Tag: Sanctification

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Imitation of Christ

Following the Example, Pattern, and Model of Christ

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Eph. 5:1-2

The imitation of Christ is modeling the life of Christ by maintaining his holy attitude and living his loving actions empowered by the Holy Spirit through faith in his indwelling presence. Jesus lives in the believer providing grace to the saint for making right choices in the midst of various and great temptations (1 Cor. 11:1-2; Eph. 5:1; 1 Thes. 1:6).

God can do a such work in us by His Spirit, that all that he commands us to do will come about naturally, and not because we feel we ought to do it. To make up your mind to praise God may be good, but it is very much better to be so filled with the Holy Spirit that you cannot help praising! What God wants out of us He will put in. The secret of power for service is to go to Calvary and get rid of the obstacles to the outflow of the Spirit of God, and then ask God for the new life that will bring forth the new fruit.

Jessie Penn-Lewis cited in His Victorious Indwelling, ed., Nick Harrison (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), 301.

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Extravagant Love

Pouring Out on Jesus

And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.

Luke 10:39-42

Christian devotion is the spontaneous act of extravagant love which ignores all conventions and practical logic in order to pour out on Jesus all adoration, praise, and thanksgiving.

Love for the Lord is not an ethereal, intellectual, dream-like thing; it is the intensest, the most vital, the most passionate love of which the human heart is capable.

Oswald Chambers, Biblical Psychology: A Treasure Chest for Christian Counselors, 2nd ed. (London: Simpkin Marshall., 1996).

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The Pastoral Burden

Pastoral Responsibility and Its Limits

Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires,and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds,and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Eph. 4:22-24

I ‘ve been in pastoral ministry for thirty years now, it’s hard to believe that I have served that long. I have been a staff member with the Agape Force, Director of College and Career for an Assembly of God fellowship, and a charismatic Baptist Church (S.B.C.). Also, I pastored an independent charismatic church called Christ Our Life. The last fifteen years of my pastoral ministry has been with the Charismatic Episcopal Church (C.E.C.).

Serving as a presbyter (i.e., priest) as opposed to a preacher/pastor has been fulfilling. Maybe in the coming weeks, I can explore the differences and similarities of being a priest as opposed to a pastor. But for the moment, a presbyter and a pastor both feel a great spiritual burden for their sheep. Pastoral ministers live with the grief of departures, the sadness of unexplainable suffering, and seeming futility of their work.

All of us as ministers struggle with discouragement at times. You work with people, spend time with people, exhort people to trust Christ, and then, watch those same people make bad moral choices. You wonder what you could have done to prevent such spiritual calamity (Heb. 13:17).

In the past, I would often feel guilty for their failure. Somehow I thought, I must not have said the right thing, or taught the needed truth, or spent enough time with them. Then, the Holy Spirit began to speak to me. He said, “I have called you to love, to serve, to teach, to counsel, to encourage, and to pray for others. However, each person has to make their own choice to walk in the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:16, 25). You cannot make others walk in the Spirit, all that you can do to is to encourage them to trust me.” In other words as a pastor, you cannot make people choose righteousness. Their choices are their responsibility.

The Holy Spirit’s words have brought an immense amount of comfort to me. The decision is up to each individual: Do they really want to change? Do they really want Christ more than any worldly pleasure or fleshly desire? Do they really want to please Christ in their attitudes and actions? Do they want Christ more than anything (Phil. 3:11)? For pastoral ministry to be effective, we must have an unreserved willingness to change, to hear God, and to obey his instructions.

We must have the unconditional readiness to change in order to be transformed by Christ.

Dietrich von Hildebrand, Transformation in Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), vii.

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The Paradoxical Christian

What is Christian Maturity?

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

2 Cor. 12:9

We misunderstand Christian maturity: I will grow and grow and grow and become more adequate, more sufficient, and more spiritually powerful. I will never fail, struggle, or be tempted. I will never have dry times, dark times, or difficult times. I think things will get easier and I will sail above the storm clouds and tumults of this life.

However, the Christian life is a paradox: the more I grow the less adequate I feel. I become more aware of my weaknesses, failures, and temptations. I feel a greater need for Jesus and his all-sufficient grace. I cry out for more of his Holy Spirit power. I yearn for his sufficiency in the midst of my inadequacy. I am more dependent on the Holy Spirit to live his life in and through me. I am only victorious because of Jesus’ moment-by-moment presence. My victory is only found in throwing myself at Jesus’ feet and looking to the Cross to my help and hope.

