is not real if a grudge is still present.

It is no wonder why we don’t have a witness in the world. It is no wonder young people don’t want to stay in church. We are foolish with our humanistic theology. I know families who will not speak to other families in the church because their teenagers have been offended at mere words. American church members can’t forgive people who disagree. The biblical standard is not being lived out in these cases. We are still drinking milk.

I once heard a Rwandan man speak to an American church. He summarized the way in which many Americans forgive:

“I forgive you, but I don’t want to sit with you in the church again. I forgive you, but I don’t want to eat with you again. I forgive you, but I will never see you again […]. That is not divine forgiveness. Forgiveness must create opportunities for [renewed] friendship and hope again.”40

The man who said these things knows something about forgiveness. His father, brother, sister, sister-in-law and her child were murdered during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. To help heal his country, he started a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation. There was complete silence in the church when he described the dinner he went to with his family’s murderers. He could educate us on forgiveness.

That, my friends, is biblical forgiveness. In the Rwandan genocide, people who went to church together killed each other. Why? They were tribal first, not family. We are family forever; it is time here to learn to live it.

Self Forgiveness

Some people have trouble forgiving themselves. Your worst moment may haunt you. Often, Christians will ask forgiveness for a specific sin, at times, for years. Christians should never do this! The “unforgiveness loop” happens when a Christian remembers a bad—even heinous—sin that he/she committed in the past. The person has confessed the sin many times, but the confession continues when it is remembered. This is unbiblical behavior.

1 John 1:9 teaches us that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous, forgiving us our sins and cleansing us from all unrighteousness.” God’s forgiveness depends on Him, not us. If we continue to confess the same sins, we will feel guilty, but the guilt comes from not believing God and not taking Him at His word. We doubt God when we confess the same sins over and over. Our consciences may continue to “feel” guilty before God for sure, but that is when we need to remember the 1 John 3:20 verse: “that if our conscience condemns us, that God is greater than our conscience and knows all things.” Our feelings don’t ever govern truth. We must stop trusting our corrupted, sinful, weak emotions and learn that what God has said is true.

So what do we do when we remember past sins of ours that have been confessed? We should: 1) Thank God that He has already forgiven us and cleansed us due to our past confessions. 2)Thank Jesus for the forgiveness we have because of His death and resurrection. 3)Remember that Jesus’ work is sufficient for the forgiveness we now stand in for that sin and all others.

Being Mad at God

Most people will experience a time when they are mad at God. There are times when God will allow great pain and suffering to come into the lives of individuals. These times have a tendency to make Christians angry at Him or even closed off toward Him; sometimes both! If you ever find yourself angry at God, confession is key. Relying on Him to soften your heart back toward Him is the next step. Jesus taught us that, “In the world you have trouble and suffering…” (John 16:33). It’s during these times that we must humble ourselves to His plan and carry on by faith, remembering that Jesus told us we would suffer.

Make Things Right Quickly with Others

Here are a few things to keep in mind as we act on forgiveness:

Get into the habit and practice of asking for forgiveness quickly.
At times you might make a bad mistake. There might need to be a “cooling off” period before trying to make things right.
Maximum grit and fortitude are what it may take if we are to work toward consistent forgiveness.

Peter Tanchi suggests three questions to provide a basic framework that may help guide in restoring relationships face-to-face:

“How can I improve?” This allows us to be prepared to receive corrections. It is always easier when we are ready to ask for our weaknesses to be exposed. It is easier to ask for ways to improve our behavior when we are in a proactive process.
“How have I hurt you?” This question makes no excuses; it shows responsibility. It takes ownership. One must be prepared not to be defensive during this question. We always want to add a “but” to the conversation and critique others when hearing hard things.
“Will you forgive me?”41 This looks to start the correction process. Forgiveness frequently is just the beginning of restoring people to the same meal table.

Forgiveness Cannot Be Forced

Unfortunately, we cannot make each other do the right things. There will be times when people refuse to forgive us. Paul indirectly spoke to this idea with, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people” (Romans 12:18). The best we can do when we blow it is to go to the offended person, confess, and ask for forgiveness and look to restore the relationship. If the offended is a Christian, they must forgive us and seek to restore relationships, but this will not always be the case. God, help us to repent.

Scripture Passage

Matthew 18:21-35

Questions

Who have you not forgiven? Write one of their initials below.
Was question 1 easily answered? Yes or No

If so, you should know that unforgiveness is a part of your life.

Why do you struggle in taking steps toward forgiveness and restoration?
Do you struggle with forgiveness regularly? Yes or No
Have you ever been angry or very disappointed with God? Yes or No
If yes, what were some of the reasons this was so?
Are you mad at God right now? Yes or No
Have you ever been angry at God and then later realized God’s purposes in your life? If yes, describe it.
What are some of the reasons that bad things happen to humanity?
Have you ever ignored God when things were going well for you? Yes or No
What event got you praying again?

Aim Point

We must recognize that we must forgive others as Jesus forgives us. Think about all the regular sins you are guilty of. Think of the sins that you have committed that have hurt people. Thank God for His forgiveness. Ask God to help you to forgive those that have harmed you.
Write emails, letters, make phone calls as necessary to ask for forgiveness or let someone know that you desire to stop holding a grudge against them.
To read more about forgiveness and/or to equip yourself better for a life of forgiveness, I recommend Charles Stanley’s book, The Gift of Forgiveness (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991).

12
Gossip

When words abound, transgression
is inevitable,but the one who restrains
his words is wise.
– Proverbs 10:19

Gossip is prevalent in every corner of the earth. It is found in churches, in businesses and homes. We rarely think about gossip the way God does.

Many Christians gossip daily and have spent many years without confessing it. Gossip has an addiction to it. It is a hard habit to break for millions. Instead of entering into Christian recovery through prayer and reading the Bible, gossips often have regular meetings with others who enjoy the same sinful pleasures. For them, the proverb is true: “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down into the person’s innermost being” (Proverbs 18:8).

For some, it is an occasional slip followed by a quick confession. These type of individuals try to give people the benefit of the doubt in situations. They do not judge situations through hearsay. They even hold others accountable when they gossip about others.

Still, others are somewhere in-between. These do not set out to embrace gossip. These individuals may only feel conviction about gossip when it becomes slander.

But most likely we have known a person who holds to a higher standard. They will rarely slip into the sin (confession almost always follows). These individuals are disciplined, and they do not allow themselves to participate in gossip. Instead they quickly direct their thoughts to a Christ-centered resolution for the pain or offense or irritation.

I knew a person like this; her name was Sherry Murray. I never heard her say a cross word about one person during her tenure as a church secretary. She always helped keep the bar high in the office toward gossip. She was consistently graceful and hopeful in her speech of others. I worked with her for eight years.

Defining Gossip

We often like to have a sliding scale for the application of the term “gossip.” We do not like to think that we are gossiping when we talk about people. But let others talk about us in a sentence and the charge of gossip will go out in force.

The Hebrew word (Heb.:נִרְגָּן neer-gawn’) translated “gossip” in Proverbs 16:28 is from a root word that means, “to roll to pieces.” A gossip tears people down. It is further defined as one who is a slanderer, talebearer, or whisperer.

When we are a whispering gossiper, we seek to hide what we are talking about from a person or persons. Some people get so used to the whispers of others that they develop a lifestyle of gossip. Certainly, some conversations need to be private; for example, a problem that needs solving. But this “whispering” involves a third, unrelated party. These are the whispers of the coffee shop.

Slandering gossip embellishes the favorite side of a problem between self or others. Slanderers do not listen to the other side of what happened in situations. Slander has chosen a side, is an unfair judge, and looks to distort the facts in its favor, whether intentionally or through ignorance.

The talebearer inflames the slander and begins to tell outright lies. Tale bearing takes form when slandering is not satisfied, when it desires to take additional reckless steps in its anger.

What is important is that whispering, slandering, and tale bearing are all the same word in the Hebrew. When one tells embellished or even outlandish stories, one is a gossiper. But when one whispers to a third person, one is a gossiper just the same. There is no difference.

The Cost of Gossip

Gossip alone accounts for much of the tension and standoffishness that we experience with one another.When people are always gossiping, they prove they cannot be trusted in a close relationship. No one desires to get close to a gossiper.

Gossip has also torn apart innumerable relationships in the churches, families, schools, and businesses. Gossip is costly: to the person sinning (the talker), the listener, and the victim of gossip. Proverbs 16:28, “A perverse person spreads dissension, and a gossip separates the closest friends.” Gossip has great lasting potential too. It may spread and impact hundreds of people; whole churches have split over gossip! Listen to what the leader of the first century Church had to say about the muscle of gossip:

“5b the tongue is a small part of the body, yet it has great pretensions. Think how small a flame sets a huge forest ablaze. 6 And the tongue is a fire! The tongue represents the world of wrongdoing among the parts of our bodies. It pollutes the entire body and sets fire to the course of human existence—and is set on fire by hell.” Also, “But no human being can subdue the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people made in God’s image. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. These things should not be so, my brothers and sisters” (James 3:5b, 6, 8-10).

James used powerful imagery and metaphors to describe our words (tongues): he used poison, pollutant, restless evil, and fires. Our words have the ability to destroy our lives and others.

Why We Gossip

We are especially prone to gossip when we have been hurt. When we are the original source of gossip, we have not taken the proper steps toward forgiveness. We are choosing the low road, sin.

Instead of gossiping when offended or hurt, we have two alternative biblical choices. The first choice would be to forgive the debt quietly without gossip and without a meeting between an offender and the offended. The second choice would be to have a meeting between the offender and the offended while looking for repentance and forgiveness.

Gossip does not even require sin as an igniter. Gossip frequently starts when people have a mere disagreement. Our culture holds to erroneous ideological views like, “If someone disagrees with you then they have attacked you.” This type of immaturity is infiltrating the Church every day. We need to be on our guard for this as we work together for God’s glory and hold to biblical standards.

The most unsightly gossip is when two people enjoy watching others fail or struggle. They relish and rejoice when people make a mess of a situation. They also seek to amuse themselves and their listeners with the juicy details of people’s sins, embarrassments, errors, or failures. How ugly.

Getting off the Gossip Addiction

Below are some steps we can take to realign our thinking about gossip and to change our behavior.

Remember, forgiveness is a command; therefore, gossip should never happen. Forgiveness and restoration are the goals to work toward when there has been a wrong. Gossip does not facilitate these outcomes.
Remember, gossip is a product of sin. A gossip’s hope is to tear someone down in the eyes of any trusted audience. The purpose is to lower others’ views of the person being gossiped about to console the gossiper. The gossiper is willfully and sinfully choosing to inflict some level of damage to a person. Often this happens with little information and almost certainly without the other side of the story. Instead, we choose to reach conclusions while ignoring fairness. We desire to be plaintiff, attorney, judge, and jury even though we are entirely biased toward our own opinions. We often don’t have all the information about an event, but our slanted certainties remain. Proverbs 18:17 speaks to these ideas: “The first to state his case seems right, until his opponent begins to cross-examine him.”
Remember what God has said about gossip. Start to look at gossip the way God does. Read the Bible verses below to recall what God thinks about gossip. Paul’s admonishment to the Church is helpful: “You must let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but only what is beneficial for the building up of the one in need, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). We must devote ourselves to the confession of the worldly sin of gossip and recommit ourselves to stronger devotion to words that build people up and never tear down. Gossip is listed with all sorts of inappropriate sins in Paul’s letter to the Corinth church. He wrote, “For I am afraid that somehow when I come I will not find you what I wish, and you will find me not what you wish. I am afraid that somehow there may be quarreling, jealousy, intense anger, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder” (2 Corinthians 12:20). This is unacceptable in the Church. Parents also need to make sure they are not teaching their children to gossip by gossiping in front of them!
Confess the sin of gossip. Confess every day if necessary. Break the cycle.
Ask for forgiveness if relationships have been broken over your sin of gossip.
Be accountable.
Ask all of your close friends to hold you accountable if you gossip about people. Let them know you are serious about your desire to stop gossiping.
Break off relationships if necessary.
Learn to stop people from gossiping around you. Instead, offer to pray with the gossiper for the people they are gossiping about. This will help break these habits. If they don’t stop, then address the sin directly with your friend. You may have to stop your association with an unrepentant gossiper as instructed by Proverbs 20:19: “The one who goes about gossiping reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with someone who is always opening his mouth.”

