In starting my review of Romans 12, which we'll be covering during our weeknight Bible study over on Facebook tonight, one part of one verse really struck me. It comes in verse 16. Paul says: "Never be wise in your own sight."
I think it's probably true that the moment we think we're wise, we're not.
Biblical Christian faith does not value self-sufficiency. God calls us into a community of shalom, of peace with God, with others, and with God's creation born of faith in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
And if we consult with only ourselves over our decisions and attitudes in life, we create a self-confirming feedback loop in which we assure ourselves that what we want to do or believe is right because it's what we want to do or believe. This is a prescription for being unwise.
That's why listening is so important for Christians.
First and foremost, we're to listen to God. Not our hearts. ("The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" says Jeremiah 17:9) Not our thoughts. (There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death," we read in Proverbs 14:12, ESV). Not our preferences. (When Jesus asked God the Father that the cup of suffering He was to "drink" in His suffering and crucifixion, He also prayed, "...not my will, but yours be done." [Luke 22:42]) We need to listen to God, through His Word.
Second, we need to listen to committed disciples of Jesus Who also listen to God and will pray with us and for us.
Third, we need to listen to the wisdom of others, whatever their backgrounds, who have acquired expertise and experience from which we can benefit. All true wisdom originates with God, even when the person imparting it doesn't themselves believe in God. "For the LORD gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. (Proverbs 2:6)
Above all, we should confidently ask God the Father in Jesus' name for wisdom. James 1:15 says, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you."
The longer I live, the less confident I am in my own wisdom, in my own capacity to discern truth or make the right decisions. But the longer I live in relationship with Christ, the more I tune into God the Father through Jesus, God the Son, the more confident I am of the decisions and attitudes God commends me to adopt. I more deeply appreciate Jesus' words to His disciples (including me) in John 15:5: "I am the vine; you are the branches...apart from me you can do nothing." I gain a deeper confidence knowing that I have asked for God's wisdom through Christ, assured like the apostle Paul that "I can do all this through [Christ] who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:13)
Just a few thoughts.
Showing posts with label decision-making. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decision-making. Show all posts
Friday, May 15, 2020
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Facing Life with Christ
[This was shared this morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio. Today is the First Sunday in Lent.]
Luke 4:1-13
Today’s Gospel lesson starts out: ”Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil...” If Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, remind you of the forty years that God’s people Israel wandered through a wilderness in the Old Testament, good!
The Bible means for you to connect these two events separated by 1500 years. For ancient Israel, God’s deliverance from the hands of Egypt and His miraculous parting of the sea should have been a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness, grace, and power.
No test should have frightened them.
No temptation should have lured them.
But, as you’ll remember, whenever a new test, temptation, crisis, or idol came along, God’s people were prone to forgetting the goodness of God and all the good that God had done for them.
They panicked, seeking refuge in dead idols that could not save them or in works of sin that couldn’t give them life.
I can't be too critical of the ancient Israelites though. Speaking for myself, I know that I find it easy to forget God in the rush of daily life or when crises hit. Instead, try reliance on myself or on the things of this world to see me through or to make me feel strong.
When I forget God, like Israel, I always make a mess of things. This is why our daily appointments with God and our weekly worship are so important. Through them, God reminds us of all we need to remember and He strengthens us with the power of His Word, the Bible.
In today’s Gospel lesson, after, on the banks of the Jordan River hearing God the Father thunder from heaven, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” Jesus goes into the wilderness. He does so seeking to do what Israel was never been able to do (and what we're never able to do): Live through the tests and temptations of this life while remaining faithful to God.
Jesus had to do this. The human race needed one representative who, unlike the rest of us, fulfilled God’s law and remained faithful to God’s will so that, at His death, He could take the punishment that each of us deserves for our sin.
In going into the wilderness, Jesus was beginning the ministry of the Messiah that God had used Isaiah to foretell hundreds of years earlier: “...We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” [Isaiah 53:6]
In the wilderness, long before He went to the cross, Jesus met the temptation to dodge His mission and forgo His ministry, which, had He caved in, would have left us dead in our sin for eternity.
Because of Jesus’ faithfulness in fulfilling God’s law for us, we can say with the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews: “...we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” [Hebrews 4:15]
But don’t let all of this history make your eyes glaze over, because Jesus’ time in the wilderness also gives us a model for daily godly living. We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ. And out of gratitude for that grace, we seek through daily repentance and renewal and by the way we live to express our thanks to God for it all.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus shows us how to face our tests and temptations in life.