He [i.e., the Christian] is strongest when he is weakest and weakest when he is strong. Though poor he has the power to make others rich, but when he becomes rich his ability to enrich others vanishes. He has most after he has given most away and has least when he possesses most. He may be and often is highest when he feels lowest and most sinless when he is most conscious of sin. He is wisest when he knows that he knows not and knows least when he has acquired the greatest amount of knowledge. He sometimes does most by doing nothing and goes furthest when standing still. In heaviness he manages to rejoice and keeps his heart glad even in sorrow.

A. W. Tozer,  That Incredible Christian (Camp Hill, PA: Christian Publications, 1964), 12.

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The Normal Christian

Joy in the Constant, Conscious Presence of Our Lord

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

1 Peter 1:8

Sanctifying grace is Jesus being the desire, ability, and power in me to respond to every life situation according to the will of God. Jesus is my desire for he works in me a hunger for holiness. Jesus is my ability for he enables me to make godly decisions and choices. Jesus is my power for he strengthens me to overcome the world, the flesh, sin, death, and the devil. Grace is the person, Jesus, living his life in and through me empowering me to live a righteous and holy life (2 Co. 9:8, 2 Cor. 12:1-10, Titus 2:11-14). Jesus living his life in me is the normal Christian life (1 Jn. 4:9).

The normal Christian is characterized by loving responses to ingratitude and indifference, even hostility, and is filled with joy in the midst of unhappy circumstances and with peace when everything goes wrong. The normal Christian overcomes in the battle with temptation, consistently obeys the laws of God, and grows in self-control, contentment, humility, and courage. Thought processes are so under the control of the Holy Spirit and instructed by Scripture that the normal Christian authentically reflects the attitudes and behavior of Jesus Christ. God has first place in life, and the welfare of others takes precedence over personal desires. The normal Christian has power not only for godly living but for effective service in the church. Above all, he or she has the joy of constant companionship with the Lord.

Robertson McQuilkin, comp., Free and Fulfilled: Victorious Living in the 21st Century (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997), xi.

The apostle Paul gives us his own definition of the [normal] Christian life in Galatians 2:20. It is ” no longer I, but Christ.” Here he is not stating something special or peculiar-a high level of Christianity. He is, we believe, presenting God’s normal for a Christian, which can be summarized in the words: I live no longer, but Christ lives His life in me.

God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every human need- His Son, Jesus Christ. In all His dealings with us He works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: He lives instead of us for our deliverance. So we can speak of two substitutions-a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way only, namely, by showing us more of His Son.

Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1985), 12.

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Pettiness and the Cross

“I Am So Offended!”

Whoever forgives an offense seeks love, but whoever keeps bringing up the issue separates the closest of friends.

Proverbs 17:9

Pettiness takes a slight, hurt, or misunderstanding, and magnifies the gravity of that real or supposed offense to unrealistic proportions. This self-absorption brings with it pain and frustration for everyone.

Pettiness takes something of small importance and turns it into a grievance of monstrous significance. Pettiness creates a hardness of heart,  a smallness of thinking, and a distorted view of reality. Pettiness is marked by meanness of spirit and a lack of generosity, especially where offense has been taken and a grudge held.

Forgiveness releases the bitterness of spirit and the bondage of soul caused by pettiness. The Cross reveals our pettiness and gives us an eternal perspective and convinces us of the smallness of our hurts and pain. “Forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do” (Col. 3:13 NJKV).

Pettiness–of the heart, of relationships, of cares–does not leave room in the heart for God, it is truly demonic. The fallen world is a petty world, a world in which high vision is not perceived, a high note is not heard. In a petty world, even religion becomes petty. The perversion of Christianity does not come from heresies, but from the fall. A fall downward, and pettiness is down there.

Alexander Schmemann, The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 2000), 41.

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Faith Works and Grace Works, Too.

Evangelical Essentials (Part Nine)

Jesus Christ, will be revealed. He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds.

Titus 2:13-14 (NLT)

Although good works, which are the fruits of faith and follow on after justification, can never atone for our sins or face the strict justice of God’s judgment, they are nevertheless pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ and necessarily spring from a true and living faith. Thus a living faith is as plainly known by its good works as a tree is known by its fruit.