The Bible explains the benefits of holding our tongues. “Where there is no wood, a fire goes out, and where there is no gossip, contention ceases” (Proverbs 26:20). When we stop gossiping, we will be known as a peacemaker and people will find us trustworthy. “The one who goes about slandering others reveals secrets, but the one who is trustworthy conceals a matter” (Proverbs 11:13).

Scriptures Passages

Proverbs 16:28
A perverse person spreads dissension, and a gossip separates the closest friends.

Proverbs 20:19
The one who goes about gossiping reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with someone who is always opening his mouth.

Proverbs 26:20
Where there is no wood, a fire goes out, and where there is no gossip, contention ceases.

Proverbs 26:22
The words of a gossip are like delicious morsels; they go down into a person’s innermost being.

2 Corinthians 12:20
For I am afraid that somehow when I come I will not find you what I wish, and you will find me not what you wish. I am afraid that somehow there may be quarreling, jealousy, intense anger, selfish ambition, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.

1 Timothy 5:13
And besides that, going around from house to house they learn to be lazy, and they are not only lazy, but also gossips and busybodies, talking about things they should not.

Questions

What are the causes of your gossip most of the time?
What steps are you willing to take to stop gossiping?
To whom do you gossip to the most?

Aim Point

Regarding the previous question. Call that person now and ask them to hold you accountable in the area of gossip. Often we waste the opportunity to change through our interactions.
Memorize 2-3 verses that you could later quote to yourself when you are tempted to sin and tear someone down with words.
If someone has wronged you and you are tempted to start gossiping, go to them instead and work through the issues. Restoration is always the goal. Often when problems are worked through biblically, friendships are strengthened. Read Matthew 18 and Galatians 6:1 before you approach someone for correction. Keep in mind all the times God has forgiven you of sin as you confront someone.

13
Doubt, Fear, and Anxiety

The physical realm life is a constant
struggle to ward off disease. Likewise,
in the spiritual realm, the life of faith
[is] a permanent battle against doubt.
– Alister E. McGrath

Towards the end of Jesus’ physical, earthly ministry the Apostles worshiped Jesus on a peak of a mountain in Galilee. It was there that they received The Great Commission, some of the last instructions they would receive directly from Jesus. A response to Jesus’ instructions seems out of place: “but some doubted”43 (Matthew 28:17). This is amazing: at least two of the eleven Apostles (Judas Iscariot was dead at this point) there were struggling in their confidence in Jesus. No doubt, the Apostles were still processing all of the events that they had witnessed. They had been with Jesus three years and had seen him raise people from the dead, heal the sick, cure the blind. Talk about a whirlwind; look no further! Yet they were still insecure in their confidence of the Lord. Even though The eleven Apostles had seen amazing things, but doubt was yet a part of their lives at that point.

To see doubt the recorded doubt is frankly, somewhat surprising. But, on the other hand, it is also encouraging in a few ways: 1) Jesus gave them The Great Commission, even in their doubts. 2) Even in their doubts, they were worshiping. 3) Seeing the disciples’ doubt gives us hope in knowing that it is part of the relational experience with the Lord. We will have doubts at times. Our emotional makeups, our frail states, and sinful natures give life to them.

Go to War Against Doubt

If we are honest, we will all act like the doubting Apostles during our lifetimes. (One might think to himself/herself, “I would never doubt Jesus.” “Give it time.” is how most senior Christians would respond.) Like The Eleven, our doubts are real. We should not deny them, but they also should not define large sections of our lives. Consider something Spurgeon wrote,

“Strive with all diligence to keep out the monster of unbelief. It is so dishonoring to Christ that He will withdraw His visible presence if we insult Him by tolerating it. It is true it is a weed that we can never entirely remove from the soil, but we must aim at its root with zeal and perseverance. Among hateful things it is the most to be defeated. […] In your case, believer, it is most wicked, for the mercies of your Lord in the past increase your guilt in doubting Him now.”44

We will see the “monster of unbelief” show itself in a few different ways: we doubt God’s power; we doubt His love; we may also doubt His care/concern for us. These are terrible thoughts, but all will think them—at least briefly—over time. Be prepared.

We experience these doubts/fears mostly at times of significant difficulties. When this happens, we are to expel the doubts/fears and not allow them to take root in our lives. We do this best by replacing those thoughts with “whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). The Scripture teaches us to think about God’s truth because we cannot believe conflicting thoughts in the same moments of life. We may have conflicting feelings minute-to-minute, but we are to concentrate on God’s truth and live by faith in His promises. We are to establish our lives on what God has said, not on what we feel and think.

Remember, we are going to have problems. Jesus taught, “In the world you have trouble and suffering, but take courage—I have conquered the world” (John 16:33b). He also used a powerful metaphor to remind us of our situation in this world in Matthew 10:16, “I am sending you out like sheep surrounded by wolves… .” We should expect problems in our lives! Let’s not doubt during the trials and problems Jesus said we would experience.

We don’t need a significant amount of faith to see God do amazing things. It is not the amount of faith that keeps us in our contented corners; doubt is the real enemy. Jesus taught some of His disciples how much:

“Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” So Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:19-20 NKJV).

With these words, Jesus describes exactly how much potential we have as believing Christians. A mustard seed of faith with no corrupting doubt will accomplish much in the Kingdom of God.

Regarding asking God for wisdom James wrote, that a person “must ask in faith without doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed around by the wind” (James 1:6b).

Doubt puts rot in our prayers, actions, and thoughts. We must pray with confidence in God. We do this more as we understand God better. God explained to Isaiah in chapter 55, verse 9, “for just as the sky is higher than the earth, so my deeds are superior to your deeds and my plans superior to your plans.” Our faith should not be shaken when God allows trials in our lives. Let’s be open to how God desires to use us in life and how He wants to unfold His plan for us. Let us not lose our confidence in His wisdom and ways.

Dream Without Doubt

For your time here on earth, your prayers should far exceed what is possible for you to achieve on your own. We often keep our kingdom dreams in the framework of our abilities and understanding; therefore, we keep the dreams in our cautious limitations. We restrain our own potential in Christ by our unwillingness to have faith in Him to any significant degree. Paul explicitly taught these ideas in Ephesians 3:20-21, “Now to him who by the power that is working within us is able to do far beyond all that we ask or think, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Dream big with God; then dream bigger still!

Tozer wrote, “God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.”45

Anxiety

Children have anxiety about the dark, what’s under the bed or going to the church nursery. Adults have anxiety about adult things: the day before their weddings, going off to college, a problem pregnancy for a grandchild, or countless other things.

Jesus’ disciples had anxiety even though they saw Him calm storms, raise the dead, feed the masses, and heal the sick.

Anxiety seems to be a constant problem for many Christians in their everyday lives. Jesus taught on worry and anxiety as recorded in Luke 12:22-34:

22 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For there is more to life than food, and more to the body than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn, yet God feeds them. How much more valuable are you than the birds! 25 And which of you by worrying can add an hour to his life? 26 So if you cannot do such a very little thing as this, why do you worry about the rest? 27 Consider how the flowers grow; they do not work or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these! 28 And if this is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the fire to heat the oven, how much more will he clothe you, you people of little faith! 29 So do not be overly concerned about what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not worry about such things. 30 For all the nations of the world pursue these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, pursue his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father is well pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide yourselves purses that do not wear out—a treasure in Heaven that never decreases, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

There are several key truths in this passage to live a life apart from anxiety:

Jesus commanded us not to worry about even food or clothing.
God knows what we need.
God will meet our basic needs.
We have a great inheritance.
The more things we have the more complex our lives become.
We will care about things we have invested in.

Scripture Passages

Luke 12:1-12

Luke 24:13-27

John 16:1-4

Questions

What are some of the sources and causes of your doubts?
Are you doubting God in some way now?

Aim Point

If you are doubting God right now about something, confess it. Pray prayers of adoration toward Him. Ask Him for the strength to stand on what He has said instead of believing your own feelings about what is going on.
Read Hebrews chapter 11; that chapter reminds us of what others went through as they waited by faith for the revealed plans of God.

14
Lust

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body,that you should obey it in its lusts. – Romans 6:12, NKJV

Lust is at the core of all types of sin. Our sin nature is driven by lust. It lusts for power, authority, recognition, sex, and more. James explained to the Church that death is the goal of our innate lustful temptations when he wrote, “But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death” (James 1:14-15 NASB). Lust always leads to death. For the Christian, that means that the moments we are being lustful cannot be regained. Our lust filled words, thoughts, and deeds not only die a death and have the potential to derail our lives in millions of ways, but these times deprive us of rewards in Heaven as well. We have eternal life positionally forever; however, we participate in our rewardable moments by either choosing to act in holiness or in the death of sinfulness.

Lust Lives in All of Us

Genesis 3 records the fall of humankind. Lust for the forbidden fruit triggered the disobedience of Adam and Eve. All the sin around us was birthed from Adam and Eve’s lust for what God said they could not have. Because of the fall, covetous and lustful desires of things and people reside in our hearts and stand at the ready to bring about our fall in minute and grandiose ways.

Another way to think of lust is to think about it as “any desire that is not rooted in love.”

Lust has very strong draws for each of us, and may manifest itself in personal ways. My lustful weaknesses may not be the ones others struggle with. But speaking broadly, lust is usually in three categories: lust for sex outside of holy marriage between a man and a woman; lust for things; lust for power and prestige.

Lust is always in us, ready to take over. We must not let these lusts take ground in our lives. John also explained that lust resides in our old natures. And he taught that lust is driven in large part by the sense of sight. He wrote, “For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh (appetites), the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 John 2:16, NKJV). Lust’s fuse is lit through our eyes. Our eyes are the vehicle—the go-between—that triggers sin into our lives. Guard your eyes!

Sensual Lust is a Focus of the New Testament

Jess C. Scott said, “The human body is the best work of art.” Teenagers, men, and women will lust after each other at some point in their lives. And most of us are familiar with how powerful sexual lust can be. In America, we invented the adage “sex sells,” but nothing for humankind is new under the sun. We humans are lust-filled creatures. Our fallen makeup coupled with temptations on the internet and TV 24/7 calls for God’s people to remain vigilant for any hint of lust in our lives.

Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:1-5,

“Finally then, brothers and sisters, we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received instruction from us about how you must live and please God (as you are in fact living) that you do so more and more. 2 For you know what commands we gave you through the Lord Jesus. 3 For this is God’s will: that you become holy, that you keep away from sexual immorality, 4 that each of you know how to possess his own body in holiness and honor, 5 not in lustful passion like the Gentiles who do not know God.

The Cost of Sensual Lust

God’s word is filled with warning and teaching about sensual lust. The human cost is becoming more and more evident even to non-Christians. Here is an excerpt of an article from a company called Webroot:

The societal costs of pornography are staggering. The financial cost to business productivity in the U.S. alone is estimated at $16.9 billion annually; but the human toll, particularly among our youth and in our families, is far greater.

According to Patrick F. Fagan, Ph.D, psychologist and former Deputy Assistant Health and Human Services Secretary, “two recent reports, one by the American Psychological Association on hyper-sexualized girls, and the other by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy on the pornographic content of phone texting among teenagers, make clear that the digital revolution is being used by younger and younger children to dismantle the barriers that channel sexuality into family life.

Pornography hurts adults, children, couples, families, and society. Among adolescents, pornography hinders the development of a healthy sexuality, and among adults, it distorts sexual attitudes and social realities. In families, pornography use leads to marital dissatisfaction, infidelity, separation, and divorce.”46

Sexual lusts have long-term potential for acute addiction. This is due in part to the ‘triple A’ influence. Pornography is accessible, is affordable, and provides a level of anonymity). We must understand that porn is to be avoided in the same way crack should be.

This truth is not going to change: lust breeds death. God has limits on our freedoms to protect us from death. We forget the dynamic potential of the sin that always wants more.

The Cost of Lust

All lust is sinful and selfish. In love, others are the focus; in lust we are the focus. The cost of unbridled lust has the highest penalties and ruin associated with it. Ask the man whose marriage failed because of his sexual lusts. Ask the woman who has brought her family to financial ruin due to her insatiable lust for more, more, more. Along with family ruin, lustfulness often leads to public embarrassment and shame. Read the following poetic passage from Proverbs with the understanding that the metaphorical language in context represents holy sexual contact and lustful sexual contact.

Proverbs 5:14-16
“I almost came to complete ruin
in the midst of the whole congregation!”
Drink water from your own cistern
and running water from your own well.
Should your springs be dispersed outside,
your streams of water in the wide plazas?”