We face them first, like Jesus, relying on the Holy Spirit. In our Baptism, God gives to the baptized the same Holy Spirit Who filled Jesus and led Him into the wilderness.
In our daily lives as Christians, we can tap into the power of the Holy Spirit as we deal with situations at home, school,work, and leisure.
And we do that by praying, by reading God’s Word, and by living in fellowship with God’s people in the Church, people, who like us as believers in Christ, stand under God’s Word as the ultimate authority over our lives.
Let me make this promise to you: If you will take the time before diving into any decision--to be still, to know that God is God, and to seek God’s counsel through Christ--you will make more right decisions, more decisions you don’t regret, and you will experience God’s peace. That's the simple truth.
In facing life’s temptations, we need to do so in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. But let’s quickly look at the three temptations Jesus faced to learn more about facing down temptation and tests.
Temptation number one offered by the devil to Jesus (verse 3): “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
The devil was taunting Jesus. Temptation often comes to us in this way. “If you’re so sure of yourself…” “If you think you’re so tough…” “If you’re certain that you’re all that…” "If you think you know what you're doing..."
Jesus didn’t let the devil’s taunting bother Him. He knew that He was God’s own Son and that the Father was pleased with Him.
The Christian lives in this world knowing that we don’t need to pull any power trips, we don’t need to do anything to prove our worth. Jesus Christ already proved our infinite and eternal worth in the eyes of God when He died on the cross and rose from the dead for us.
Through our Baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and our faith in Christ, we own the same title that Jesus bears: Child of God.
In this first temptation, the devil was also preying on Jesus’ weakness. Jesus was not only God, but also a man who, after forty days in the wilderness, was hungry. The devil was challenging Jesus to use His power in a way that Jesus never used it: for Himself.
Had Jesus turned stones into bread just to suit Himself, He would have been guilty of the same sin that His earthly brother James would later accuse earthly Christians of committing: “You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Jesus faced down this temptation when He cited the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 8:13: “Man does not live by bread alone…”
The God we know in Jesus Christ is all you and I need. He has our backs here. He has our backs for eternity.
Temptation two is shown in Luke 4:5-6. The devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said that if Jesus would worship him, the devil, he would give all those kingdoms to Jesus. We are tempted to idolatry, the worship of things or people other than God, because we think they can assure us of good lives, maybe even easy lives. We worship idols as shortcuts to blessings only the God of the universe can give.
The devil knew that Jesus had come to claim the people of the world for God. The devil was offering Jesus a shortcut, a less personally painful way claiming the world. Watch out for shortcuts!
But Jesus didn't come into the world to conquer its kingdoms by domineering people; Jesus came to conquer our greatest enemies--sin and death--by going to the cross and the tomb.
All who believe in Jesus become part of something that lasts longer than all the kingdoms, corporations, nations, fads, Twitter trends, or dictatorships of the world, the eternal kingdom of God.
Jesus refused the devil, saying He would only worship God. We are called to do the same thing every day of our lives.
In temptation three, the devil twists the Word of God, trying to entice Jesus to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. Some scholars believe that the pinnacle rose seven hundred feet from the the temple’s base.
God, the devil said, would catch Jesus. The devil pulled a few passages from the Old Testament out of their context, not taking into account everything God says in His Word to tempt Jesus, to try coaxing Jesus into jumping.
But Jesus responded, quoting Isaiah [verse 12], “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Jesus knew God’s Word and because He did, He was ready to face whatever the devil or this world threw at Him. We need to know God’s Word for the same reason.
As we face life’s tests, we can move through them to deeper faith and deeper maturity as people when we
As we surrender to Christ each day, we belong to God and through Jesus, we know that God is bigger than any temptation, any test, any challenge, even death.
He is all we need. Amen
Luke 4:1-13
Today’s Gospel lesson starts out: ”Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil...” If Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, remind you of the forty years that God’s people Israel wandered through a wilderness in the Old Testament, good!
The Bible means for you to connect these two events separated by 1500 years. For ancient Israel, God’s deliverance from the hands of Egypt and His miraculous parting of the sea should have been a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness, grace, and power.
No test should have frightened them.
No temptation should have lured them.
But, as you’ll remember, whenever a new test, temptation, crisis, or idol came along, God’s people were prone to forgetting the goodness of God and all the good that God had done for them.
They panicked, seeking refuge in dead idols that could not save them or in works of sin that couldn’t give them life.