Article Twelve,“A Contemporary Version of the 39 Articles of Religion,” available from; www.stjohnsanglican.org/39.doc.

Good Works as the Fruit of Salvation

No works can produce salvation. However, a faith-filled salvation will produce many good works. Good works are the fruit of salvation, not its cause or basis.

It seems that ‘good works’ is a general expression to cover everything a Christian says and does because he is a Christian, every outward and visible manifestation of his Christian faith . . . Rather we are to be ourselves, our true Christian selves, openly living the life described in the beatitudes, and not ashamed of Christ. Then people will see us and our good works, and seeing us will glorify God. For they will inevitably recognize that it is by the grace of God we are, what we are, that ‘our’ light is ‘his’ light, and that our works are his works done in us and through us.

[John Stott, Message of the Sermon on the Mount, John Stott Daily Bible Study Email, August 14th, 2007 (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1985).]

Justification is by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. Good works can be described as the fruit of faith. An expectation of redemption is living in a godly manner. There is no place in the Christian life for claiming a “born from above” experience while giving no evidence of a changed life. A changed life is life that allows Christ to live His life in and through the believer (1 John 4:9).

This is the rest of faith. You relax, almost like a spectator, except that it is your hands with which He is at work, your lips with which He is speaking, your eyes with which He sees the need, your ears with which He hears the cry, and your heart with which He loves the lost.”

[Major Ian Thomas, The Indwelling Life of Christ: All of Him in All of Me (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2006). 99.]

Good works are not produced by the Christian, but good works are borne in the life of  the Christian by the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23). We are fruit-bearers not fruit-producers. Grace works out the life of Christ in us.

Saving faith has intrinsic power to produce fruit.

[John Piper, The Pleasures of God (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1991), 244.]

Good works or deeds display to the world the changed heart that Christ has created (Matt. 7:15-20). Faith in the finished work of Christ expresses itself in deeds done for God and others.

Although we cannot be saved by works, we also cannot be saved without them. Good works are not the way of salvation, but its proper and necessary evidence. A faith which does not express itself in works is dead.

[John Stott, Christ the Controversialist (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1970), 127.]

Therefore, good works are the fruit of faith, they follow after justification, they are evidence of a changed heart, and therefore will flow from a life changed by the Cross.

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Spontaneity vs. Discipline

new-river-bank-barn2

Sloppy vs. Focused Spiritual Life

Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.

1 Tim 4:7 (NASB)

Our fleshly, sinful nature takes our basic needs and turns them into obsessions. Our flesh (i.e., fallenness) yearns the govern us and divert us from intimacy with God. Our flesh cries out for attention and desires to rule our lives. Our sinful nature is an idolatrous over-desire that arises from our being: a heart that is afraid of disappointment, fears that God will be unfaithful, worries about unmet needs, and yearns for control. Discipline is not the favorite word of our flesh (Prov. 23:12 NASB). Discipline says to the flesh, “No more control.” Discipline looks to the Holy Spirit to work in us what Christ did for us on the Cross. The Holy Spirit imparts sanctifying grace to enable us to say, “No,” to worldly passions and unrighteous desires (Titus 2:11-14). Freedom is the reward of disciplined trust in the Holy Spirit. We depend on his grace to make godly choices and there we find release from the flesh’s bondage.

‘Discipline’ has become a dirty word in our culture . . . . I know I am speaking heresy in many circles, but spontaneity is greatly overvalued. The ‘spontaneous’ person who shrugs off the need for discipline is like the farmer who went out to gather the eggs. As he walked across the farmyard toward the hen house, he noticed the pump was leaking. So he stopped to fix it. It needed a new washer, so he set off to the barn to get one. But on the way he saw that the hayloft needed straightening, so he went fetch the pitchfork. Hanging next to the pitchfork was a broom with a broken handle. ‘I must make a note to myself to buy a broom handle the next time I get to town,’ he thought . . . .

By now it is clear that the farmer is not going to get his eggs gathered, nor is he likely to accomplish anything else he sets out to do. He is utterly, gloriously spontaneous, but he is hardly free. He is if anything, a prisoner to his unbridled spontaneity.

The fact of the matter is that discipline is the only way to freedom; it is the necessary context for spontaneity.

John Guest cited in Donald S. Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines of the Christian Life (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1991), 236.

