Laying Down Our Will to Embrace His

"I entreated Your favor with my whole heart; be merciful to me according to Your word."

Psalm 119:58

Even when we have learned, God continues to teach.  There is always a deeper level - a more personal application - for biblical truth beyond where we stand.  The necessity and value of an undivided heart is a theme I have often been reminded of lately.  Unless we come to a place of rest and complete neutrality on an issue when seeking God, clear direction from our heavenly Father will often elude us.  It is not that God has abandoned us, but our preferences cloud our judgment.  We can stumble through a self-induced fog, straining for clear vision of the path laid before us.  As long as we hold to our plans and ideas - even with the thought of bringing God glory - clarity of sight and sureness of footing will remain out of reach.

In wrestling with God over direction of my life and even the church, only after I wholly yielded myself to God's plan did the answer come.  I thought I had laid my will down through belief, but God's silence showed I had not.  After I repented and sought God's guidance with my whole heart, answers came so clearly through God's Word, confirmed through circumstances and others, and complete with the peace only found through the Holy Spirit.  The example for every Christian was held forth when Jesus laid down His will in the Garden of Gethsemane before He laid down His life.  We want to lay down our lives before we lay down our will, but we find we cannot.  We fight to lay down our lives.  We look for opportunities for sacrifice.  We grasp in vain for guidance, seeking open doors.  But until our will aligns wholly with the Father's will, we will suffer spiritual impotence and confusion.  I see two distinct "wills" in operation in my life:  God's will, and my will.  They are naturally opposed to one another in every respect.  I must first lay down my will in faith in God before I can fully rest in my Father's will.

If we see the folly in casting valuable pearls before pigs who cannot discern or appreciate their value, why do we think that God will lead us into deeper truth and understanding when we are firmly set in our own ways according to our will?  Jeremiah 29:13 reads, "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart."  If we trust God will our souls for eternity, we should completely trust His guidance for our next step in this life.  We must therefore put aside our agendas, opinions, and ambition concerning what we see and seek the LORD wholeheartedly with willingness to hear AND obey whatever God says.  Because Christ is the Good Shepherd, He will hear our cries and lead us into safe pasture.  He will be merciful to us according to His Word!

The Narrow Way

The longer I follow Christ, the more I am struck by His objective claims.  The world says there are "many paths to God," but the Bible proclaims the opposite.  In our modern-day culture of relativity, people hate the idea of anyone claiming to possess absolute truth.  That is why people hated Jesus.  He stood up to the religious leaders of the day, boldly proclaiming He was the Son of God.  He transcended all earthly rulers in wisdom and power.  He performed mighty signs and wonders, and rose from the dead in glory.  He said without apology or caveat in John 14:6:  "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."  No politician, prophet, or lunatic spoke as this Man.  In Christ we find no comfortable middle ground with this world.

Following Jesus Christ is an exclusive, narrow way.  He will receive every sinner who repents and receives Him through faith.  The Gospel is incredibly simple, yet it is the hard way.  Christ's yoke is easy and His burden light, but the broad path to destruction is easier traveled than the upward call of God.  The way of Jesus Christ is an uncompromising way.  Because of this, it is an impractical way for anyone who desires earthly recognition, fame, power, or glory.  Yet it goes further.  It is an intolerable way.  People have no problem with Christians when they resemble the soft, weak, mushy persona that often passes for Jesus.  But when Christians take a stand upon the Bible as the literal Word of God concerning moral issues in society, they are fiercely attacked and despised.  It is an impossible, unthinkable way.  Following Jesus in obedience makes foolishness appear wise from a worldly perspective.  Those who have tasted and seen that God is good know better!