I can't be too critical of the ancient Israelites though. Speaking for myself, I know that I find it easy to forget God in the rush of daily life or when crises hit. Instead, try reliance on myself or on the things of this world to see me through or to make me feel strong.
When I forget God, like Israel, I always make a mess of things. This is why our daily appointments with God and our weekly worship are so important. Through them, God reminds us of all we need to remember and He strengthens us with the power of His Word, the Bible.
In today’s Gospel lesson, after, on the banks of the Jordan River hearing God the Father thunder from heaven, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” Jesus goes into the wilderness. He does so seeking to do what Israel was never been able to do (and what we're never able to do): Live through the tests and temptations of this life while remaining faithful to God.
Jesus had to do this. The human race needed one representative who, unlike the rest of us, fulfilled God’s law and remained faithful to God’s will so that, at His death, He could take the punishment that each of us deserves for our sin.
In going into the wilderness, Jesus was beginning the ministry of the Messiah that God had used Isaiah to foretell hundreds of years earlier: “...We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” [Isaiah 53:6]
In the wilderness, long before He went to the cross, Jesus met the temptation to dodge His mission and forgo His ministry, which, had He caved in, would have left us dead in our sin for eternity.
Because of Jesus’ faithfulness in fulfilling God’s law for us, we can say with the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews: “...we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” [Hebrews 4:15]
But don’t let all of this history make your eyes glaze over, because Jesus’ time in the wilderness also gives us a model for daily godly living. We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ. And out of gratitude for that grace, we seek through daily repentance and renewal and by the way we live to express our thanks to God for it all.
In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus shows us how to face our tests and temptations in life.
We face them first, like Jesus, relying on the Holy Spirit. In our Baptism, God gives to the baptized the same Holy Spirit Who filled Jesus and led Him into the wilderness.
In our daily lives as Christians, we can tap into the power of the Holy Spirit as we deal with situations at home, school,work, and leisure.
And we do that by praying, by reading God’s Word, and by living in fellowship with God’s people in the Church, people, who like us as believers in Christ, stand under God’s Word as the ultimate authority over our lives.
Let me make this promise to you: If you will take the time before diving into any decision--to be still, to know that God is God, and to seek God’s counsel through Christ--you will make more right decisions, more decisions you don’t regret, and you will experience God’s peace. That's the simple truth.
In facing life’s temptations, we need to do so in the power of God’s Holy Spirit. But let’s quickly look at the three temptations Jesus faced to learn more about facing down temptation and tests.
Temptation number one offered by the devil to Jesus (verse 3): “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
The devil was taunting Jesus. Temptation often comes to us in this way. “If you’re so sure of yourself…” “If you think you’re so tough…” “If you’re certain that you’re all that…” "If you think you know what you're doing..."
Jesus didn’t let the devil’s taunting bother Him. He knew that He was God’s own Son and that the Father was pleased with Him.
The Christian lives in this world knowing that we don’t need to pull any power trips, we don’t need to do anything to prove our worth. Jesus Christ already proved our infinite and eternal worth in the eyes of God when He died on the cross and rose from the dead for us.
Through our Baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and our faith in Christ, we own the same title that Jesus bears: Child of God.
In this first temptation, the devil was also preying on Jesus’ weakness. Jesus was not only God, but also a man who, after forty days in the wilderness, was hungry. The devil was challenging Jesus to use His power in a way that Jesus never used it: for Himself.
Had Jesus turned stones into bread just to suit Himself, He would have been guilty of the same sin that His earthly brother James would later accuse earthly Christians of committing: “You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Jesus faced down this temptation when He cited the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 8:13: “Man does not live by bread alone…”
The God we know in Jesus Christ is all you and I need. He has our backs here. He has our backs for eternity.
Temptation two is shown in Luke 4:5-6. The devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and said that if Jesus would worship him, the devil, he would give all those kingdoms to Jesus. We are tempted to idolatry, the worship of things or people other than God, because we think they can assure us of good lives, maybe even easy lives. We worship idols as shortcuts to blessings only the God of the universe can give.
The devil knew that Jesus had come to claim the people of the world for God. The devil was offering Jesus a shortcut, a less personally painful way claiming the world. Watch out for shortcuts!
But Jesus didn't come into the world to conquer its kingdoms by domineering people; Jesus came to conquer our greatest enemies--sin and death--by going to the cross and the tomb.
All who believe in Jesus become part of something that lasts longer than all the kingdoms, corporations, nations, fads, Twitter trends, or dictatorships of the world, the eternal kingdom of God.
Jesus refused the devil, saying He would only worship God. We are called to do the same thing every day of our lives.
