When Good Is Bad

that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, (Ephesians 4:22NKJV)

I love the way The Message puts this:  …everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it! (Ephesians 4:22)

The Apostle Paul adds this helpful insight:

… If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so:  circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; concerning the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the church; concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; (Philippians 3:4-9 NKJV)

We would gain greater understanding of Paul’s admonition to the Ephesians if we noted from the list above that the things he counted “rubbish” were things of the old man that many would look on and count as “good.”  That’s why The Message says – “and I do mean everything.”  Nothing we did prior to knowing Christ has any merit or place in our walk with Christ, even if it was considered a good thing in the eyes of the world.

We can do something as “good” as supporting a hungry child, without being prompted by God to do so, and it will produce a righteousness not of Christ.  It will produce a self-righteousness that is contrary to Christ.  I know this first hand because I did it.  For years before knowing Jesus, I had a Compassion child.  I did not give for the sake of Christ – or even the child, but for the sake of appeasing my guilty conscience from all the other horrible things I was doing.  And this kept me from coming to the end of my rope sooner than I did because I could always go back to this one act of “righteousness” to justify the many acts of unrighteousness.  

This is vital to grasp because we can easily mistake the “former conduct” as just those “other horrible things” that are obviously sin. But we would miss the more subtle work of the flesh, which is to do something “good” out of a self-centered motivation.  We must “put off” the old man in every form, which is – at the end of the day – simply a dependence upon self that does not acknowledge the Lordship of Christ.

Jesus said, “Apart from me you can do nothing.”  And that “nothing” includes our walk with Him.  If we do not have Christ at the center of our life, we will be walking in things we do in “His name” that will receive the harsh reply in Heaven of “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” Matthew 7:23 (NKJV).

Today, I will ask the Holy Spirit to guide my every decision and then pause before making the final choice to be certain it is from Him.  And if I am not sure, I’ll go with the old adage, “When in doubt, leave it out.”  It is better for me to wait than to put on my former self-confidence and move forward without Jesus.

Fueling the Fire of Faith

Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive. Serve the Lord (Romans 12:11 NIVR).

I was never a camper so I would probably not have really had the insight on keeping fires going, but for my one winter in North Carolina.  Having lived in South Florida for over 50 years, I spent from December to March that year in front of my fireplace.  And I learned very quickly that in order for the fire to stay hot, I had to keep adding fuel.  The key, however, was to add the fuel before it appeared the fire needed it.  If I waited until it looked like the fire was about to go out, it was too late.  The fire was not hot enough to burn the new wood.

As I consider the lesson I learned about real fires, the parallel to this scripture makes perfect sense.  In order to keep the fire of God going in my heart – to keep it alive – I must not wait until I am so spiritually drained that my fire is about to die.  Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14:  But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 

The more I allow myself to be drawn into a natural mindset, the less I will be able to discern the things of the Spirit.  That means that if I allow myself to become dull spiritually, it takes more effort to make the fire burn.  While the Bible teaches that I am saved and sealed by God’s Spirit until the day of redemption, it also teaches that I must now renew my mind by the washing of the Word because the mind and the spirit are different.  My spirit is one with Christ, but my mind is still linked to this world through my senses.  And it is that on-going battle we, as believers, must fight every day – to make the things I cannot see, hear, taste, and touch more real than the things I can.  And that is what the Bible calls faith.  It is the key to keeping the fire going.

So how do we stoke the fire of faith?  The Bible says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God (Romans 10:17).   Obviously that verse is not talking about hearing something through our physical ear, or everyone who physically hears God’s Word would have faith.  It is the kind of hearing Jesus spoke about when He spoke of eyes that see and ears that hear.  He was talking about the ability to rightly discern everything in this life through the filter of eternity.  Only when we walk with this eternal perspective can we really serve the Lord with a fire that never goes out.  So, the fuel we add is the Word of God, which stokes the fire of faith and we need to add it even when we feel like we are spiritually doing well.

Today, I will add the fuel of God’s Word to the fire of my heart so that I will have a continual source of heat for what lies ahead of me in the next 24 hours. 

Love Without Hypocrisy

Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good (Romans 12:9 NKJV).

Hypocrisy according to the dictionary is: Feigned high principles, pretense, two-facedness, double standards, and insincerity.

Here, Paul is telling us to not let our love be pretentious and two-faced.  It is almost unthinkable to use those words in the same sentence with the word love, yet the sad reality of living in a fallen world is that even something as precious and pure as love can be faked and subject to double standards.

In order to check our hearts and make certain that we are loving in a way that honors God and is not hypocritical, we would do well to look at how this same Apostle describes true love.  In 1 Corinthians 13, we find the qualities of a love that is sincere, genuine, and single hearted:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NKJV).