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The Dove and the Lamb

baptismsqtile

The Humility of God (Chapter Five)

Over the last several weeks, we have been blogging through The Calvary Road by Roy Hession. So far, we have learned that revival is personal heart change: confession, repentance, joy, Spirit-baptism, and gospel-driven evangelism (preface). Revival is the restoration of God’s glory in his church. Revival is the manifested presence of the kingdom of God in and among his people actively bringing the lost to salvation and the lukewarm to renewed passionate devotion in Christ. The key: revival starts with me (Isa. 57:15 KJV; Hab. 3:2 KJV). I don’t wait for this big move of God–I get right with God now.

In chapter one,  Christian growth is defined as the Holy Spirit working through people, circumstances, and the Word of God to address self-centeredness still resident in my life. Chapter two reminds us that it’s the little sins that steal our joy. These “little foxes” keep us from enjoying the constant, conscious presence of Christ. Then in chapter three, Hession examines our need for transparency in relationships. If we want to experience on-going personal revival, we should be, as much as it depends on us, in right relationship with our family and friends. In all our struggles, failures, and lapses in holiness, we must go to the Cross for forgiveness of sin, cleansing from sin, renewal in grace, and power for victory. Chapter four points out that daily choices matter: these choices are the difference between sinning and abiding in Christ (John 15:5).

Today begins a reflection from chapter five: the Dove, the Holy Spirit, rested upon the Lamb, Jesus Christ, at his water baptism (Matt. 3:13-17). The Dove speaks of peace and the Lamb is a picture of total submission. When the Dove honors the Lamb, you and I see with our eyes that “the heart of Deity is humility” (pg. 58).

The main lesson of this incident is that the Holy Spirit, as the Dove, could only come upon and remain upon the Lord Jesus because He was the Lamb. Had the Lord Jesus had any other disposition than that of the Lamb – humility, submissiveness and self-surrender – the Dove could never have rested on Him. Being herself so gentle, she would have been frightened away had not Jesus been meek and lowly in heart (pg. 58).

Humility is seeing me as God sees me: dark yet lovely (S.S. 1:5), weak yet strong (2 Cor. 12:9), and poor yet spiritually rich (2 Cor. 9:8). Humility is not thinking less of myself, but thinking less about me (1 Peter 5:5). [Tim Keller, Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Leader’s Guide (New York: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2003), 159.]

God is brilliant, yet he speaks to me in simplicity and with great tenderness. God is all-powerful, yet he waits for a response from me to his love. God is perfect, yet he does not expect perfection from me. God is all knowing, yet he never grows impatience with my ignorance and inability to understand. God is truly humble: he became God incarnate in human flesh in order that you and I might know him.

If God in his essence is humility then we are called to a life of yieldedness and brokenness to his will.

Here, then, we have pictured for us the condition upon which the same Holy Spirit can come upon us and abide upon us. The Dove can only abide upon us as we are willing to be as the Lamb. How impossible that He should rest upon us while self is unbroken! The manifestations of the unbroken self are the direct opposite of the gentleness of the Dove. Read again in Galatians 5, the nine fold fruit of the Spirit (“love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self control”) with which the Dove longs to fill us! Then contrast it with the ugly works of the flesh (the N.T. name for the unbroken self) in the same chapter. It is the contrast of the snarling wolf with the gentle dove! (pg.59).

Being continuously filled with the Holy Spirit (Dove) means that the blood of Christ has cleansed us. We are abiding in Christ (Lamb) in brokenness and yieldedness to his will. The result of a humble heart is a life that enjoys God’s constant peace, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isa 26:3 KJV). “The sign of the Spirit’s presence and fullness will be peace” (pg. 66).

Peace is a rest and repose of the heart that knocks out all disturbing and disruptive forces, which would steal our fulfillment in Christ. This peace pervades my being when I hold steady trusting the faithfulness of the Father. I receive Christ’s peace for he is the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6) into the deepest recesses of my spirit. I have peace with God through faith in his shed blood (Rom. 5:1), which establishes peace with others (Eph. 2:14), while freeing me to trust his peace (Isa. 26:3), and as a result, I can now walk in peace in the midst of my greatest needs (Phil. 4:7).

Lord, let us be people of peace both inwardly and outwardly. Let our lives reflect the humble God that you are and always will be. Father, Son and Holy Spirit in us, we pray.