In temptation three, the devil twists the Word of God, trying to entice Jesus to throw Himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. Some scholars believe that the pinnacle rose seven hundred feet from the the temple’s base.
God, the devil said, would catch Jesus. The devil pulled a few passages from the Old Testament out of their context, not taking into account everything God says in His Word to tempt Jesus, to try coaxing Jesus into jumping.
But Jesus responded, quoting Isaiah [verse 12], “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Jesus knew God’s Word and because He did, He was ready to face whatever the devil or this world threw at Him. We need to know God’s Word for the same reason.
As we face life’s tests, we can move through them to deeper faith and deeper maturity as people when we
- rely on the Holy Spirit;
- remember that as baptized believers in Jesus Christ, God has our back, we have nothing to prove to anybody, and can live each day in God’s grace;
- remember that only God is worthy of our worship and lives lived in response to His grace; and always recall that by steeping ourselves in God’s Word, we are ready for anything.
As we surrender to Christ each day, we belong to God and through Jesus, we know that God is bigger than any temptation, any test, any challenge, even death.
He is all we need. Amen
Sunday, February 12, 2012
The Gift of Self-Control
[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
This past week, I went for a checkup with my cardiologist. After the assistant had done her thing and the doc had looked over my files, he walked into the examination room and said, “Everything looks good.” Then, with a smile, he asked, “What’s with the weight?” I had gained six more pounds since our last visit, putting me about 27 pounds above my ideal weight. The culprit? I love bread.
So, I’m asking God to help me exercise self-control in order to more faithfully treat this body, which the Bible reminds me is not my own, but something that, with His death on the cross, Jesus bought back from sin, death, and the devil. And it’s this body that, if I endure in my faith in Jesus Christ, will rise again from the dead when Jesus returns on what the Bible calls “the Day of the Lord.” The Bible also teaches that every Christian’s body is: “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” To take care of this body, I need self-control.
We live in a world that, in many ways, discourages self-control.
Lady Gaga sings, “I was born that way,” encouraging people to commit whatever sins they think consistent with their inborn natures.
TV commercials and shopping channels prompt us to waste money on products—from mouthwash to financial planning services—for which often false promises are made.
Married men and women engage in what they think of as harmless trysts, while other people mouth smutty talk, giving no thought to how, as they do these things, they debase the gift of sexual intimacy God has given to them.
Pornography, it’s estimated, is a $10 to $15-billion industry, in which devotees are encouraged to idolize sex (or, as the Bible puts it, to worship the creation instead of the Creator) and end up viewing other people as objects to be used for their own pleasure, rather than as fellow human beings made in the image of God.
Obesity is becoming a pandemic: About one-third of all adults in the United States—33.8%--are obese.
All of these instances (and countless more) and the heartaches and the wedges they drive between God and us, between others and us, and between us and the people God made us to be, exemplify human sin and a death-dealing lack of self-control.
The Bible has a lot to say about self-control. And for good reason.
We’ll see why self-control is so important and how we can have it in a moment.
But let's first establish that God Himself wants us to exercise self-control in how we live.
Please look at Genesis 4:6. These are words spoken by God to Cain, one of Adam’s and Eve’s sons, after his offering of leftovers to God looked bad compared with his brother Abel’s grateful offering of the firstlings from his flocks: “So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
It was a lack of self-control that caused Cain to not give God first place his life, to resent his brother for Abel’s grateful faith in God, and to despair of the importance of his own life…in other words, to sin. God is telling Cain to exercise self-control, to master his sinful impulses.
Our second lesson for today was written to the church the apostle Paul founded in the Greek city of Corinth. The letter was written in about 54AD. Look at what Paul says in our short second lesson. His words are worth reading and hearing again:
An athlete exercises self-discipline: She trains; he practices; they exercise and watch what foods they eat.
In Paul’s day, athletes who won their contests—a race or a wrestling match, for example—didn’t receive money, gold medals, commercial endorsements, or trips to Disney World. They received wreaths, made of laurel leaves, placed on their heads. Wreaths are perishable and they were dead shortly after given as awards.
Paul says that he and all Christians live our lives—we run—for a prize that is imperishable, one that will never wither or die. The prize is the gift of a relationship with God, here and eternity.
It’s a gift for which we don’t compete. All who believe and are baptized are already gold medal winners. We are saved by God’s charity (His grace) through our faith in Christ.