From this list emerges the heartbeat of authentic, Biblical love – humility.  At the center of being able to love the way Jesus loved us, we find the mindset of Christ that was able to lay aside His Divine Nature, take on the form of a servant, and become obedient even to the death on a cross – not for His sake, but for ours.  Real love can only be experienced by the humble in heart who are willing to give up all rights for the sake of others. 

As much as I aspire to love this way in my head, I struggle daily to abandon myself enough to attain the humility necessary to experience this love.  I am thankful that God has not made the goal my ability to perfectly perform this act, but rather the constant yielding of my will to His when I am faced with choice of whether I will or not. 

Today I will look for those altars of decision that God sets before me daily to relinquish my rights to the high call of humility.  And with the power He gives me daily, I will be able to demonstrate authentic, Biblical love every time I am successful and authentic, Biblical mercy every time I am not.

Avoiding Irreversible Regrets

Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Mark 8:37 NKJV)

There are two sides to a bad decision.  There is the front end where we are making the choice to do something that is not going to have good results.  And there is the back end of the decision where we must live with the consequences of that choice.  This verse deals with that back end.  That’s why it does not say “what will a man TAKE in exchange for his soul?” which would be the front end.

This verse addresses the enemy that haunts my heart – irreversible regret.  I find myself many times immobilized with a fear of doing something that I will regret for the rest of my life and be unable to take back.  I look on at the life of Judas in horror, as I consider the ramification of that one bad decision.  How many men and women have wasted their entire existence because of one decision that cost them their destiny?  Whether it was Esau selling his birth right or Moses striking the rock the second time, it is clear to see that there is a price tag on our choices.

Free will is one of the most pronounced ways in which we are created in the image of God.  Nothing else in creation functions with free will.  Animals, vegetation, galaxies, and even the angels themselves are subject to instincts and governing principles that determine their destiny.  Only man has the ability to choose his own future. And with this incredible privilege comes a high responsibility because once the choice is made, there is no turning back.  That’s why Jesus asks the rhetorical question – “What will a man give in exchange for his soul?”  We cannot buy back our own soul from its predetermined course to hell.  Yet, we can make a decision to trust in Christ’s finished work on the cross to save us from that fatal end.  And because we are not just saved from hell, but from the independence from God called sin that sends us there, that one choice can also be made daily to keep us from irreversible regrets.

When faced with decisions, I need to stop and pray so that I will choose daily to allow Christ to save my soul from the wrong decisions I will surely make without His intervention.  Only as I put my free will back into His hands can I be sure not to make a decision that might cost me my soul and cause me to live in the shadow of what might have been my legacy.

Keep It Simple Saint

Then the angel said to him, “Gird yourself and tie on your sandals”; and so he did. And he said to him, “Put on your garment and follow me.” (Acts 12:8 NKJV)

I wonder if I would have had the wits to understand a word the angel said if I were Peter.  Seriously think about this.  You are in the middle of a dead sleep when you feel someone strikes you on the side and you look up and there is a bright light and an angelic being standing there.  For most of us, this would have been so out of the ordinary that we might have taken more than a second to gather ourselves together enough to follow the instructions given by the angel.

But this was not most of us.  This was Peter.  This was the man who had been with Jesus personally during His earthly ministry.  He stood on the Mount of Transfiguration where he saw Jesus, Moses, and Elijah shining as bright as the sun.  He was the one who saw Jesus walking on water and actually stepped out of the boat to take a few steps on water himself.  He was there when Jesus brought the demoniac into his right mind.  He was there when Jesus raised the little girl and Lazarus from the dead.  And he was there on the day of Pentecost, preaching like he’d done it all his life.

So, what’s another bright shining light and angelic appearance to a man who has been walking in the miraculous for the last three years of his life?  And if Peter had not been conditioned to expect the unexpected, he might have done what most of us would have done.  We would have been so fixated on the messenger that we would have missed the simple message that ultimately was what saved Peter’s life – follow me.

Leave it to mankind to make complicated even the most simple of instructions.  We can certainly fixate on the majesty, miracles, and wonder of Jesus, and completely miss His message – follow Me.

Lord, today, I want to keep it simple.  If I am to follow You, then I need to not major in the minors by building up such a brilliant case of my own rights in a situation, but to simply follow You and lay down my life today however that looks.

Sleeping Faith

And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers; and the guards before the door were keeping the prison (Acts 12:6 NKJV).

As I read this verse, my mind immediately moves to the scene where Jesus is asleep in the bow of the boat as the disciples were left fighting a storm that caused grown men of the sea to freak out.  What is it about both scenes that seems so surreal? Perhaps it is because we typically associate sleep with a condition of rest and peaceful calmness that the thought of a person sleeping in the midst of hurricane force winds or while bound with chains between two soldiers, seems so difficult to wrap our minds around.  Yet both are perfect pictures of faith.

