christian living

That’s right.  I am a slave.  I was purchased and now I no longer belong to myself, but to the One whose blood bought me.

And that changes everything.

Yelling in our ears–and from our own hearts, even, is the message “It’s about you! What feels right?  What sounds right?”

Which is to be expected outside of Christ.  But if you claim to be a Christian?

It is nothing about you at all.  Or your feelings, or what you think life should look like.

Absolute surrender to the One who owns me is to be my sole concern.

Or He doesn’t own me.

The funny thing is, we don’t even realize we’re clasping the “me message” so tightly, but we know how we want to feel and what we want to do and if those needs aren’t being met by what we’ve learned about God…

we change Him.

But never ourselves.

He will not be changed.

Paul and the disciples of Christ understood one thing:  they were not their own and whatever that meant for their lives–comfort or dejection, gain or loss, fame or persecution–it was of no matter to them.  They didn’t try to fit their perception of who God is into a box that would make life “work” for them, or fulfill their emotional needs.

If Paul could hear the sniveling of our current Christianity:

“But if I believe that about God it makes me feel bad and I can’t serve a God like that.”

Most of us wouldn’t stand two minutes in the shoes of those Christians who were cast out, hated, tortured and martyred for their faith.

There needs to be a name for this “new Christianity” which is not Christianity at all.

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ “

As purchased property, all that I am and all that I do and all that I believe is no longer my own.  Any agenda outside of serving the One who paid for me is the wrong agenda.  Self-fulfillment must die.

Hard to hear?  Oh my, yes.

And our Lord knew that.  And that’s why “many heard and walked away”.  And that’s why, “Many will say in that day, ‘Lord, Lord’…and I will say to them, ‘Depart from me, I never knew you’.”  And that’s why “narrow is the way and few there be that find it”. And that’s why, “the world will hate you, but remember, it hated Me first”.

The only true fulfillment now is that which is found in losing my life.

To a true follower of Christ, this realization is the sweetest thought that ever entered the mind–a free-fall back into the arms of grace, completely trusting my life into His hands, the One who formed me and knows what is best for me.

To the impostor, it is repulsive.

And the greatest of ironies comes rushing in:

“If the Son has set you free (i.e. you have become My bond-servant), you are FREE indeed!”

It’s not just who you know, it’s what you know…

“It is of great importance to note that our theology (belief about God) and doxology (our worship of God) should never be separated. It is not possible to worship an unknown God. All true worship is a response to the self-revelation of God in Christ and in Scripture. Worship without theology is bound to degenerate into idolatry. Hence the indispensable place of scripture in both public worship and private devotion. It is the word of God which calls forth the worship of God.”

John Stott

From, Martyr of the Catacombs, another book I highly recommend you read to your children.

“You see before you men and women who have left friends, and home, and honor, and wealth, to live here (dark, dreary underground tunnels among tombs) in want, and fear, and sorrow, and they count all this as nothing for Christ; yes, they count even their own lives nothing.  They give up all for Him who loved them.”

I highly recommend you go to Amazon and buy the book “Real Christianity” by William Wilberforce.  So far I am devouring the pages.  These are thoughts worth sharing…

“Believing in Jesus means we personally accept His work on our behalf and open our lives to His indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.  Those who are not familiar with the teaching of the Bible must come to terms with this statement of the Bible:  ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.’  Acts 16:31

Submission and dependence are the appropriate responses to the teaching of Jesus:   “Remain in Me and I will remain in you.  No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine.  Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.  I am the Vine, you are the branches.  If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.”  John 15:4-5

You cannot work your way to Heaven.  You cannot do anything to earn the grace and forgiveness of God.  Your good behavior does not balance out the guilt of your sin.  The great distinction between Christianity and cultural religion believes all these things can be obtained by your own efforts.  True Christianity is looking for something much greater.

True Christians look to God to restore the image of God to their soul, but know that this is not something this is able to accomplish.  All their hopes of attaining this rest on total reliance on the Holy Spirit who comes to indwell them when they open their lives to Jesus Christ….