We cannot earn—or achieve—our way to a saving relationship with Christ. Jesus died on a cross, absorbing all the poison of our sin and selfishness, paying the debt to God we owe for our sin, then rising from the dead, so that all who repent for their sin and give their lives to Christ, are saved from sin, death, and futility as a free gift.
It is possible for us to kick away the life that Christ offers to us freely, though.
We kick Christ and life with God away when we lose our self-control and let the world, the devil, and our sinful selves call the shots in our lives.
But as anyone who has ever tried to take off a few pounds can testify, self-control, the mastery of self, the punishment of self in order to bring it into submission to the loving will of God, is not easy.
The good news is that we can have self-control.
Let me show you where the power for self-control can be found. Turn to Galatians 5, starting at verse 18, in the Bible.
There, Paul says that if we are led by the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him, we aren’t condemned by the law. The power of sin to keep us from living with God has been destroyed.
Then, beginning with verse 19, Paul describes “the works of the flesh”: the things we do when we rely on ourselves instead of on God. It’s not a happy list! Look at it:
But look at verses 22 and 23 to see what the Spirit produces in us when we daily and continuously give ourselves to Christ and ask for God’s guidance and help:
Every time we make decisions, we evidence either the self-control that comes from God or the lack of self-control that comes from sin.
Here’s a (far from perfect) eight-point checklist you might want to use when you’re confronting any decision in your life. These might help you to invite God's Holy Spirit into the process to give you Godly self-control:
In following Jesus, we may not always earn the world’s applause or make bigger pay checks, but we will be able to face our Lord at the ends of our lives and say with Paul: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
And we will hear Jesus say, “Well done… Enter into the joy of your Master.” Amen
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
This past week, I went for a checkup with my cardiologist. After the assistant had done her thing and the doc had looked over my files, he walked into the examination room and said, “Everything looks good.” Then, with a smile, he asked, “What’s with the weight?” I had gained six more pounds since our last visit, putting me about 27 pounds above my ideal weight. The culprit? I love bread.
So, I’m asking God to help me exercise self-control in order to more faithfully treat this body, which the Bible reminds me is not my own, but something that, with His death on the cross, Jesus bought back from sin, death, and the devil. And it’s this body that, if I endure in my faith in Jesus Christ, will rise again from the dead when Jesus returns on what the Bible calls “the Day of the Lord.” The Bible also teaches that every Christian’s body is: “a temple of the Holy Spirit.” To take care of this body, I need self-control.
We live in a world that, in many ways, discourages self-control.
Lady Gaga sings, “I was born that way,” encouraging people to commit whatever sins they think consistent with their inborn natures.
TV commercials and shopping channels prompt us to waste money on products—from mouthwash to financial planning services—for which often false promises are made.
Married men and women engage in what they think of as harmless trysts, while other people mouth smutty talk, giving no thought to how, as they do these things, they debase the gift of sexual intimacy God has given to them.
Pornography, it’s estimated, is a $10 to $15-billion industry, in which devotees are encouraged to idolize sex (or, as the Bible puts it, to worship the creation instead of the Creator) and end up viewing other people as objects to be used for their own pleasure, rather than as fellow human beings made in the image of God.
Obesity is becoming a pandemic: About one-third of all adults in the United States—33.8%--are obese.
All of these instances (and countless more) and the heartaches and the wedges they drive between God and us, between others and us, and between us and the people God made us to be, exemplify human sin and a death-dealing lack of self-control.
The Bible has a lot to say about self-control. And for good reason.
We’ll see why self-control is so important and how we can have it in a moment.
But let's first establish that God Himself wants us to exercise self-control in how we live.
Please look at Genesis 4:6. These are words spoken by God to Cain, one of Adam’s and Eve’s sons, after his offering of leftovers to God looked bad compared with his brother Abel’s grateful offering of the firstlings from his flocks: “So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.”
It was a lack of self-control that caused Cain to not give God first place his life, to resent his brother for Abel’s grateful faith in God, and to despair of the importance of his own life…in other words, to sin. God is telling Cain to exercise self-control, to master his sinful impulses.
Our second lesson for today was written to the church the apostle Paul founded in the Greek city of Corinth. The letter was written in about 54AD. Look at what Paul says in our short second lesson. His words are worth reading and hearing again:
Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.Paul, of course, is using an analogy or a metaphor, both comparing and contrasting the life of a follower of Jesus Christ with the life of an athlete.
An athlete exercises self-discipline: She trains; he practices; they exercise and watch what foods they eat.