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Daily Choices that Matter

The Daily Choice: Reacting or Responding (Chapter Four)

We continue our study of Roy Hession’s classic work on personal revival, The Calvary Road by examining a major theme found in chapter four: choices. In order to enjoy the constant, conscious loving presence of our Savior, I must make moment-by-moment choices to trust him. Trusting the Lord means laying down my life, my pride, my selfishness, and trusting his goodness, his wisdom, and his sovereign purposes (Phil.1:27-30). I choose to trust my Lord with people and their attitudes, circumstances and their disruptions, and situations and their disappointments (Heb. 11:6).

Holiness consists of daily yielding to God my experiences of the Fallout of the Fall: sinning people, selfish actions, broken things, and disrupted plans (Phil. 3:7-8). The issue of holiness is not what people do to me, but how I respond to their fallenness (Heb. 12:14-15). My choice: respond by thanking the Lord for difficult people and situations or react with burning anger toward God and others over my frustrating circumstances.

Amy Carmichael says that nothing anyone can do to us can injure us unless we allow it to cause a wrong reaction in our spirits. Only our reaction can bless or burn.

Paul Billheimer, Mystery of God’s Providence (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1983), 15.

Hession emphasizes that God sovereignly uses people’s faults to challenge our own unbrokenness. My pride, stubbornness, and selfishness are revealed when I feel slighted and overlooked. Do I get angry when I am not praised? Do I get easily offended when people do not do what I want? Do I harbor ill feelings when others do not recognize my efforts?

Do not let us imagine that we have to be broken only once as we go through the door. Ever after, it will be a constant choice before us. God brings His pressure to bear on us, but we have to make the choice. If someone hurts and slights us, we immediately have the choice of accepting the slight as a means of grace to humble us lower or we can resist it and stiffen our necks again with all the disturbance of spirit that that is bound to bring. Right the way through the day our brokenness will be tested, and it is no use our pretending we are broken before God if we are not broken in our attitude to those around us. God nearly always tests us through other people. There are no second causes for the Christian. God’s will is made known in His providence, and His providences are so often others with their many demands on us. If you find yourself in a patch of unbrokenness, the only way is to go afresh to Calvary and see Christ broken for you and you will come away willing to be broken for Him (Hession, The Calvary Road, pg. 49).

Emotionally reacting to my circumstances resists and rejects God’s working in the midst of my disappointment. My reacting leads to anger deepening into a bitter and unteachable spirit. My frustration and impatience expresses disbelief in God’s sovereign working in my daily affairs.

It is almost terrible to live with these thoughts pressing on one’s heart – that one can never speak a word, never transact a piece of business, that one’s face is never seen lighted up with the radiance of God, or clouded and despondent, without it being harder or easier for other men to live a good life. Every one of us, every day, resembles Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made other men sin; or we are lifting other men into the light, and peace, and joy of God. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself; but the life of every one is telling upon an increasing number of mankind. What a solemn responsibility it is to live!

F. B. Meyer, Devotional Commentary on Philippians (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1979), 116.

Responding is trust. I believe that my Heavenly Father has a divine appointment in my various trials and tribulations. I counter my flesh and believe God’s goodness by trusting his sovereign hand in the baffling and trying times. I may not understand “why,” but I choose to trust God, my Heavenly Father, who is good, loving, and gracious. I believe that my Lord has my best in mind and he is not rejecting me by allowing difficulties. Responding comes forth from a thankful heart drawing me into the Holy Spirit’s wellspring of grace. Responding says “yes” to God in my daily circumstances and looks for opportunities to grow in my intimate love relationship with Christ (James 4:6).

We must see our circumstances through God’s love instead of, as we are prone to do, seeing God’s love through our circumstances.

Jerry Bridges, Christian Quote of the Day website, daily email, May 21, 2005.

It is God’s grace that enables us to make righteous choices throughout the day (2 Cor. 12:9-10, Titus 2:11-14). Sanctifying grace is Jesus being the desire, ability, and power in me to respond to every life situation according to the will of God. Jesus is my desire for he works in me a hunger for holiness. Jesus is my ability for he enables me to make godly decisions and choices. Jesus is my power for he strengthens me to overcome the world, the flesh, sin, death, and the devil. Grace is the person, Jesus, living his life in and through me empowering me to live a righteous and holy life.

DeVern Fromke, Life’s Ultimate Privilege (Cloverdale, Ind.: Sure Foundation, 1986), 118.

My daily choices matter –my choices are the difference between abiding and sinning.