God's way is the only way, and that Way is Jesus Christ.  Exclusive and narrow, yes.  Narrow is not a bad thing when you are heading precisely in the right direction!  While the world searches fruitlessly for love, peace, joy, significance, assurance, and purpose, these things are found in Christ alone.  1 John 5:11-12:  "And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. ¹² He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life."  Notice the lack of words like "might," "may," "possibly," or "hopefully."  God has given eternal life and this life is in Jesus Christ.  Unmistakably direct and clear:  there is a God and He has provided a Way to heaven through Jesus.  He who has the Son has life, and those without the Son of God do not have life.  Clear, precise, and concise.  There is the claim; take it or leave it.  Laugh it off, fight against it, rage against the idea, hurl insult after insult.  But the truth resounds now and for eternity, for the Word of God endures forever.

The preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who worship the creature over the Creator, but to those who are saved it is the power of God.  Romans 10:8-9 reads, "But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart" (that is, the word of faith which we preach): ⁹ that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."  Believe, confess your sins, repent, and be saved, becoming born again through the Holy Spirit.  Jesus is not one of many doors to heaven, but He is the Door through whom all who enter heaven must enter.  Jesus says in John 10:9-10:  "I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."  Rely upon Christ Jesus and choose life!

Singing in the Fire

While busy with custodial duties at church, I was listening to a talk by Britt Merrick, pastor of Reality Carpinteria.  He spoke from experience about how joy and suffering are coupled in the Christian life.  Instead of God removing suffering from life, He allows Christians to embrace genuine joy in the midst of suffering.  Just yesterday I finished reading a biography of Mrs. Spurgeon by Charles Ray.  Susannah was a godly woman who not only endured suffering, but continued to persevere and be profitable for God's glory in the midst of acute long-term illness.  She was a woman of maturity and faith, one who learned to trust in God no matter what.  In the book, there is an object lesson she shares which spoke deeply to my heart.  Ray begins this quote from Susannah on page 81:

At the close of a very dark and gloomy day I lay resting on my couch as the deeper night drew on, and though all was bright within my cosy little room, some of the external darkness seemed to have entered into my soul and obscured its spiritual vision.  Vainly I tried to see the hand which I knew held mine and guided my fog-enveloped feet along a steep and slippery path of suffering.  In sorrow of heart I asked, 'Why does my Lord thus deal with His child?  Why does He so often send sharp and bitter pain to visit me?  Why does he permit lingering weakness to hinder the sweet service I long to render to His poor servants?'  These fretful questions were quickly answered, and though in a strange language, no interpreter was needed save the conscious whisper of my own heart.

For a while silence reigned in the little room, broken only by the crackling of an oak log burning on the hearth.  Suddenly I heard a sweet, soft sound, a little, clear, musical note, like the tender trill of a robin beneath my window.  'What can it be?' I said to my companion, who was dozing in the firelight; 'surely no bird can be singing out there at this time of the year and night!'  We listened, and again heard the faint plaintive notes, so sweet, so melodious, yet mysterious enough to provoke for a moment our undisguised wonder.  Presently my friend exclaimed, 'It comes from the log of the fire!' and we soon ascertained that her surprised assertion was correct.  The fire was letting loose the imprisoned music from the old oak's inmost heart.  Perchance he had garnered up this song in the days when all went well with him, when birds twittered merrily on his branches, and the soft sunlight flecked his tender leaves with gold; but he had grown old since then and hardened; ring after ring of knotting growth had sealed up the long-forgotten melody until the fierce tongues of the flames came to consume his callousness and the vehement heat of the fire wrung from him at once a song and a sacrifice.

Oh! thought I, when the fire of affliction draws songs of praise from us, then indeed are we purified and our God is glorified!  Perhaps some of us are like this old oak log - cold, hard and insensible; we should give forth no melodious sounds were it not for the fire which kindles round us, and releases tender notes of trust in Him, and cheerful compliance with His will.  As I mused the fire burned and my soul found sweet comfort in the parable so strangely set forth before me.  Singing in the fire!  Yes, God helping us if that is the only way to get harmony out of these hard, apathetic hearts, let the furnace be heated seven times hotter than before.

When God sees fit to refine us in the fire, may the Holy Spirit quicken us to praise Him!  May the joy of the LORD be our strength always!

The Grace-Knowledge Connection

"You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked; ¹⁸ but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen."