In Paul’s day, athletes who won their contests—a race or a wrestling match, for example—didn’t receive money, gold medals, commercial endorsements, or trips to Disney World. They received wreaths, made of laurel leaves, placed on their heads. Wreaths are perishable and they were dead shortly after given as awards.
Paul says that he and all Christians live our lives—we run—for a prize that is imperishable, one that will never wither or die. The prize is the gift of a relationship with God, here and eternity.
It’s a gift for which we don’t compete. All who believe and are baptized are already gold medal winners. We are saved by God’s charity (His grace) through our faith in Christ.
We cannot earn—or achieve—our way to a saving relationship with Christ. Jesus died on a cross, absorbing all the poison of our sin and selfishness, paying the debt to God we owe for our sin, then rising from the dead, so that all who repent for their sin and give their lives to Christ, are saved from sin, death, and futility as a free gift.
It is possible for us to kick away the life that Christ offers to us freely, though.
We kick Christ and life with God away when we lose our self-control and let the world, the devil, and our sinful selves call the shots in our lives.
But as anyone who has ever tried to take off a few pounds can testify, self-control, the mastery of self, the punishment of self in order to bring it into submission to the loving will of God, is not easy.
The good news is that we can have self-control.
Let me show you where the power for self-control can be found. Turn to Galatians 5, starting at verse 18, in the Bible.
There, Paul says that if we are led by the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus Christ to all who believe in Him, we aren’t condemned by the law. The power of sin to keep us from living with God has been destroyed.
Then, beginning with verse 19, Paul describes “the works of the flesh”: the things we do when we rely on ourselves instead of on God. It’s not a happy list! Look at it:
“adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies [that’s advocating or actively living doctrine contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the Bible], envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.”Paul says that people who make a practice of these things “will not inherit the kingdom of God.” They push Jesus and salvation out of their lives.
But look at verses 22 and 23 to see what the Spirit produces in us when we daily and continuously give ourselves to Christ and ask for God’s guidance and help:
...love, joy, peace, longsuffering [that’s patience in the face of difficulties and opposition to us for our faith in and witness for Christ], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…In other words, as we consciously submit our every moment and our every decision to God’s evaluation, correction, and wisdom, we will be given the power to exercise self-control. We’ll experience the peace of God that passes all human understanding.
Every time we make decisions, we evidence either the self-control that comes from God or the lack of self-control that comes from sin.
Here’s a (far from perfect) eight-point checklist you might want to use when you’re confronting any decision in your life. These might help you to invite God's Holy Spirit into the process to give you Godly self-control:
- If the decision will take you down the easy path, you probably shouldn’t take it. Jesus says in Matthew 7:13-14, “…the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction…the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life...”
- If what you're considering doing is what you want to do, you probably shouldn’t do it. Proverbs 14:12 and other Bible passages tell us: “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” The key is not to rely on your own thinking or common sense, but on the wisdom God freely gives to those who ask for it.
- If your prospective decision appeals to your ego, watch out. 1 Corinthians 10:31 teaches: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” Ask yourself, “Will this decision glorify God?”
- If your feelings are leading you to a decision, you may want to avoid it. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God reveals that: “The heart is devious above all else…” Unless we, in the words of Psalm 51, are praying regularly and submissively for “a clean heart…and…a new and right spirit within…,” it’s almost always wrong to base our decisions on what we feel.
- If a trusted Christian friend warns you against a prospective decision, reconsider it. Proverbs 24:6 tells us that “in abundance of counselors, there is victory.”
- If you haven’t sought the counsel of at least one Christian friend, you may be about to make a bad decision. Jesus told Nicodemus that a sinful world refused to come to Him, the light of the world; instead, they huddled in darkness because they didn’t want their evil to be exposed. If we're not willing to share the decision we're contemplating with at least one other follower of Jesus Christ, we need to ask ourselves what we're hiding and why.
- Is this decision designed to please others, not God. Paul says bluntly in Galatians 1:10: “If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” As followers of Jesus Christ, our decisions should not be driven by the opinions of others, even if the opinion in question is that of just one other person.
- Finally, never make a decision if you haven’t been regularly reading God’s Word and praying. Jesus says that wise people build their lives on Him alone. And the Psalm tells us that God’s Word is a light to our path and a lamp to our feet. When we make decisions without regularly reading God's Word and regularly talking things over with God, we are flailing in the dark.
In following Jesus, we may not always earn the world’s applause or make bigger pay checks, but we will be able to face our Lord at the ends of our lives and say with Paul: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
And we will hear Jesus say, “Well done… Enter into the joy of your Master.” Amen
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