FRIENDED BY CHRIST

When you think of living God’s way and your personal track record, what emotions rise to the surface? Regret, disappointment, frustration?

What words or phrases come to mind? Failure, all have sinned, nobody’s perfect, sinful nature?

With that in mind, watch this clip from “Facing the Giants.”

Pure inspiration. As good as a Rocky movie.

I remember learning about self-fulfilling prophecy in high school. According to our good friends at Wikipedia, it is “a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true … due to positive feedback between belief and behavior.”

One of the core teachings of the church is our depravity due to our sinful nature. The inherent, unspoken message is “You are screwed up, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

I am not saying this is not true. I am not implying salvation lies within each of us, if only we can unlock the magic key inside or get on the path of self-discovery.

But what happens when the dominant, constant message I hear about myself is I’m a mess? And my own experience confirms this? I can become a hot mess! Hopefully, it drives me to the Risen Christ in total dependence on Him to remake me into a new creation.

But in the meantime, in-between-time, as I continue to fall short, what do I do? Wallow in misery or grow hard-hearted and cold over time?

Let’s allow Moses to throw his two cents in here. Moses, the great prophet and leader of Israel during the Exodus, the self-proclaimed “most humble guy ever,” is preaching his last sermon to God’s people. Moses is near the end of his life, the people are on the cusp of entering the long-awaited Promised Land, and God has established through giving His Law the way of life He intends for His people.

Here is what Moses says in Deuteronomy 30:10-14 regarding God’s intended ways of living:

The Lord your God will delight in you if you obey his voice and keep the commands and decrees written in this Book of Instruction, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand, and it is not beyond your reach. It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.

Why would Moses go and say a thing like that? When he says God’s ways are within their reach, he doesn’t mean that literally, does he?

This is before Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Before the coming of the Holy Spirit in new creation power, when things became upended and now through faith we are holy temples where God may dwell.

It seems our potential might be more than we realize. That the image of God (that has been cracked by sin, but still remains!) might mean more than we realize. Maybe our capacity for good and our capacity to obey is greater than we realize.

We do not put limitations on ourselves physically or emotionally. When we hear stories of great human accomplishments in the arena of sports, or stories of survival despite the worst of conditions (such as the Holocaust), we do not doubt their truthfulness. We realize and recognize our potential.

But when it comes to living God’s way, we see ourselves as defeated before we have even tried. Persevering and overcoming rarely enter our vocabulary, yet these are the very words we hear throughout the New Testament epistles!

I am not proposing we can be sinless, attain perfection, or earn salvation. But I wonder if our focus on sins and the sinful nature has actually become an enabling device to sin.

I leave you with one final thought from Hebrews 12:4.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

What you believe about yourself is critical. What you believe about God is even more critical.

Thoughts?

Something’s bugging me. And it has to do with me.

Today is the start of Lent, the forty-day period leading up to our celebration of Easter. It’s tradition to give something up for Lent, whether it’s chocolate, TV, Facebook, or the musical sounds of Justin Bieber. It is a wonderful, ancient practice that has been getting more attention the last few years. Its benefit is in preparing our hearts and reflecting on what our Lord Jesus went through for us. To suffer and find some solidarity with Christ’s sufferings.

Why do we need to do this?

Glad you asked. We live in a culture that is so bubble-wrapped and cushy that giving something up has become a felt need for many of us. Suffering is a rarity. It is, because when it comes our way we are always shocked. We live “blessed” here in America.

We have fully adopted this mindset in the church. We equate God’s blessing with the American dream. While we scoff at the ridiculousness of the “health and wealth/name it and claim it” gospel, we cling to a version of it. In Christ, God is ready to give us “The Life You’ve Always Wanted.” Not to pick on the book with this title, but this is such a popular message and an underlying layer of Christian sub-culture.

While I do believe God wants to bless His people (so that they in turn are a blessing), this was not the central focus of Jesus’ message about the kingdom or what life would look like for kingdom people.

The message of Jesus could accurately be titled “The Life You Never Wanted.” Men come up to him asking to be his disciples, and he tries to convince them they don’t really want this. He tells stories of counting the cost, asks his closest followers if they want to drink the cup he’s been given to drink, and tells the crowd that to follow him is to GO TO THE CROSS.

That’s not a popular message. That’s not sunshine and gumdrops. That’s not the American dream.

And it’s not a message I like too much, either. I want just a little bit of Jesus. I echo the Apostle Paul, but I leave parts off: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”

I have become too comfortable with one side of the coin and have justified not looking at the other side of the coin. I love my new identity in Christ, but I ignore my calling as Christ’s. The call to take up my cross.

Lent is an opportunity to embrace that call, even if it’s in a safe, small, temporary way.

So here’s my deal: I’ve been thinking about Lent all week. And now it’s here. And I still don’t know what I’m going to give up… and to be honest, I don’t want to give anything up.

Do you know what I told myself this morning? Maybe I don’t have to literally give anything up. Maybe I can just fully embrace the idea of being willing to give something up, and that’s good enough.

Pathetic. Cop out.

I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I will be giving something up for the next 40 days.

Maybe even longer.

How about you? Do you feel this tension inside you? That God is calling you to something grander than the American dream?

To A Life You Never Wanted?