We each possess a bottomless pit for the lusts we carry within us (cf. Romans 1:18-32). The deeper we follow lust however, the higher the cost. Lust “is the kind of thing that eats you and leaves you starving.”― Nayyirah Waheed

The Lower Bar

The attitudes toward pornography cause a lowering of the bar in other ways too. Many Christians are now seeing illicit sex outside of marriage as “the consolation you have when you can’t have love.”48 However, sex outside of a marriage is no consolation. It’s death masquerading as the next best thing to love, but only God could measure its toll on humankind. “Sex is okay outside of marriage” is a thinly veiled belief to ease the conscience. Christians need to reaffirm God’s divine plan for sex: one man, one woman married for life.

Overcoming Lust

Romans 13:13-14 reads, “Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (emphasis mine, NKJV). The passage explains that we should “make no provision for the flesh.” The Greek word for “provision” means to give “forethought” to or to “give care to.” We must act immediately in our thought life if we struggle with lust. We must intentionally drive out lustful thoughts and replace them—again—with thoughts of “… whatever is true, whatever is worthy of respect, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if something is excellent or praiseworthy …” (Philippians 4:8). In other words, lust is driven out of our minds with truth.

One reason we see others and ourselves struggling with lust is because we allow small amounts of it at first—thinking that,“A little is okay.” It isn’t. By giving in to lust in small ways, we immediately start to feed it; it then begins to occupy more of our thoughts and takes root in our hearts. Lust takes ground very quickly. All “sin takes you farther than you want to go, keeps you longer than you want to stay, and costs you more than you want to pay.”49

Here are some practical ways to regain lost holiness.

There is no shortcut. The answer to all things spiritual is found in relationship to the God of our faith—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Paul taught the church in Galatia how to overcome the lusts of the flesh: “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish” (Galatians 5:16, NKJV). “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and make your hearts pure, you double-minded” (James 4:8).

In cultivating your relationship to God, He will pull you from the lusts that have entangled you.
Fast for three days, confess and repent.
Go on a weekend spiritual retreat, get serious about holiness anew, and God will equip you for victory.
There may be times where one needs to seek out professional counseling due to one’s willingness to lust.
Often, accountability is needed. A close friend that will “get in your grill” while holding your confidences may be needed.
Start writing prayers to God in a notebook and ask Him for His help.

The only place for lust in the Christian’s life is in the past dealt with by the power of God.

Scripture Passages

Matthew 5:28
“But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (NKJV).

Romans 1:24
“Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves (NKJV).”

Romans 1:27
“Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due” (NKJV).

1 Corinthians 10:6
“Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted” (NKJV).

Questions

What area(s) of lust do you struggle with the most? Why?
Are you willing to get accountability in these areas? How will you be held accountable?
What steps will you take to overcome lust?
How can you prevent yourself from struggling with lust?

Section Three
Elevating Our Life Toward Christ

If we put in the work, we shall see the victory.

15
Relying and Dependence

I am the vine; you are the branches.
The one who remains in me—
and I in him—bears much fruit,
because apart from me you
can accomplish nothing.
–John 15:5

To be a disciple is to be a student of another. For the Christian, discipleship, in its essence, is Christ-likeness; responding to life like Jesus, thinking like Jesus, etc. is what we should aspire to every day. It ought to be the devotion of our lives. The only way to accomplish this is absolute, complete, thorough reliance on The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God must live through us if we are to look like the Son. The fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22b-23a). Whose fruit is it? God’s. It is God’s character that expresses itself through our words, thoughts, and actions.

Often, Christians believe that they need to act like God. They say, “I need to be a better Christian.” That is an impossibility. We only look like God because of God. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are always working in our lives. They are accomplishing 100% of their work. They can do no more; there is no more potential in the work that they do in and through us. Everything they do is perfect. So, to say, “We must rely on God,” is really an understatement; we must entirely rely on God to accomplish anything of eternal value. Paul also saw this clearly and taught, “For in him [God] we live and move about and exist” (Acts 17:28a). We live in God. We move in God. We exist in God.

The more in love with God we are, the more we live by His power. At times, it seems like we are “passing on the religion without the relationship.”50 Full dependence is necessary to reach our potential. In other words, a “self-sufficient child of God” is an oxymoron; our potential is possessed as we fall in love with Him more deeply.

Service May Dilute Our Reliance

Luke 10:38-42 recorded Jesus’ encounter with two sisters, Martha and Mary:

“38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted with all the preparations she had to make, so she came up to him and said, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to help me.’ 41 But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, 42 but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the best part; it will not be taken away from her.’

Martha made a choice, and Mary made a choice. You, too, will make choices today, tomorrow, and next Monday. If you are going to prioritize God properly in your life, it will start with conscious decisions of humbleness. Mary was at the feet of Christ, listening, a perfect picture of humbleness, weakness, and submission.

Our service to God may keep us from reliance. In the 21st Century, there is a real tendency to be busy with our service to God. Worship is relegated to something we do for 15-30 minutes once a week at best. We choose to be Martha instead of Mary, with the more significant acts of worship consistently idle. Our real power flows out of our devotion to God. Worship cultivates reliance and dependence.

The greatest competitor to our devotion
to Jesus is our service to Jesus.
— Rick Franklin

Distractions

Technology keeps us distracted. It would be difficult to think of how humankind could be more distracted. Technology seems to keep us in a constant state of “busy.” In our phone, we find our calendars and to-do-lists of things that are important enough to keep track of. But in those phone apps, we don’t see life’s most important thing to do: Worship God. We must make time for God to stay in touch with Him. Reliance dies without time. The Scriptures, prayer, being quiet before the Lord all help to cultivate reliance. We must do it daily.

We do many things that will not matter. We have filled our lives’ minutes up with both the most eternally important and the most temporally mundane. These “busy” things in our lives keep us from a lifestyle of reliance. We overuse the sentence, “I’m too busy.” Often we are busy being busy. When we stand before the Lord, do we think that the excuse, “Lord, I was too busy to spend 15 minutes a day with you,” will hold up? Let’s get our priorities straight.

Our greatest fear should not be of failure
but of succeeding at things in
life that don’t really matter.
– Francis Chan

Strength from Weakness

Paul understood where his strength came from. He wrote, “Therefore I am content with weaknesses, with insults, with troubles, with persecutions and difficulties for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10; emphasis mine). Christian weakness is an attribute of strength potential. We tap into the fullest power of The Almighty when we are totally dependent and in need. Our daily need for God is the strength and foundation of reliant power. But being weak and humble strikes at core values of our flesh. Therefore, humbleness and weakness take a daily commitment.

Look to organize your life toward weakness. That is, organize it in ways where you must become more and more dependent on the Almighty to act in your life.

Circumstances Seem Impossible

When we rely on Jesus, nothing He wants from us is impossible. Relying on Jesus for the impossible again is a key Christian principle. Below, Oswald Chambers used Peter’s steps on the Sea of Galilee to expound on the concept of reliance on Christ for the impossible:

Don’t Think Now, Take the Road

“…Peter…walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid… —Matthew 14:29-30

The wind really was boisterous and the waves really were high, but Peter didn’t see them at first. He didn’t consider them at all; he simply recognized his Lord, stepped out in recognition of Him, and ‘walked on the water.’ Then he began to take those things around him into account, and instantly, down he went. Why couldn’t our Lord have enabled him to walk at the bottom of the waves, as well as on top of them? He could have, yet neither could be done without Peter’s continuing recognition of the Lord Jesus.

We step right out with recognition of God in some things, then self-consideration enters our lives and down we go. If you are truly recognizing your Lord, you have no business being concerned about how and where He engineers your circumstances. The things surrounding you are real, but when you look at them you are immediately overwhelmed […]. Let your actual circumstances be what they may, but keep recognizing Jesus, maintaining complete reliance upon Him. You do not know when His voice will come to you, but whenever the realization of God comes, even in the faintest way imaginable, be determined to recklessly abandon yourself, surrendering everything to Him.”51

Peter defied the laws of physics for a time. The impossible became the reality when he was focused on the Lord. Although he only took a few steps on water, only Peter got out of the boat! The potential one has in a fully committed reliance on the Lord is incalculable.

Scripture Passage

John 15:1-17

Questions

How often do you pray?
How often do you worship God?
What are you trusting God for right now that cannot be accomplished in your power?

4) If you do not have a kingdom work that relies upon God, what could you begin to pray about?

Aim Point

Take time (15-20 minutes) over the next week to worship God every day. Listen to worship music, read a passage of Scripture, and pray.
Begin to ask God to make you totally dependent on Him.
If you have trouble focusing when you pray, begin to write your prayers in a notebook first. Then read them to God.

16
Produced to Reproduce / Part 1, Evangelism

“The gospel is ten words:
Christ died for our sins
and rose from the dead.”
– R. Larry Moyer

In a business I used to work for, we used to use the acronym OJT. It stood for “On the Job Training.” The Disciples learned this way. By listening, looking, and emulating Jesus, they learned the way of the Master. Later, when Jesus told them to go and “make disciples,” they knew they were to repeat the process that He used with them. And that was the top priority Jesus gave to the Disciples from the Great Commission: disciple people.

The Disciples were not the “best and the brightest” either. They were the guys, if we had to predict, who were the least likely to change the world. But through the power of God and His instruction—they did. Even though they were average, Jesus placed them in the most crucial apprenticeship ever conceived of.

The Greatest Mission

We are now a part of that apprenticeship, and the responsibility of evangelizing the lost and discipling the saved has passed to us. From generation to generation, from faith to faith, we now have the responsibility to disciple the next generation.

The most important thing we could ever do, concerning another person, is to share the Gospel of Jesus with them. Everything else is an extreme distant second. For in the the end, what else matters if a person has no relationship with the Lord? Salvation is every person’s greatest need. It is every coworker’s greatest need. It is every fellow student’s greatest need. It is every homeless person’s greatest need. Most assuredly, if you and I are not making Christ known as we go through life, we are neglecting our highest priority for our lives. The next generation is born as the last was, one birth at a time. Those births start with the hearing of the Good News.

All Too Common

“When was the last time you had a conversation about God?” That was a question the Barna Group asked for a survey. Their conclusion came back:

“For most people, the unfortunate and surprising answer to that question is ‘not very often.’ Spiritual conversations are exceedingly rare for most Americans, and even for Christians, who are at best reluctant to have them.”52

I once heard a powerful comment on Christians’ silence regarding the Gospel from Nabeel Qureshi. Qureshi grew up in America and came to faith in Jesus as an adult out of Islam. He said he was surrounded by people who called themselves “Christian,” but they never shared the Gospel with him. He later concluded, “either they didn’t believe the gospel was true, or, if they did believe it, they didn’t care if I went to hell.”53 We must speak up!

Paul, through rhetorical questioning, put it to the Roman church plainly: “How are they to call on one they have not believed in? And how are they to believe in one they have not heard of? And how are they to hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14) We are God’s ambassadors. We are supposed to represent Him here. We must open our mouths with the words of life we have inside of us.

How many times did you share the Gospel last year? How many times will you share the Gospel next year if you had to guess? Many Christians are stringing years together without ever sharing their faith in words. There is apprehension for many, so we need to pray for strength and courage to share our faith.

Where is the Darkness?

Some Christians only have spiritual conversations when they are around like minded Christians. They are light among light. I believe there are many reasons for this. I have listed several reasons here:

Holy Huddles. It’s tempting to play life safe by only associating with Christian friends, family, and communities. However, to make disciples, we must enter into darkness. Lost people do not attend Bible teaching and believing churches. We must go to them. The walled-off, monastery life is attractive because it protects us from lost, godless people. While we need to protect children from people who would influence them in ungodliness, we need to be more intentional in sharing our faith in the dark world. Sharing our faith may be uncomfortable at first (it is spiritual), but as we share our faith more often it can become quite natural.

“No Time.” What keeps us in holy huddles oftentimes are church programs. Churches fill their calendars up with programs and more programs—especially medium size to mega churches. There is always something for the faithful to do at their respective place of worship. But when the church has a fireworks display in their parking lot on July 4th, who is witnessing about the One who brings true freedom at the fire station’s firework display on 10th Street? When we only go to men’s Bible study to study the King, who is talking about the King-of-Kings at the social club or deer camp? We have to get around lost people to witness about Jesus.

**“Monday Morning Atheists.”**54 We compartmentalize our lives. We may often live Monday through Friday without ever speaking Jesus to our peers, bosses, teachers, or anybody. This is the case for many Christians year after year. We need to embrace the thesis verses of Romans with Paul:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel from faith to faith, just as it is written, ‘The righteous by faith will live.’” (Romans 1:16-17).