Hebrews 11:1 says:  Faith is being sure of what we hope for. It is being certain of what we do not see.

Peter’s hope was obviously not in circumstances or things over which he had no control.  His hope was in the unwavering character of Christ that Peter had been able to observe up close and over time.  He had been there when Jesus was asleep in the bow of the boat.  He had been there when Jesus came walking on water in the midst of another storm.  He had been there when Jesus held his tongue before His accusers and never spoke a word in His own defense, though He certainly could have easily discharged the charges without much effort at all.  He had been there when Jesus was beaten almost to death. And he had been there when Christ breathed His last breath.

Peter had finally learned the valuable lesson of faith from his former Mentor.  And now, as with Jesus, Peter’s hope was anchored in the fact that his life was not his own and that whatever happened to him was under the sovereign control of God, not the soldiers on each side, or even Herod who would probably have him put to death the next day.  It was this unwavering focus of hope on the right source that gave Peter the ability to have a good night’s sleep in a situation that would have caused a melt down for most of us.  Our attitudes in the midst of a trial can be a very revealing and accurate measure of where we are placing our faith.

In life I will learn to take note of when I begin to freak out and make the concerted effort to refocus my faith upon Jesus, regardless of what circumstances and life are throwing my way.

In You Alone

No one is holy like the LORD,  for there is none besides You, nor is there any rock like our God. 1 Samuel 2:2 NKJV)

You alone are God.  You alone know the depth of my pain and the height of my joy.  You alone can determine the course of my life.  You are the very essence of what my heart cries for and my soul searches for.  You alone know the most intimate thoughts and intentions of my mind.  You alone search the tiniest corners of my puny world and the boundless infinity of eternity.  Your thoughts towards me are kind, benevolent, good, true, righteous, and holy.  You desire to bring only good to my life.  You are trustworthy with my soul for You alone know what I need the most.  You are faithful to bring about those events in my life that are necessary for my sanctification so that I will enjoy You for all eternity.  You alone know my deepest fear and my greatest potential.  In You alone is hope for tomorrow and strength for today.  You alone hold the answers to my future, the victories for my struggles, and the comfort for my sorrows.  You bring goodness and calamity based upon Your omniscience of my need for both.  Your love is endless, timeless, matchless.  It is beyond any human capacity to affirm and validate.  Only in You is there a blessing sufficient to satisfy my soul in its search for significance.  You alone hold the key to my well being.  In You alone is life and outside of You is only death.  Were I to spend my entire life pursuing the goal of finding security, approval, love, and contentment in anything in this entire universe but You, I would fail miserably.  Only You can save me from the lesser life of self.

Lord, my hope, trust, faith, and my heart are in You alone.

Only When Asked

And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he asked Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 7:31 NKJV)

Without guidance, it is nearly impossible for people to understand and find their way.  This is true in every area of our life.  From intellectually to emotionally to physically to spiritually, if we are not shown the way, it is difficult to find it on our own.

The wisest man on earth, King Solomon, said, “There is nothing new under the sun.”  That means that someone else has already experienced whatever we discover or learn.  And the learning curve on life can be cut radically short if we are open to discipleship.  The problem comes in that many people are not.  Rather than look at the road map, they keep thinking that they will eventually figure out the way themselves.  And eventually, they may, but at the cost of many lost hours and sometimes years. 

This idea of being guided through life begs the question of why so many people resist the help of a mentor who has already learned the shortest route to success.  And the answer lies within the human heart.  It is the very root and source of our inability to hear the answers – not just from God, but from our brothers and sisters in Christ.  The problem is called pride. 

Pride is the direct result of the fall of Adam and Eve.  Prior to Eve stepping out into her own path of decision, this couple lived completely and totally upon the understanding and guidance of God.  It was Eve’s departure from this God-dependence that left her in the state of self-dependence, and it has been the undoing of man ever since.

God created a perfect world.  The paths were determined, the principles set, the systems in balance.  Eve’s one decision threw the entire world out of kilter.  And the worse part of her decision was that it was irreversible because it had opened the Pandora’s box of self-determination.  Eve had stepped away from a God-given path to create her own path.  She had left the safety of what was already predetermined to find a different way – her own way.  She called what was wrong right and set the course for humanity to struggle constantly with that decision every day of our lives.  That, in its purest form, is pride.  It is reliance upon self rather than God.  And that’s why the Bible says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.  He cannot and will not honor a way, other than the perfect one He has created because all others fall radically short of His glory.

The only remedy for pride is the position taken by the Eunuch.  In humility, he admits his insufficiency, and invites the mentor to step into his life.  It has been well said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  But until humility is embraced, the human heart is incapable of being guided – even by God.

I need to humble myself daily so that I can accept guidance from God in whatever shape and form it may come – even through a donkey, if necessary.