Having entered into this relationship the true Christian then seeks to grow in his or her spiritual life by studying the Bible in order to understand the doctrines of the faith.  In studying and contemplating the life of Christ, the true Christian attempts to model his or her behavior after that of Jesus.  It is the neglect of study of the Bible and reflection on the life of Christ that is at the heart of the practical errors of the majority of confessing Christians….

If we are to walk worthy of Christ, we must practice a central discipline…we must FIX OUR EYES ON JESUS.

This is the key….It is maintaining this focus we realize how logical it is to make an unconditional surrender of our total beings to the will and service of God.  If we are truly not our own, but have been purchased by God and belong to Him, then it makes sense to live with a passion to glorify God in all we area and in all we do….

Can we compromise our attitude and response to sin without immense shame?  When we fix our eyes on Jesus we see in the most vivid colors how hateful sin is to the perfect holiness of God.  Rather than sin going unpunished, God gave His only Son and allowed him to suffer for our sin.

It takes unthinkable vanity to believe that God will not treat unrepentant sin harshly when we see what it cost Him to provide forgiveness.”

Prompted by some things I’ve been reading and conversations I’ve been having, there is a burning concern on my heart that forces its way to this post.

Since the beginning of time, Satan has used a deceitful and powerful weapon to catch people in a web of self-pity and “victim mentality”.  It continues like gangrene through our present day and we are so tantalized by its “gentle force” that all of us are susceptible.

We call it “humanism” now, and its tenets are rooted in “self-fulfillment, misguided compassion and self-interest”.  The trickiest thing about this other religion is that it uses our natural regard and feelings of compassion and protection of others to accomplish a deeper, sinister end.

Humanism has invaded the church as well.  It hides behind gentle-sounding, spiritual phrases and often grossly distorts the definition of grace.  It has re-painted our picture of Christ and conveniently whittles away the uncomfortable traits of his character that demand of us self-sacrifice and repentance.

Those words have no place in the humanist’s vocabulary.  They invoke “guilt and shame”, they say.

Why does this concern you and me?  Because it is probably one of the most subtle, dangerous influences in our lives.  We can so easily be swept up by its silver-tongued proponents (and remember, Satan doesn’t have horns and a forked tail; he comes as an angel of light).

We love being victims so much that we live in a society that has effectively turned every sin into a neat “disorder”.  There is little teaching about taking responsibility for one’s actions and putting blame squarely where blame is due.  Instead, we can always find a scapegoat to blame our problems on–another person, our parents, our church, or a hereditary “disease”.

Do not let your children develop a victim mentality.  It not only destroys them, but everyone around them.  And guard your own life from it.  Be ever so discerning about the things your read and the teaching you allow to affect you.  Pay close attention to “feeling-evoking” conversations.  Don’t be baited by questions that allow your mind to search for someone to blame for your problems. We could all be victims if we allowed ourselves.  (Though I disagree a lot with Dr. Phil, he hits this point on the head.)

There is a real kind of abuse in the world. I’m no stranger to it, having grown up caring for children all our lives who came from abused homes.  Some abuse is hidden and some do suffer in silence.  That abuse needs to be dealt with. But I’ve seen “the abusing of abuse”, meaning, the word “abuse” thrown around carelessly to manipulate, slander or destroy other people, groups and churches.

Real abuse has existed and will exist until the end of time.  There are abusers in every strata of society, church and family.  It sickens me when the sinfulness of a man or woman is blamed on a larger, healthy institution.  If a husband abuses his wife, it doesn’t make the institution of marriage wrong.  If a parent abuses his child it doesn’t make parenthood wrong.  If a parent from a large family abuses his children, it doesn’t make the idea of large families wrong, it makes the abuser wrong.  If a husband of a family who claims to believe that “the husband is the head of the wife” abuses his wife, it doesn’t make the Scriptural teaching of headship (where the husband is called to lay down his life for his wife) wrong.  It makes him wrong.  We must always default to the truth of Scripture and never alter a teaching because of those who would abuse said teaching!

God’s Word is our standard.  Always.  Anything that veers from that, no matter how lovely it sounds, is inherently evil, veiled in light.

“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”  Matthew 10:16