Simplify the Process

We tend to think about sharing our faith like it is a monumental challenge, or that it takes a pastor “to do it right,” or if those don’t work, we might come up with another of a hundred other misconceptions (excuses really). Bottom line: we are called to be Jesus’ witnesses.

There are many books on “lifestyle evangelism”55 that include explanations on how to turn everyday interactions and conversations into sharing the Cross of Christ with others. But we tend to think the process is much harder than it is. All witnesses do is testify about something. When we are witnessing about Jesus, we are giving testimony of what God has done for us. Here is a simple plan to have a conversation about Jesus with someone else:

May I share something with you?
(Before) I want to tell you what my life was like before I trusted in Jesus to save me.
(During) I came to know Jesus through …
(Jesus) Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave to save sinners who trust in Him alone.
(After) My life after I trusted Jesus has been …

Make sure it is an honest account of these things. Most Christians have not had an easy life after coming to know Jesus as their Savior. But we all have the spiritual blessing of a relationship with Him, things like joy and peace and contentment through our trials.

People who share their faith do it not “because of what they know, but because of the Person they know, how well they know Him, and how much they long to see others know Him.”56

Scripture Passage

Roman 10:1-17

Questions

Have you recently told someone outside your family and friends about Jesus’ death and resurrection? In other words, did you share the Good News with someone in the last 3 months?
Is there a friend or family member that you can share the Gospel with today?
What is a plan you could implement to hold yourself accountable to sharing your faith with others?
Being honest with yourself here, are you a committed witness of Jesus?

Aim Point

Do you know a person who would mentor you or at least hold you accountable in regard to evangelism? Who?
What group of people could you get around to help motivate you to share your faith and disciple others?

Resources

There is a short video on the Gospel titled, “What is the Gospel? (The Gospel in Two Minutes)”. Here is a link to the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apBjEhATypE
This could serve as a guide for the sharing of one’s faith or one could share the video directly with someone and ask if they could call them afterwards.

Evantell sells an easy to understand handout to aid people in sharing the Gospel with others. Their website is https://www.evantell.org/.

17
Produced to Reproduce / Part 2, Discipleship

Equipped to be like
Christ through His power.

We must be something if we are to help others to be the same something. In other words, we must be devoted Christians if we desire to be used by God to reproduce devoted Christians. The mold must be of good quality to reproduce properly. Every word, action, and thought counts and matters. When our flesh is winning, due to a lack of true relational closeness to Christ, we are losing. We then do not look attractive to those that we are trying to reach, nor do we possess the spiritual strength to accomplish the important work of reproducing.

The great news, again, is that we do not have to perform; God does the work. He is the One who makes us authentic. He produces His fruit in us in greater degrees as we submit to Him in greater degrees. So through confession of sins, reliance on God, and a serious recommitment to the Scriptures, we get back on the path to spiritual strength.

The Process of Change

We must stay in a constant state of worship of God to see our lives built, repaired, and powerful. Nothing in discipleship is more important. For “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in [Jesus]” (John 15:4b). God does the work; we participate through submission and humbleness.

We ought to worship Him in our homes, jobs, schools, and in public. Every action has the capacity for worship. I am not talking about breaking out a hymnal in the restaurant. I am talking about being in a constant state of mind of desiring God’s glory to be known around us. He is on the throne over our lives, but we experience change through our interactive worship in the day to day. We worship Him by:

Thinking about Him.
Talking to Him in the car.
Praying to Him on bended knees in the home.
Living an authentic, humble life in front of children.
Asking questions of God.
Asking for wisdom in situations.
Praying for strength to witness about His grace to others.
Thanking Him for that great cup of coffee, for hot showers, for air-conditioning in the summer, for a pillow at night.
Etcetera.

There are countless ways to worship God. Most of them involve being in the moment with Him. We are told, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31, emphasis mine). Drink your coffee at the coffee shop for the glory of God!

We need a mindset change at times: you need to live life with the understanding that God is right there. He is on your side. He cares about you, and He is doing amazing things in your life. Through tragedy, He is there; through the best times of joy, He is right there. He cares about what you are going through.

Start interacting with him during different times of the day. You will see the difference. When we are in a constant state of worship, the glory of God will become our only priority; everything else will become a detail. Be in the moment with Him then you will experience Him, and He will use you to change lives. One of the best examples of this is Paul and Silas in jail in Acts 16:16-40. Check that passage of Scripture out for the first time or again. One will see a powerful example of what I am taking about there.

We May be Agents of Blasphemy

When we don’t have a close relationship with God, know that our lives and our testimonies degrade. We all have had our moments when we have not represented God well; those moments defame God. But when those moments start stringing themselves together, we become worldly Christians, and our witness may be used as an example for people to even blaspheme God. Paul explained this to the Roman church when he wrote, “For just as it is written, ‘the name of God is being blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you’” (Romans 2:24). Moments matter. String moments together for God’s glory. If we are not in close relationship to Christ in a moment, that moment will be off message. We “either embody or contradict the story we are seeking to share.”57

Holiness is Key

When we talk, think, and act like the common world, our message is contaminated and corrupted to the unsaved. Make no mistake, authenticity equals holiness. As Kraus has said, “Life and witness, method and message, nature and mission are one whole integrated experience.”58 When we are experiencing God, others see His holiness through us and that holiness is beautiful and attractive.

When we talk, think, and act like the common world, our message is powerless. God doesn’t use common actions to change lives. We must pursue holiness to be used in the Church among our brothers and sisters and in the lost world.

Some may be saying, “You just said, ‘God does the work!’” Yes, but remember: God does the work; we participate. Our participation is through remembering what God has said, confessing where we fall short of loving our neighbors as ourselves, humbling ourselves toward God, and worshiping in all of our actions.

Paul told the young Timothy,

“Now in a wealthy home there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also ones made of wood and of clay, and some are for honorable use, but others for ignoble use. So if someone cleanses himself of such behavior, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart, useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. But keep away from youthful passions, and pursue righteousness, faithfulness, love, and peace, in company with others who call on the Lord from a pure heart. But reject foolish and ignorant controversies, because you know they breed infighting. And the Lord’s slave must not engage in heated disputes but be kind toward all, an apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:20-25a)

Spiritual Children

We have a responsibility to share the Gospel with others—for that is their greatest need. We also have a responsibility to teach and model Christ until that new believer can stand on his own in faith. “In the physical realm when your children have children, you become a grandparent. Your parents become great grandparents [… .] And so it should be in the spiritual.”59 If it is at all possible, a person led to Christ should be discipled and taught by the person who shared the Gospel with them. At times, this will not be possible, so we must all be on alert for those who have come to faith but do not have a mentor (a spiritual father so to speak.)

If you want to be used by God, you must act. God is doing His part. Dawson Trotman said to an audience, “Are you producing? If not, why not? Is it because of a lack of communion with Christ your Lord? Remember, ‘Nothing under Heaven except sin, immaturity and lack of communion will put you in a position where you cannot reproduce.’”60

The Smaller the Better

Jesus spent the most time with three disciples, Peter, James, and John. Discipleship can be accomplished no better than the way Jesus did it. We look to Him for the framework and the how to.

For a case study, I once lead a Men’s Monday Night Bible study. On average there was 8-12 men each Monday. I once challenged the men of the study: “Let’s meet for study two months; then take a month to do ‘hands-on’ ministry in the community.” They agreed. We went and did construction at a homeless shelter for the first endeavour. By the end of the first “hands-on” month, the Bible study had three men left. Holy huddles are appealing. It is a difficult thing to move even 12 men toward common goals. I have found that groups of two or three men are easier to move and motivate toward accomplishing the more difficult ministry goals than larger ones.

Scripture Passages

Matthew 10:5-42

Luke 10:1-24

Questions

Below are questions for Christians that have known the Lord Jesus for at least 2 years.

Did you disciple a person last year? Yes or No
Are you producing fruit at all?

Aim Point

Pray to God and ask Him to send you someone. If you know someone you could disciple, ask them; be proactive.

Section Four
Change for Reward

18
Lose to Live: Introducing Life

For whoever wants to save
his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life
because of me will find it.
– Jesus

Jesus gave His disciples an important paradox: if we save our lives, we lose our lives; if we lose our lives, we find them. Jesus was clear: lose to live is an absolute. It is a spiritual, contractual, an absolute kingdom principle. There is no negotiation. And the lose to live idea is one of the most important ideas a Christian should understand. The prioritization of losing is a principle that has the potential to govern and shape our lives around the actual, personal plans of God. Losing is where we find the most profound meaning and worth of our lives and potential.

What is this life for? Why am I here? What is my purpose in life? What is the meaning of life? For the Christian, these questions are answered in the idea of striving to die to their life and the common ideas that go with it. To find an abundant, fulfilling life, the Christian must die. In other words, we must give up our natural tendency to live life to fulfill one’s self.

We, as Christians, have the same common, deep desires to set our lives up around our security, comfort, and happiness. But the fulfilling life is found by giving up the goals of self and living for the love of God and others. We live in lives of sacrifice, lives that place others before ourselves. This is what the Scriptures teach us to do: “Instead of being motivated by selfish ambition or vanity, each of you should, in humility, be moved to treat one another as more important than yourself” (Philippians 2:3).

Dream Big

Ephesians 2:10 teaches, we “are [God’s] creative work, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we can do them.” God has a custom plan and purpose for every Christian; our original purposes are our “sweet spots.” You and I will never experience greater fulfillment than when we do what God designed and gifted us to do— personally. And while God may not intend for us to be the next Moses, Elijah, Deborah, or Daniel, although He may as well, God has good works already prepared for us to accomplish. God placed you in your country, at this time, with your gifts and talents, with your experiences, for His purposes. “God is calling us to a treacherous journey, yet it’s rewarding beyond our imagination.”61 The life potential, if we embrace the “lose to live” kingdom work, will be the most satisfying way we can live. For this is where our highest potential becomes tangible life experiences with God. But we only reach our potential when—and if—we embrace the theology of sacrifice and selflessness.

We may be afraid of God’s plans for our lives. We don’t fear God as long as He stays at a distance. I believe most Christians will live a life that never includes the question, “God, what shall I do with the life that you have given me? … Let’s face it: we’d probably each rather maintain ultimate control of our lives.”62 There is within us a strong desire to stay in control of our situations. A person who does not ask these potentially life altering questions of God, may find him/her self living exclusively in their skills, talents, education, geography, network and experiences. That is what unbelievers lives look like: they say, “Let’s build lives around the hope of predictable outcomes.”

God Is Always Speaking

There are some who erroneously believe that God does not speak to us as individuals but only speaks to Christians through the Scriptures. They have developed a theology that believes, “God lives in us, but He never says a word to us!” They would teach that we are indwelt by an All Powerful God who is silent! But here I agree with Meyer:

“We may even create a theology that says, ‘God no longer speaks’ to get us off the hook for the rebellious disobedience residing hidden in our hearts. Hard to stomach? I know, I’ve been there. This reluctance to obey may point to a deeper issue. Do we actually trust God?”63

Live as a Sacrifice

The entirety of our lives ought to be used in the way God sees fit. Jesus accomplished the highest form of sacrificial living when He died for us. What should and will our sacrifices be? They ought to be the same which Paul explained to the Church in Romans 12:1, 2:

“Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice—alive, holy, and pleasing to God—which is your reasonable service. Do not be conformed to this present world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve what is the will of God—what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.”

Our entire body and life should be presented to God for His use. Let these quotes sink into your mind and heart:

“If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.”64

The abundant life “is living life by a single God-exalting, soul-satisfying passion.”65

“Our enemy is more aware than we are of the spiritual possibilities that depend upon obedience.”66

Scripture Passages

Matthew 16:21-28

(Mark 8:34-38; John 12:20-29; Mark 1:16-20 (cf., Matt. 4:18-22; Luke 5:1-11; John 1:35-51); Mark 2:13-14 (cf., Luke 5:27-32); 1 Corinthians 1:26-29; Ephesians 2:10)

Questions

Are you ready to say, “I am willing to give up authority over my life? What do you want from my life Lord?”
What one word would you choose to describe the people of Mark 1:16-20 & 1 Corinthians 1:26-29?
With these Scriptures in mind, what seems to be an essential principle about people that change the world for God?
What does that possibility mean for you?