2 Peter 3:17-18

After I read this passage, I was led to consider the connection between grace and knowledge.  Without knowledge we are unable to appreciate or even acknowledge grace.  For instance, salvation by grace through faith is an unmerited gift from God.  Because of His great love for us, God the Father chose to satisfy divine justice through the sacrifice of His own Son Jesus the Christ on Calvary.  What a gift!  Not only can man be forgiven for his sins by repenting and trusting in Jesus as Saviour, but the righteousness of Christ is freely credited to each Christian born again through the Holy Spirit.

There was a time when I was ignorant of God and His grace.  I didn't know that Jesus is God-made-flesh and humbled Himself to take human form.  I did not know Jesus died so I might live.  At first, His gracious sacrifice and gift of eternal life had been reduced to a picture on a page of an ornate Bible.  I didn't know that Jesus did that for me and everyone else who was guilty of sin.  But after reading the Bible I grew in knowledge.  I learned the Bible reveals Jesus is God's Son sent to seek and save the lost.  How greatly He humbled Himself in becoming a man and embracing the cross!  I realised all have sinned and none are worthy to be purchased with the precious blood of Jesus.  Only through knowledge and enlightenment by the Holy Spirit did God's grace - generous favour freely given which I cannot earn, purchase, or deserve - actually appear as grace.

So how can we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ?  Practical knowledge spurns on our growth in grace.  When we understand who Jesus is, His infinite love for man, and the degree of His sacrifice and suffering, the grace He extends to us is discerned.  As our understanding of the depth of our sin grows, our appreciation of God's grace towards us also grows.  We realise our obligation to extend more and more grace to others, even as God has toward us.  We have freely received:  we are called to freely give.  If we do not see ourselves as great sinners, we will never be great in grace  If we are more concerned about the speck in our brother's eye than the log in our own, our growth in grace will be stunted.  This fact is illustrated in a conversation Jesus had with a self-righteous Pharisee named Simon.

Luke 7:40-50 reads, "And Jesus answered and said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." So he said, "Teacher, say it." ⁴¹ "There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. ⁴² And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?" ⁴³ Simon answered and said, "I suppose the one whom he forgave more." And He said to him, "You have rightly judged." ⁴⁴ Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. ⁴⁵ You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. ⁴⁶ You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil. ⁴⁷ Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little." ⁴⁸ Then He said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." ⁴⁹ And those who sat at the table with Him began to say to themselves, "Who is this who even forgives sins?" ⁵⁰ Then He said to the woman, "Your faith has saved you. Go in peace."

The difference between the sinful woman who anointed Jesus and the judgmental Pharisee was that the woman loved much because she had been forgiven much.  Do not misunderstand:  she had not sinned more than the Pharisee!  They were both sinners before God.  The woman recognised the enormity of her debt which had been forgiven.  Because of this, she expressed her love for Christ with tears and the sacrifice of expensive perfume.  The Pharisee loved little because he thought he had little need of Christ's forgiveness.  Though the woman was known as a sinner, she was the one who went home in peace justified and saved.

There is a point in every Christian walk we either grow or regress in grace.  Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.  When we grow in knowledge, we can be deceived to assume we have obtained the right to sit in the seat of judgement of others.  Our eyes are to be fixed on Christ, judging ourselves lest we be judged.  Knowledge of Christ and how undeserving we are allows us to grow in our appreciation of God's grace, to receive it from God, and freely offer it to others.  Maybe you figure you deserve grace because you have repented.  No!  We can never earn God's grace or it could not be grace.  Perhaps we withhold grace because someone has not proven themselves worthy to us.  In doing so we make grace of no effect.  If increased knowledge of doctrine makes us legalistic, we have abandoned the grace of God.  Paul warns the church in Galatians 5:2 & 4, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage...⁴ You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace."

Let us grow in grace and knowledge of our LORD and Saviour Jesus Christ.  Gracious words should attend gracious thoughts.  Colossians 4:6 says, "Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one."  Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.  Out of the abundance of grace a man has received from God so he thinks.  Unless God's grace seasons our knowledge, we will know nothing as we ought to know.