19
Lose to Live: Slave or Servant

“The [Greek] word “doulos” means
slave, the meaning is so unequivocal,
no study of history is necessary.
– John MacAuther

As has been said, the minimum requirement is, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But hidden under our desire for predictability is the pacifying and comfortable question, “What is the minimum God requires of me?” We Christians have a tendency to cleave to our comfortable views and presuppositions in evaluating our lives and priorities. The price of this cleaving is the loss of a more abundant life. This life is always just a few committed steps away. These steps would quickly usher us into a richer spiritual life of following in Jesus’ path of complete selflessness. But these thoughts of a more fulfilling life—like Jesus’ life— seem to give us anxiety and fears. These fears keep us from risking much, doing much, and ultimately being much for Christ. John Piper identified this innate reservation early in his thought life: “The thought of building a life around […] minimal significance—a life defined by the question, ‘What is permissible?’—felt almost disgusting to me.”

One hits the mark when one loves his neighbor as himself, but that is the minimum mark. We often think this is the highest of Christian standards, but it isn’t. Loving your neighbor is a command; anything less is sinful.

Higher Levels of Christian Living

Jesus places opportunities before us to live at higher levels of life than the “love your neighbor as yourself” minimum. These higher levels are namely, the ministries of servant or slave to every person with whom we interact. Jesus modeled this type of ministry most clearly in the feet washings He gave His disciples the night of His arrest. He performed the work of a slave even though He is The Creator of the universe. Jesus is God; yet, He was willing to serve people in the humblest of ways.

Have we learned to wash feet? That is, are we willing and learning to serve in the most humble ways in this life? We live life more like Christ as we trust in what He said more and more. In other words, when we have theological clarity and buy-in with the corresponding commitment and actions, we have the resulting love, faith, feet washing actions in measurable ways. Jesus offered us higher levels of life as we become more and more selfless. Forget “I need to be second”; we need to embrace “I am last!”

What Holds Us Back?

The words are less challenging in the English.

The following is a lengthy excerpt, but look at what has happened over the years regarding Bible translations of the word for “slave”:

“If you go to the New Testament, you will find the Greek word for “slave” about 150 times in all its forms. And you will find it actually translated “slave” only a few of those 150 times. The New Testament translators only translate the Greek word for slave “slave” when it’s referring to an actual physical slave, or when it’s referring to an inanimate object, like “slaves of sin” or “slaves of righteousness.”

So there is this concept of slavery in the Scripture that has been completely hidden to the English reader. Now this was by design because the word “slave” is the most important, all-encompassing, and clarifying word to describe a Christian used in the New Testament, and yet whenever a Christian is in view, it’s not translated “slave.” The word is doulos. Have you heard that word? The word is doulos. In the Greek, that word means “slave”—never means anything but “slave.” It doesn’t mean “servant”; it doesn’t mean “worker”; it doesn’t mean “hired hand”; it doesn’t mean “helper.” There are six or seven Greek words that mean “servant” in some form. Doulos never means “servant.” A servant is someone hired to do something. The slave is someone owned. Big difference—huge difference—and yet all through the New Testament the word “slave” is masked by the word “servant,” or some form of the word “servant.” Truly a remarkable thing.”

When I started doing the research on this word, I found 22 English translations of the New Testament, 22. There was only one of them of all the translations of English New Testaments going back to the King James—up until today—there was only one of those 22 that translated doulos “slave” every single time, even though everyone knows it means slave and only slave. In fact, the most formidable of all Greek dictionaries, Kittel, says, “The word doulos means slave, the meaning is so unequivocal, no study of history is necessary.” It always means slave, and yet it’s not translated slave.67

We have stopped using the word “slave” in our Bible translations due to our national stain of slavery. By doing this, translation committees have diminished the highest goal for the Christian. While it is true that American slavery and slavery of the first century had differences (see Abarim Publications68), there are many similarities; more than some may admit.

Jesus taught that the way to the top is the absolute bottom of what humans would want apart from God. Even in our saved condition, making our minds up to be the slave of humankind takes tremendous commitment, and recommitment, and recommitment, and recommitment … . It takes daily recommitment. It takes the work of God to accomplish. Jesus taught, “whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:27, 28). We are to possess Jesus’ values and do things “just as” He did.

“[S]lave of all … . How totally opposed to all my natural leanings. … How would my family react if I were to come home and brag to them that I had been chosen as slave? […] Maybe nothing about the nature of Jesus and my living it out lends itself to advertising.”69 Being the slave of all takes a death of all self desires.

Lest I be remiss, I will add too that God is The Perfect Master, not an earthly master that would kidnap His slaves and mistreat them. Yes, He may very well call His people to a short life through an early death at times, or He may cause us to suffer much in our walks toward Him, but we must never forget that He is perfect in all He does, and “he rewards those who sincerely seek him.” (Hebrew 11:6).

God still presents an offer of voluntary slavery (at least the first century type) for every Christian as the supreme level of service. It takes great courage to enter this kind of service. We have to choose these higher levels of Christian living by giving up more of ourselves and lives.

Modern Hindrances

It is not commonly taught or heard. Becoming a slave of every person is not commonly heard in the churches’ hallways. There are many reasons for it, but one is that we have stopped hearing, reading and believing the hardest words in the Bible. We seem to gloss over them and explain them in comfortable ways.

Leadership is not leading the way. Elders, deacons, and churches’ staff should be models of servanthood. When working properly, they serve one another from the bottom up, and also serve the members. When leaders don’t know how to be a slave of all, how will the members ever buy-in and get it? If we are leaders, we should be the leader in service—in spiritual slavery really. Our nameplates should read “slave” not CEO. Unfortunately, many ministry structures are carbon copies of corporate boardrooms. Biblical leadership should be sacrificial service at the bottom of the heap. True leaders eat last, serve the longest, and lead the way to their death.

It is not our personal experience, knowledge, and skills that will change the world for Christ; biblical selflessness will.

Self loves self on the throne. We tend to think about ourselves and our immediate families 24/7. Living our life with only self in mind is our natural, earthly tendency. These tendencies stand daily in our way, kicking and screaming against the idea of a totally committed life to our suffering Savior. We must have a resolute mindset and reliance on God to change this for us. It takes a surprising gut-level determination to move completely off the thrones of our lives.

“Within the human heart things have taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the throne.”70

The Way to the Top is to the Bottom

Recap: love your neighbor as yourself is the minimum standard for behavior between Christians and people. It is the second greatest commandment, but it is not the highest form of love between people. Two other levels are even more challenging; both are voluntary. Both however, take significant commitment.

Below is a chart that illustrates the truth of Scripture.

In Slavery, We Find Our Richest Fulfillment

We find life to the fullest as we live like Christ through the power of God. We were saved and designed to be His representatives in this life. We represent Jesus most effectively as slaves—living selfless lives. Most Christians will never set their aim on the highest potential that Jesus offers us. We are afraid God will not meet our needs and will leave us stranded, empty and/or even homeless. But Tozer’s words are reassuring here:

“… God is so vastly wonderful so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is.”71

Scripture Passages

Matthew 18:1-9

Matthew 19:25-20:16

Matthew 20:20-28

Mark 9:31-41

Mark 10:17-31

Mark 10:32-45

John 13:1-17

Questions

Have you ever considered being the servant of every person in your life?
What would keep you personally from making the paramount commitment to being everybody’s servant—or even slave?

Aim Point

Take one day and purposely take every opportunity to serve every person as there are opportunities. Open every door, be first to set up for a meeting, do the dishes after a public meal, etc. Repeat, repeat, repeat … .

20
Maximize Your Rewards

“And the king said to him,
‘Well done, good slave!
Because you have been
faithful in a very small
matter, you will have
authority over ten cities.’”
– Luke 19:17

“If you do good works for God for a reward, you will lose them anyway; because you are doing them for the reward.” Have you ever heard that? That sentence has led many to conclude the exact opposite of what Scripture teaches. Jesus taught His disciples how to gain rewards in Heaven many times. He instructed them carefully on how to pray to receive rewards in Heaven (Matthew 6:6), how to give and receive rewards in Heaven (Matthew 6:2-4), and even how to be first in Heaven (Mark 10:35-45).

The word “reward” is recorded 30 times in the New Testament. With those occurrences, there is much instruction on the topic. God desires us to have deep understanding regarding how to maximize our reward possibilities that are available everyday.

Do Things in Secret

One of the most emphasized instructions Jesus taught, concerning gaining rewards in Heaven, was for people of faith to perform their actions in secret. Regarding giving money, Jesus taught the people:

“Be careful not to display your righteousness merely to be seen by people. Otherwise you have no reward with your Father in Heaven. Thus whenever you do charitable giving, do not blow a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in synagogues and on streets so that people will praise them. I tell you the truth, they have their reward. But when you do your giving, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your gift may be in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:1-4).

Regarding praying, Jesus taught the people:

“Whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray while standing in synagogues and on street corners so that people can see them. Truly I say to you, they have their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:5, 6).

Secrecy is important because it takes the most faith. When we do things in secret like giving and praying, and those actions are between an individual and God alone, and one believes he will be rewarded later, it is both obedience and faith as a motivation. Without faith it is impossible to please God (cf., Hebrews 11:6a). In other words, actions done in secrecy will be rewarded because first, we had faith in what Jesus taught; second, we acted in faith on what He said; third, we must wait by faith until we cross into the next life to receive the reward.

We, as fallen people, crave attention. The fleshly attention is a reward killer. People may see some of our works, but our ego is ready to relish the attention. We need to do everything we can in secret in this life.

We Act on What We Believe

You and I act on what we believe. We always have and always will. If I told you that a 50-pound meteor was going to smash into your exact location in 30 minutes—and you believed me—you would leave your location. In the same way, when Christians are fully convinced that they are going to see Jesus face-to-face, then they respond in specific actions as God has instructed. We act on what we believe. That is what James, the leader of the early church, presented when he wrote, “… faith, if it does not have works, is dead being by itself.” It is quoted much of the time as, “Faith without works is dead.” Faith is a must in any Christian action, endeavor, thought or word, and good works prove our faith to be genuine.

All of Life is Rewardable

The Lord is keeping track of cups of water that are handed out to people. Wow. Jesus said, “And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple, I tell you the truth, he will never lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42). This teaches us that even the smallest of things have an associated reward with it. Every word, thought, and deed is rewardable.

Jesus is not only keeping track of every detail of our lives, but He is keeping a reward count for every person who has ever lived. Jesus taught, “For the Son of Man will come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done” (Matthew 16:27; emphasis mine). Jesus also informed the churches of Asia through John about rewards. In Revelation 22:12, Jesus taught, “Look! I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to pay each one according to what he has done!” (emphasis mine).

Paul taught us about our rewards also. To the Church in Rome, Paul wrote, “He will reward each one according to his works” (Romans 2:6). He also reminded the Church in Corinth, “The one who plants and the one who waters work as one, but each will receive his reward according to his work” (1 Corinthians 3:8).

This Reward is a Great Reward

Jesus used a parable to teach that people may receive 30, 60, or even 100 times more in Heaven than what they gave here (see Matthew 13:1-23). Jesus assured Peter of his reward when Peter seemed to exclaim to Jesus, “Look, we have left everything to follow you!” Jesus responded, “I tell you the truth, there is no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive in this age a hundred times as much—homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, fields, all with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first”(Mark 10:28-31).

Let us take hold of the possibilities for our lives! Let’s act on the word of God. The writer of Hebrews gave the Church a great reminder, “So do not throw away your confidence, because it has great reward” (Hebrews 10:35).

Proximity Doctrine

Caveat: before I discuss the Proximity Doctrine, it is important to say here that God does the holy work in us to make us like His Son; this is a foundation of understanding. With that said, we must also say that we participate in the process of becoming more like Christ. We do this by, 1) dying to ourselves (give up what our flesh wants); 2) humbling ourselves and understanding that apart from God we cannot do anything; 3) asking for God’s leading, wisdom, and help in the situations in our daily life. When these things are a reality in our lives, God lives through us. Remember, the Vine lives through the branch (cf., John 15).

The Proximity Doctrine in a nut shell is the more faithful we are here, the greater access to Jesus we will have in the millennial kingdom. We may have closer dwelling places to His, have jobs that require access to Him, be part of His Court, etc. One may take issue with this because many have been taught that one may have dinner every night with Jesus at anytime. But the Scriptures don’t teach that. Let’s look at the Scriptures for truth.

Jesus described to his disciples how to sit at his right hand in Mark 10:35-45:

“Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him and said, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” He said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Permit one of us to sit at your right hand and the other at your left in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I experience?” They said to him, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink, and you will be baptized with the baptism I experience, but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give. It is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

Now when the other ten heard this, they became angry with James and John. Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them. But it is not this way among you. Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

The person on Jesus’ left hand has the secondary position (proximity) when compared to the person on Jesus’ right hand.

This may not sit well with some, but the positions and proximity of someone on Jesus’ right and left hand should immediately dispel the teaching that is contrary to God’s Word. Jesus clearly taught:

To be first, one must be the slave of all humankind. This person will have the most access to Jesus.
To be great, one must be the servant of all humankind. These will have much access to Jesus.

Volunteered slavery to all people is what it will take for a person to sit at Jesus’ right hand. The reward is closer proximity.

There is only one person who will sit at Jesus’ right hand. There is only one person who will sit at His left hand. The most faithful people who ever lived on the face of the planet will have the most access to Jesus.

Let’s also consider Revelation 2 and 3. Varying rewards are given to the churches based on their participation to overcome through God’s power. To the church in Philadelphia, Jesus spoke the following in Revelation 3:12-13:

“The one who conquers I will make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he will never depart from it. I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God (the new Jerusalem that comes down out of Heaven from my God), and my new name as well. The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

There are people who will minister in the temple of God. They will have permanent access to the temple of God.

Jesus also taught about Proximity when He spoke about an earthly banquet and “The Great Banquet” afterwards as recorded in Luke 14.

7 Then when Jesus noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. He said to them, 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, because a person more distinguished than you may have been invited by your host. 9 So the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your place.’ Then, ashamed, you will begin to move to the least important place. 10 But when you are invited, go and take the least important place, so that when your host approaches he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up here to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who share the meal with you. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

“A better place” involves a closer proximity.

I believe from these passages that we may arrive at a conclusion: the more faithful we are, the closer we will dwell and work in relation to our resurrected Lord.

Therefore, the Proximity Doctrine’s central idea is that we should humble ourselves and participate with God in the road of slavery to humankind so that we may gain better access to Him throughout all eternity.

Scripture Passage

Luke 19:11-27

Questions

Do you live with the understanding that every thought, word, and deed are rewardable? Yes or No
What keeps us from living our lives as slaves of people?
Think about all of the conversations that you had over the last week. Were there any that were not God-honoring? Yes or No
If not, how could these conversations be different to honor God?
What attitudes and actions seem to stand in your way to maximizing your rewards?
What percentage of your Christian life—concerning good works toward others—has been in secret?

Aim Point

Go to biblegateway.com and type in “reward.” Read all the verses on the topic. Be able to articulate a reward theology that does not violate these verses.

21
Mechanics of Repentance and Change

Where’s God on Your Priority List?

For most of us, we consistently struggle to set our priorities right. Our lives have a way of managing us. Our over-connected, “social,” 21st Century culture presses in on our time and keeps us from doing many things we ought to. We are often unwilling to take control of our priorities.

The mechanics of repentance and change must involve prioritizing our daily lives to what God desires for us. “How can I please God today?” “Why am I not spending time with God every day?” “Where’s God on my priority list?” Essential questions such as these require a prioritization—a reworking of our schedules. All people throughout time have had these same problems. This continues to be a focal need of the modern Christian: placing God as priority one.

To grow closer, we must prioritize the important, release the trivial, and reject the frivolous. There are so many things in the 21st century longing for and demanding our attention, but nothing is new under the sun. Time and attention wasters have always been in the world. Listen to Spurgeon, “The common fault with most of us is our readiness to yield to distractions. Our thoughts go roving here and there, and we make little progress toward our desired end.”72 We must focus on our hopeful end by asking ourselves, “Are we living our lives in such a way to receive the prize of Christ?”

Think about your weekly activities: what percentage of your life could you make drastic changes to for God’s glory instead of using it for temporary satisfaction? We have time for what we make time for. Paul Becker said it well, “Stop your frantic ‘doing.’”73 We must stop saying, “I don’t have time.” We need to stop blaming time for our lack of concentration in choosing the greater things of God and how well we spend our time. Our “time is a function of priority.”74

We are the Christians we want to be right now. We are as godly as we want to be. We worship as often as we want. We are choosing to live our lives the way it is. Great determination is required to change our lives in significant ways. Our lives are elastic but in a lackadaisical environment, stubbornly static. We tend to slip back to where we were quickly and permanent change can be elusive without a tenacious will.

“The busier you are the more intentional
you must be.” - Peter Tanchi

So to change and move our lives closer to God, it takes thinking and acting on many good habits that will facilitate life change.

“We toil for matters of the world: we rise up early, go to bed late, eat the bread of sorrow and all for a little wealth. We think nothing of the hardest labours to accomplish our worldly delights. Then consider prayer, reading, meditation, and worship: how difficult are these? How soon we cry out, what a weariness is this? A little time in duty is spent with a great deal of murmuring.”75

To Repent, Do What You Already Know to Do

It seems, in all the years I have walked with the Lord, that I never stay in one place with Him. Either I am becoming more like Him today or I am giving in to the flesh more often. I have realized that when I want to make a concerted effort to gain back the relationship with Jesus that I digressed from, I must first hold onto what I am doing well and get rid of things that take too much time or are sinful in nature. I then begin again, to work back in the spiritual disciplines that I neglected. I already know how to be a spiritual person. The trouble is I am not acting on what I know.

To Repent, Take Out the Trash

I usually begin repentance with remembering that there is no potential with God; God is always working in my life perfectly. Perfection has no potential. He can do no more; He cannot improve; He is perfect in all He does. I, therefore, must choose to yield to God’s work by getting rid of the things I am doing that do not please God. God is working in us to will and to act according to His standard (cf., Philippians 2:13). The reason we choose sin is because of us not because of Him.

Notice that Paul instructed Timothy that a person must “cleanse himself” of behavior.

Now in a wealthy home there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also ones made of wood and of clay, and some are for honorable use, but others for ignoble use. So if someone cleanses himself of such behavior, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart, useful for the Master, prepared for every good work. But keep away from youthful passions, and pursue righteousness, faithfulness, love, and peace, in company with others who call on the Lord from a pure heart (2 Timothy 2:20-22).

This passage reminds me that I am responsible for what I do. God is already doing His work; I must get rid of the things in my life that are not noble.

Make the Next Right Decision

We live daily in moments of decisions. Every day we are faced with choices. Some of the choices we make are unique, but mostly they are repetitive. These choices compile and eventually make up our days and the totality of our lives. The application of these Christian truths may also be simplified to a decision-making process: make the next right decision. To repent, we must stop making the decisions we know not to make. We must change our minds about the acceptability of the things we do that do not glorify God.

Let’s face it, most of us would be pretty good Christians if we would apply what we already know to do. The Christian life boils down to simple truths: love, faith, and hope. The devoted life is grown with prayer, the Scriptures, community and worship.

Prayer

“I pray too much.” I have never met a person who believed this about themselves. We all understand that we could and should pray more. Prioritizing prayer models what Christ did and is invaluable to us.

If we would stay off our “smart” phones longer than a few minutes between busy duties and desires throughout the day, we might find many prayers headed heavenward.

Many times, after I see myself slipping with God, I notice that I first stopped praying as I should. I started “slipping” with God. Reading God’s Word and praying to Him are the “meat and potatoes” of Christian growth. When we stop praying, we are in trouble. And it’s usually trouble that gets us back into the habit of prayer. Maybe you can identify with Peter as Spurgeon did:

“And starting to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’” (Matthew 14:30).

“Sinking times are praying times with the Lord’s servants. Peter neglected prayer at starting upon his venturous journey, but when he began to sink, his danger made him a suppliant, and his cry, though late, was not too late.”76

Now is the time of repentant prayers.

Family Devotions

Ask any “solid” Christian what should one do with their own family to facilitate spiritual growth, and almost certainly one will hear, “Read the Bible and pray together every day.” I saw an example of this when meeting with a dear Indian friend of mine. I and another man met at his house for breakfast, and he asked to be excused for a few minutes during the meeting. We were meeting in the dining room and I noticed he moved to the informal eating area of his home. There he met his high school aged daughter. I saw him open a Bible and read a few verses with her. He then prayed for her before sending her off to school. My friend gave me a powerful reminder of the importance of a father in a child’s life and devotional life in the home.

There is no substitute for family devotions. God’s word is active and living. It realigns our thinking, priorities, and focus. God’s word is necessary for our growth.

Dads and moms need to regularly show their children how important the Scriptures are in the home. It is the parents’ responsibility to teach their children to spend time with God daily. They should model this.

Act With Determination

There must be a willful determination in us to seek God. Our fleshy natures are so powerful and always with us. Paul proved he understood our conflicted natures well when he wrote Romans 7:15, “For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want—instead, I do what I hate.” Those natures of ours demand attention and must be forcefully put down.

We see many examples of the resolute in the Bible. Joshua spoke to his people about the staunchness of choice in Joshua 24. Daniel exhibited great relentlessness even in the face of the consequence of death. We see this determination, of course, throughout Jesus’ ministry. He would get away to pray. He would pray when others were sleeping. He would move from town to town because he didn’t want comfort; He wanted to fulfill His purpose in life. The clearest example of His persistent determination was evidenced by His sweat drops of blood-laced prayer to the Father in the Garden before His crucifixion: “Yet not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42b) and His willingness to go to His cross.

Endure

I wish I could say that the longer we live, the less determination is needed for a spiritually focused life, but our flesh natures must be at least partially described as doggedly persistent.

Therefore, endurance is also required. We must be in a constant state of motion toward God. Tozer adds insight to the necessary endurance required: “To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul’s paradox of love, scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist […].”77 “We must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us” (Hebrews 12:1b).

Scripture Passage

Matthew 9:35-38

Questions

Where’s God on your priority list?
How many times a week do you spend reading the Bible and praying in your home? Circle one: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
What are the frivolous distractions that seem to gather too much of your time?
What hobbies or things do you enjoy that you may devote too much time to?
If you have children, how are you teaching your children the value of the Bible and prayer in your home?

Aim Point

Write out what you do Sunday through Saturday in a typical week using the times of day to map out where your time is going. What could you get rid of or cut down on to spend more time investing in God’s kingdom work?

Example

Monday
6 am ………………… Breakfast
7 am ………………… Devotional
8 am ………………… Breakfast
9 am ………………… Work
10 am ………………… "
11 am ………………… "
12 am ………………… "
1 pm ………………… "
2 pm ………………… "
3 pm ………………… "
4 pm ………………… "
5 pm ………………… "
6 pm ………………… Dinner
7 pm ………………… Watch TV
8 pm ………………… Watch TV
9 pm ………………… Watch TV
10 pm …………………Watch TV

Call someone and ask them to hold you accountable for the #1 Aim Point by asking you weekly if you are reading a chapter a day and praying.
Find a ministry and work in it.
Call a ministry leader right now and ask them if they need volunteers.
Begin to read one chapter of the Bible a day from a book in the New Testament. If you are married and/or have children in the home, have a meeting and let them know that your family is going to begin to read a chapter and pray together before breakfast. If mornings are too “crazy” for you (like if you have five children), then pray for them before breakfast. Read the chapter of the Bible in the evening. We have time for what we make time for.

22
Finding Our Place in Ministry

For we are his creative work, having
been created in Christ Jesus for good
works that God prepared beforehand
so we can do them.
— Ephesians 2:10

From 1 Corinthians 12, Paul explained that every Believer is an integral part of Jesus’ one Body. This particular illustration of all Christians being needed and being part of one Body is important. We collectively work together with our service gifts to accomplish service ministries to others and to the world. With this illustration, we know that we are all needed and serve a role in God’s plans and purposes and we are entirely interdependent. What an awesome responsibility and privilege.

Note here: these gifted ministries may take much time to start, grow, mature and flourish. Bennardo spoke to this attribute of God well when he wrote, “God’s ‘slow’ is slower than our ‘slow.’ Like, really slow. Like, ‘so slow you can’t tell anything’s happening’ slow.”78 But all of us have a ministry that we should be doing and working in.

Every Christian has a place in this life that no one may fill where you are (although others may have the same gift as you do). It’s yours; God made it for you. This place doesn’t necessarily involve what one does for a living. The place I am writing about is in an equipped place for service to the community of believers. When walking in the ways of God, you fit “there” in the Church. You will never experience more satisfaction than living life in the God-ordained place where you fit. Working where we are gifted brings peace and fulfillment. You were born at such a time to fulfill the plans God has for you.

These diverse gifts working together in a local community are how we function well as a ministering unit. Each gift is important and we use the gifts collectively to meet the spiritual and physical needs of people. As we serve one another, we manifest (reveal or show) the work of the Holy Spirit as we serve others (see 1 Corinthians 12 for a full treatment of this truth). Peter wrote about this service to others: “Just as each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of the varied grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10). Peter taught that every Believer has (past tense) received a gift.

God gives the gift. He decides what’s best, and you have been specially equipped. As Christians, we are told to use our gifts “to serve one another.” To serve one another, we must be around each other. Notice again that Peter explained that we are to be a “steward” of these gifts (steward means manager). We are entrusted with and required to put to use the gifts God gave us.

Find Your Spiritual Gift

Recently I asked a group of six men, “What is your spiritual gift?” There wasn’t a response from any of them. They didn’t know their spiritual gift. Some had been saved for over 30 years! I wish I could say that this is uncommon, but it isn’t. Most people have trouble naming any spiritual gift listed in the New Testament much less their own. This should not be the case for us.

Below is a list of all the spiritual gifts. The gift names may vary depending on the translation one uses.

Every Christian should know what their spiritual gift(s) is so that it may be purposefully acted upon for God’s glory. Online assessments may be used (link below), but here are several points of caution:

Don’t overly trust in assessments. They may be a tool God uses to reveal your gift to you but ask God to show you your spiritual gift as you study and pray about the passages that teach about spiritual gifts.
We may not see ourselves in ways that are in the most transparent light. Most everyone has sat in a class with a teacher who was thoroughly convinced that they are a teacher, but they are not. There are times that we “want” a particular spiritual gift, but we would all do very well to find the truth of our giftedness. Ask the mature of God’s people who know you well what your spiritual gift is.
It may take some time to find your spiritual gift(s). If you are a new Believer, you could take the assessment, but do not place much weight on it. Often it takes some time for your faith and understanding to develop before even having the ability to comment appropriately about God’s gift to you. Therefore, if you are a new believer, please know that you should use extreme caution with any assessment. Know assessments are out there and may be used, but do not place much weight in them at this point.
Some just don’t exercise their gift with intentionality or at all. A pastor may take 20 hours a week to write a sermon, but the person with the gift of encouragement may be very passive in using their gift. People with the gift of encouragement need to write encouraging cards and emails and make phone calls and schedule meetings of being purposeful in encouragement.
All Christians should look to practice and strengthen all the Christian attributes. For instance, one may not have the gift of hospitality, but the Church was instructed to practice hospitality (Romans 12:13b).
It may be possible to have more than one gift per person (cf., 1 Corinthians 12:31). The Church is instructed to desire the greater gifts.

Definitions

This section is adapted from Crossroads (church).79

Apostle

There are many views on this gift, in part because Jesus’ closest followers—the Disciples—were called Apostles. So many in the churches—if not most—have reserved the title and gift of “apostle” for people who saw Jesus with their own eyes. However, Paul told the entire church at Rome that they had the responsibility of “apostleship” (the Greek word ἀπόστολος: apostle means a messenger, one sent on a mission). We are surely all to be God’s messengers to some degree. Generally, it might be best to think of apostle as the God-given strength and ability to start a new ministry from the ground up. Many would substitute the word “missionary” for “apostleship.” Some would describe a person here as have the gift of “apostolic ministry.”

Administration

The spiritual gift of administration is the God-given strength and ability to organize multiple tasks and groups of people to accomplish ministry (Luke 14:28-30; Acts 6:1-7; 1 Corinthians 12:28).

Builder or Craftsman (Referenced in the Old Testament; possibly a skill)

The gift of craftsmanship is the God-given strength and ability to plan, build, and work with your hands in environments to accomplish the building needs of the Church (Exodus 30:22, 31:3-11; 2 Chronicles 34:9-13).

Discernment

The spiritual gift of discernment is the God-given strength and ability to spiritually identify falsehood, improper motives, and the spiritual forces at work in ministry and life (Matthew 16:21-23; Acts 5:1-11, 16:16-18; 1 Corinthians 12:10; 1 John 4:1-6).

Evangelism

The spiritual gift of evangelism is the God-given strength and ability to share the Gospel with unbelievers clearly and methodically, followed by people responding (Acts 8:5-6, 8:26-40, 14:21, 21:8; Ephesians 4:11-14).

Encouragement

The spiritual gift of encouragement is the God-given strength and ability to comfort, strengthen, and urge others to action through written or spoken words. People with this gift often use Biblical passages to encourage others (Acts 14:22; Romans 12:8; 1 Timothy 4:13; Hebrews 10:24-25).

Exhortation

The spiritual gift of exhortation is the God-given strength and ability to give warnings, advice, and make urgent appeals to God’s people.

Faith/Miracles

The spiritual gift of faith and/or miracles is the God-given strength and ability to believe in God for great things. A person of faith has an exceptional understanding that God may do the miraculous, whether spiritually or physically (Acts 11:22-24; Romans 4:18-21; 1 Corinthians 12:9; Hebrews 11).

Giving

The spiritual gift of giving is the God-given strength and ability to exceptionally give to advance the Kingdom of God on earth (Mark 12:41-44; Romans 12:8; 2 Corinthians 8:1-7, 9:2-7).

Healing

The spiritual gift of healing is the God-given strength and ability to help physically or spiritually injured people.

Helps and Service

The spiritual gift of helps/service is the God-given strength and ability to work in a supportive role for the accomplishment of tasks in Christian ministry with the ability to often see the need before others do (Mark 15:40-41; Acts 9:36; Romans 16:1-2; 1 Corinthians 12:28).

Hospitality

The gift of hospitality is the God-given strength and ability to create warm, welcoming environments for others in homes, public gatherings, and churches (Acts 16:14-15; Romans 12:13, 16:23; Hebrews 13:1-2; 1 Peter 4:9).

Knowledge

The gift of knowledge is the God-given strength and ability to bring truth and understanding to ministry (Acts 5:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:8; Colossians 2:2-3).

Leadership

The gift of leadership is the God-given strength and ability to influence people at their level while directing, facilitating growth, and focusing them on specific visions of ministry (Romans 12:8; 1 Timothy 3:1-13, 5:17; Hebrews 13:17).

Mercy

The gift of mercy is the God-given strength and ability to feel empathy and to care for those who are hurting (Matthew 9:35-36; Mark 9:41; Romans 12:8; 1 Thess. 5:14).

Pastor/Shepherd

The gift of pastor/shepherd is the God-given strength and ability to care for the personal needs of others by caring for, nurturing, and spiritually mending people (John 10:1-18; Ephesians 4:11-14; 1 Timothy 3:1-7; 1 Peter 5:1-3).

Prophecy

The gift of prophecy is the God-given strength and ability to communicate God’s truth in a way that calls people to a right relationship with God (Acts 2:37-40, 7:51-53, 26:24-29; 1 Corinthians 14:1-4; 1 Thessalonians 1:5).

Teaching

The gift of teaching is the God-given strength and ability to study and learn from the Scriptures and then speak truth to others in ways that bring understanding and depth to other Christians (Acts 18:24-28, 20:20-21; 1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11-14).

Tongues/Interpretation

Not having room here, please see https://www.gotquestions.org/gift-of-tongues.html for a longer explanation about tongues and interpretation. There are many very different views on this topic.

Wisdom

The gift of wisdom is the God-given strength and ability to understand and to bring clarity and greater understanding to situations and circumstances through the Scriptures (Acts 6:3,10; 1 Corinthians 2:6-13, 12:8).

Don’t be a Martha

In the past, I have been guilty of doing things for Jesus but not spending time with Jesus. The proverbial to-do-list demands attention. The greatest thing we can do is spend time with Jesus daily. Listen to the words of Spurgeon below:

“Her fault was not that she served: The condition of a servant is commendable in the Christian. “I serve” should be the motto of all the princes of the royal family of Heaven. Nor was it her fault that she had “much serving.” We cannot do too much. Let us do all that we possibly can; let head and heart and hands be engaged in the Master’s service. It was no fault of hers that she was busy preparing a feast for the Master. Happy Martha, to have an opportunity of entertaining so blessed a guest; and happy, too, to have the spirit to throw her whole soul so heartily into the engagement. Her fault was that she grew “distracted with much serving,” so that she forgot Him and only remembered the service. She allowed service to override communion, and so presented one duty stained with the blood of another.”80

Find a Ministry

Are you sacrificing anything for the ministry of the Lord? In other words, do you live a part of your life for serving others outside your family? For many, a church is only there for them; they never really pour back into the lives of others. This is a travesty. As Christians, we don’t have a choice, nor should we want one: we must serve others. Unbelievers serve their families (Luke 6). Our love for people must grow to others. We serve others by getting involved with the ministries that the Church is already doing and by starting new ministries as God places the visions and burdens on our hearts.

If you are a new Christian, children’s ministry is a great place to start ministering. By working with children, one may be exposed to opportunities to exercise all of the spiritual gifts. If you are a new Christian, and you are faithful to the ministry, you may be given the opportunity to teach.

Also, as you go through life, practice all the spiritual gifts as you have opportunities. The most important thing—regarding ministry—is to exercise your God-given spiritual gift in ministry! Get started.

Scripture Passage

1 Corinthians 12

Questions

If you have been saved for more than two years, do you know your spiritual gift?
If you know your gift, how do you serve others with it?
Do you serve actively with your gift?

Aim Point

If you don’t know your spiritual gift, ask God to reveal your gift to you while you study the passages listed in the Spiritual Gift chart.
Ask mature Christians what they think your spiritual gift is.
Take the assessment. It may prove helpful to you.
If you are a new Christian, continue to get involved with ministry and serve the Body of Believers. Continue to pray about your spiritual gift and ask God to reveal it to you.

23
Acquiring God’s Vision

Do you believe that God has a plan for each of us that we may discover? It is my hope that you might answer this question in the affirmative and find God’s vision for your life.

The first thing we must address is that God has more than one type of will. There seems to be a deficient amount of work on the idea of God’s wills—at least in my experience. So here I will summarize what I have seen in the Scriptures regarding the wills of God.

Understanding the Wills of God

Many theological ideas sound right but aren’t right. I too thought I had been right in the past as well and have changed my mind after coming to better scriptural conclusions. I also confess here that, there are things I believe today that I will not believe at the end of my life. W. Bickerton spoke to this continual learning in spite of incorrect thinking when he said, “We live in the midst of errors.”81 One of the errors I used to believe is that everything—everything, that happened is God’s will. But I came to find that that doctrine needs much refinement and should not stand without caveats and much explanation.

I believe in the sovereignty of God. God is all-powerful! He created the universe by His will and His word. His creative power is beyond our understanding.

I also know that God can change any king’s heart (cf., Proverbs 21:1) if He so chooses; God can harden any king’s heart (cf., Exodus 9:12) if He chooses. God’s sovereignty was seen also when God directed Jonah to preach to Nineveh. God’s purpose for Jonah happened, despite Jonah’s objection and actions. Although Jonah could have embraced God’s purpose more obediently, God’s purposes for him were ultimately done because God trumped Jonah’s will and forced His will on the prophet.

With these truths stated and affirmed true, I also know that God allows a particular type of His will to be violated. We read in the Bible that Paul commanded the Corinth church to, “stop sinning” yet they continued to sin to a degree (1 Corinthians 15:34). A type of God’s will is violated with every sin.

Therefore, we need to understand that God has at least four kinds of wills.

He has a perfect will (which all of humankind’s collective efforts cannot change). This perfect will is what has and will happen—no matter what! Jesus came to the earth and was the Son of Mary at just the right time. This was God’s perfect will.

God also has a permissive will which is where our Christian freedoms are allowed. We make choices every day in the freedom God allows us to exercise. How to express love to one another is an example. Choosing a car to buy is another. His permissive will also allows us to have freedom in life as we make big decisions for our families and small ones like deciding what to eat for lunch.

God has a permitting will. He has permitted sin to happen without being its source and without condoning it. This is where our wills and God’s have interaction.

This has been the case since The Fall in the Garden (Gen. 3). Adam ate the fruit of the forbidden tree in God’s permitting will. We was commanded not to eat. Adam could break the command of God because God, in His perfect will, made that possibility possible in His permitting will.

We have hundreds of examples throughout the Scriptures of a type of God’s will being violated. They are literally on almost every page of the Bible. Cain killing his brother was not God’s perfect will, but the circumstances that made the murder possible were inside God’s permitting will. God told Cain he needed to master sin before the murder (cf., Genesis 4:7), but Cain chose differently. Cain was permitted to chose poorly. We see a clear example of God’s permitting will being violated when Jesus lamented about the nation of Israel in Matthew 23:37,

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (NKJV; emphasis mine).

Inside of God’s sovereignty, Israel’s will was done in life and in direct contradiction to one type of God’s wills. Here we see Jesus’ will—God’s will—was not done. God wanted Israel to rely on Him and come under His protection. That did not happen. God allowed Israel to have its will instead, so Israel killed prophets instead of listening to them. We must make sure we understand this will.

Furthermore, theologically speaking, every sin a Christian commits is a violation of God’s will, for the Bible teaches the Church, “Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning” (1 Corinthians 15:34a, NIV; emphasis mine). God’s perfect will for the Church is to “stop sinning,” and we violate this type of God’s holy desire for us every day.

God also has purposive will for us. This will is His highest purpose and design for us. Included in this will of God are, 1) God desires all men to come to the knowledge of Him. 2) God desires all people of faith to choose the highest truths as they love God and people in the exact ways as Jesus did. God’s minimum commanded purpose is that we love our neighbors as ourselves. But His highest purposive will is that we become the slave of all humankind which is a choice. To become like Christ to our fullest potential is God’s will for us—His purposive will .

Many theological errors that I have repeatedly seen in my studies is due to individuals thinking that God only has one type of will.

Summarizing: The Four Wills of God

God’s Perfect Will:

God’s will that will happen exactly as He intended.

All of humankind’s efforts could not change it.
These are things and events that will happen precisely how God intends.
Examples include creating the universe, Jesus’ death and resurrection, the last day of the earth as we known it, etc.

Permissive Will:

God grants permission to Christians to make choices about their lives.

Here we are free to do what we want outside of sinful choices (e.g., how we decide to express love to others; how much to give as an offering).
In this will, we are free to choose things.
In this will there is freedom in neutral things of life as well (e.g., a lunch choice, kind of car to buy, etc.).

Permitting Will:
God permits and allows sinful possibilities to humankind—including Christians. God does not condone sinfulness when it is chosen by humans.

God’s permitting will permits humans to do evil without condoning it.
Examples include: Christians choosing to sin and unbelievers not committing to faith in Christ.

Purposive Will:
In this will, God has a conscious purpose, design, and intent for humankind. His will for Christians is that they should and could respond like Jesus in every moment of life. In this will of God, Christians possess the invitation and have the ability (through the Spirit’s power) to become committed followers and examples of Christ in their lives to obtain their highest purpose of God’s design.

Being the slave of all humankind is in this will of God.
Being the servant of all humankind is in this will of God.

Fallacy: God is Now Silent

I spoke much about God’s will to say that you and I have choices in life. These choices include God’s highest purposes for us as individuals.

I believe it is a fallacy to say God is now silent toward us as individuals because we have the Bible. (Many well meaning Christians believe God stopped speaking after the Bible was completed.) Here, I agree with Becker when he said, “Have you been taught that you can no longer hear from the Spirit of God, that it is wrong even to try to listen to him? If so, that represents a significant hindrance to receiving God’s vision [for your life].”82 It is inconceivable to me how people can believe that an Almighty God lives inside of their very being and never utters a personal word to them or gives them any particular direction. Many hold this idea to be true as they call God, The “Wonderful Counselor.”

We will find hundreds of examples on almost every page of the Bible filled with people who God directed. Name a person in the Bible that went through life with God without ever hearing some important direction for their life from Him. God has always directed everyone who was listening. Examples in the Bible include God using dreams, visions, direct communication, the prophets, the stars, angels, a donkey, elders, teachers, and numerous other means to lead and teach His people. God is always speaking.

Many people seem to confuse periods of lessened communication from God and claim there is a lifetime of silence from God to His people—collectively. True, there were long periods that God did not direct Abraham (Abraham was doing his daily thing), but there were always times where He did. The same is true for every figure in the Bible. Paul was directed by God many times as written in the book of Acts.

I agree with Tozer, “The Whole Bible supports this idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is, by His nature, continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice.”83 Furthermore Jesus said, “My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

Vision

Since God is speaking, the question is, “Are we listening?” Have you ever asked this question of God: “What is your vision for my life God? A vision is a God-given “‘clear and challenging picture of the future of a ministry as you believe that it can and must be.’”84 “Most great moves of God begin with hungry people in humble rooms who believe they are stewards of this moment of history.”85

Most people I have met, when they are brutally honest, will admit that, “I am afraid to ask God such a question because I fear what His answer might be.” We should approach this question not with trepidation but with confidence knowing that God equips us for anything He would have us to do.

Action

Are you willing to follow Jesus at all costs? Most Christians are not. We will live our lives, placing limitations on the highest calls on our lives. To make this clear here, Jesus said we should be cautious and make sure we are willing before starting down a road of complete commitment. The more we commit to follow Christ—no matter what—the more it will cost. This is the road of the brave. If one does want to become a fully committed disciple of Jesus, he/she should consider the following passage carefully:

“Now large crowds were accompanying Jesus, and turning to them he said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t sit down first and compute the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish the tower, all who see it will begin to make fun of him. They will say, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish!’ Or what king, going out to confront another king in battle, will not sit down first and determine whether he is able with 10,000 to oppose the one coming against him with 20,000? If he cannot succeed, he will send a representative while the other is still a long way off and ask for terms of peace. In the same way therefore not one of you can be my disciple if he does not renounce all his own possessions” (Luke 14:25-33).

Jesus used many illustrations to teach about becoming a disciple. He used illustrations of building a tower and running out of money and going to war and running out of the “stomach” for it. His point is that if we choose God’s highest purpose for our lives that it will cost—a lot! Count the costs carefully.

Finding our place

Words in this section that are in bold are from Bekele Shanko.86

If we desire to see God’s vision for our lives, we should prayerfully consider things like the following:

Career Conflict. There may be a time in your life where you realize that your career conflicts with a spiritual direction God wants to take your life.

Self Awareness. Part of “self awareness” is knowing what your spiritual gift is (or gifts are). God has equipped you to walk in the life He has for you (Ephesians 2:10). You fit there. The Lord may have very specific plans for you.

While I cannot say that you will hear from God, what I know is that many people do find ministries that God has called them to, and that specific call keeps them going when the war looks lost.

We have freedom in love. The commands on our lives are summed up with Love God and People. While this is entirely true, we also see people being placed by God in specific ministries and places that rise above the minimum. We need to ask God, “What is my purpose?” While you may not hear an answer from God at this point in your life, if you ask this question of God, He may answer you in a specific way immediately. Ask God, “How should I serve your purpose in my generation?” “God, give me insight into my purpose.”

There are times in our lives where we need to get away and alone with God where we may have personal reflections. Our reflective questions might include:

What are my core values?
What is my area of influence?
What are the areas of human need around me?
God, what is the next step of action I need to take?

“If God is speaking to your heart, don’t let your
mind get in the way of what God wants you to do.”
—Mark Batterson

We Must See Fruit

No matter what your hands find to do in life, you should look behind you and ask the question, “Is what I am doing producing fruit?” Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators, said it best, “Emotion is no substitute for action. Action is no substitute for production.”87 If you are not producing fruit, make decisive changes to your life. Now.

Scripture Passages

Luke 14:25-33

John 17:6-18

Matthew 9:35-38

John 4:27-38

Questions

Do you desire to find God’s specific purpose for your life?
What would hold you back from asking God for a specific purpose?

Aim Point

Jesus went to places of seclusion to pray during His ministry. I believe the American church does this too infrequently. We live in a media filled society and we rarely get alone with God to hear from Him. Planned prayer retreats can help refocus ourselves and can be used of God to give us a vision for our lives. I will not say that God will give you a vision for your life. What I will say is that, if you are willing to follow at all costs, you should ask Him for a vision for your life.

Paul Becker of Dynamic Church Planting International (dcpi.org) wrote a small book entitled, Seeing Your Vision Come True. In it, Paul wrote about how to have a prayer retreat to facilitate finding your vision from God. Below is an outline from Becker’s book: “Twelve Steps to an Effective Prayer Retreat.”

Go to the retreat site and rest.
Pray for the retreat.
Plan your retreat.
[Confess and] Repent of your sins.
Thankfully review how God has been working.
Submit to God’s plans for you.
Devour the Word of God and take notes.
Write down your specific issues and questions.
Meet with God in a quiet place. Listen and take notes.
Prayerfully respond in writing to your specific issues and questions.
Receive counsel from wise, godly people.
Plan to communicate your thoughts and delegate your tasks.

24
Charles Spurgeon Devotional

Whatever your hand finds to do,
do it with your might.
— Ecclesiastes 9:10a

“Whatever your hand finds to do” refers to works that are possible. There are many things that our heart finds to do that we will never do. It is good for it to be in our heart; but if we would be eminently useful, we must not be content with forming schemes in our heart and talking of them; we must practically carry out “whatever your hand finds to do.”

One good deed is worth more than a thousand brilliant theories. Let us not wait for large opportunities or for a different kind of work, but just do the things we “find to do” day by day.

We have no other time in which to live. The past is gone; the future has not arrived; we will never have any time but now. So do not wait until your experience has ripened into maturity before you attempt to serve God.

Endeavor now to bring forth fruit. Serve God now, but be careful about the way in which you perform what you find to do-“do it with your might.”

Do it promptly; do not fritter away your life in thinking of what you intend to do tomorrow as if that could repay today’s laziness.

No one ever served God by doing things tomorrow. If we honor Christ and are blessed, it is by the things that we do today.

Whatever you do for Christ, throw your whole soul into it. Do not give Christ a little halfhearted labor, done as a matter of course every now and then; but when you serve Him, do it with heart and soul and strength.

But where is the power of a Christian? It is not in himself, for he is perfect weakness. His power lies in the Lord of Hosts. Let us then seek His help; let us proceed with prayer and faith, and when we have done what our “hand finds to do,” let us wait upon the Lord for His blessing. What we do in this way will be well done and will not fail in its effect.⁹⁰

Appendix A

If you need a counselor to guide you in working through tragedy in your life,

a good resource is through Dallas Theological Seminary’s website at https://www.dts.edu/resources/find-a-counselor/ .

(This link was active at the time of publication.)

Notes

For formatting purposes on mobile the Notes are on a separate webpage. Click here for the notes.

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT

Preface

What to Expect

1 Discipleship

2 Love is Motive

Judge Not the Quality of Actions nor the Motive of the Heart

We Must be in Love to Love

Trials Test Love

Scripture Passages

Questions

Aim Point

3 Love God

God’s Secure Love

Love Results in Actions of Obedience

Live to Please God

Scripture Passage

Questions

Aim Point

4 Love People

Setting the Ideas of Love Too Low

Setting Our Own Value Too High

Setting Our Value Too Low

Separating the Love of God From the Love of People

Scripture Passages

Questions

Aim Point

5 The Audacious Potential of Faith

Faith Must be Cultivated

God Will Lead Through Faith

Faith in God is a Key to Joy

Scripture Passages

Questions

Aim Point

6 Hope

Enlarged Vision

False Sources of Hope

True Source of Hope

Devices of Hope

The Result of Hope

Scripture Passage

Questions

Aim Point

7 Grace

Receiving Grace

Resting in Grace

Giving Grace to Others

Not Abusing Grace

Scripture Passage

Questions

Aim Point

8 Holiness

Apartness

Practical Holiness

Dedicated/Consecrated

Serious Sanctification

Self-righteousness

Judging the Lost

Failure Awaits

Scripture Passages

Questions and Exercise

Aim Point

Section Two “Acceptable Sins”

9 Withholding Love

The Cross: The Greatest Expression of Love

Love…Really?

Scripture Passages

Questions

Aim Point

10 Forgetting Faith

Faith Fades Fast

Selfishness

Pride

Naysayers

Uncommitted Faith

“No”

Holy Huddles

Fear

Doubt

Look for the Faithful

1
Discipleship

2
Love is Motive

3
Love God

4
Love People

5
The Audacious Potential of Faith

6
Hope

7
Grace

8
Holiness

Section Two
“Acceptable Sins”

9
Withholding Love

10
Forgetting Faith

11
Unforgiveness

12
Gossip

13
Doubt, Fear, and Anxiety

14
Lust

Section Three
Elevating Our Life Toward Christ

15
Relying and Dependence

16
Produced to Reproduce / Part 1, Evangelism

17
Produced to Reproduce / Part 2, Discipleship

Section Four
Change for Reward

18
Lose to Live: Introducing Life