Category: surrender

A Brief Testimony

So, how would you put into words a concise, yet comprehensive statement of who you were in sin, who you are in Christ, who you are becoming by His grace, and the glorious hope of who you will be? I’ve been rather verbose about it on numerous occasions 🙂 although I’ve never taken the time to compose a synopsis. The pastoral residency I’m in calls us to respond to every facet of the Gospel and evangelism is perhaps the most essential call of every Christian. And that makes this effort rich for me in both substance and purpose.

Here’s what I would say if I had just a couple minutes of your time…

From the earliest age, I recall always being in church, seeing as I was raised as a pastor’s kid. I don’t remember not being a Christian — my faith as a child was strong and my heart was tender; but I do remember becoming increasingly and intolerably rebellious as I entered and began through my teenage years. A crisis of faith developed toward the end of high school when I knew I could no longer allow self-will to harden my heart and destroy the faith God had given me. I knew Jesus died in my place for my sin. I knew I could only live in Him. This was the beginning of a long journey back to God.

The personal, spiritual battles that continued into adulthood were often lost due to my preoccupation with self — achievement, satisfaction, fulfillment — all things that were sometimes merely secular, but for entirely the wrong motives, or even more often, blatantly sinful. I could never quite satisfy my desires — I was always left incomplete. Although guilt repeatedly led to what was often private confession, the secret shame and lack of true repentance left me a slave to the insatiable.

God allowed me much success in my career — perhaps in part to prove to me just how hollow it could be. Yet as I found myself being crushed by guilt and emptiness, the evidence of God’s love and mercy began to overwhelm me. I found that He was ever so patiently drawing me to Himself. I was filled with deep longing for true repentance and freedom — God wonderfully granted me that repentance and I found such freedom in the love of Jesus like I had never known! My guilt and emptiness were replaced with such joy and contentment.

The gracious gift of Jesus’ righteousness has begun a work in me that continues as I grow and am transformed by the Spirit and the Word of God. The Spirit of God living in me guides and directs me, convicts me of sin and righteousness, and makes me Holy, reminding me I am His own. As I confess my sin, He faithfully and justly forgives me as His child. God continues to strengthen me when temptations to lust and covet confront me — giving me perfect peace in His complete fulfillment of my every need.

As I continue to obediently seek and honor God and His kingdom, and to faithfully respond to God’s call on my life to minister the Gospel, no matter the sacrifice, He proves that His providential grace is perfectly sufficient. All my hope is in Jesus, my Lord—because He arose from the dead in the power of His Holiness, whether today or tomorrow I live or die, in Jesus I have life eternal.

How about you?

Reliance, Sufficiency, and Consequences

Mulling over Oswald Chambers this morning, the Spirit gave me some perspective on the past few months …

Understanding my self-reliance and self-sufficiency as it conflicts with God-reliance and God-sufficiency is beginning to free me from a way of thinking that leads away from prayer and into anxiety or even indifference relative to the extent to which I confront or ignore a circumstance or need.

Take Possession and Clean House

“55 But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those of them whom you let remain shall be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall trouble you in the land where you dwell. 56 And I will do to you as I thought to do to them.” (Num 33:55–56)

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,” (Heb 12:1)

In considering these two Texts, I find myself both exhorted and encouraged.  The “inhabitants of the land” are analogous to “every weight, and sin“.  Just as the Israelites were not to be satisfied with possessing the land, we must not be satisfied merely to take possession of this great Salvation afforded us by the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  In humble obedience to the Holy Spirit, we must endure the cleansing and purification of our souls.  Whatever weight we won’t lay aside … Whatever sin we won’t confess and repent of … these will fester and spread like a cancer just as the “inhabitants of the land” perverted and polluted the Israelites from within.  The writer of Hebrews not only gave the examples of all the great “cloud of witnesses“, but he went on … “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb 12:2)  Because He did, we too can endure our cross for the hope, the joy that is set before us … our eternal glorification and dwelling in perfect communion with our Creator and Father, the Almighty God.

As You Are? Yes and No.

In listening to a brief discourse by Ben Witherington, III (ATS) on homosexuality, I found myself greatly appreciating a perspective he expresses rather succinctly in this way: You’re welcome to come as you are. You’re not welcome to stay as you are. I myself came to the cross and into the congregation of the Body of Christ bearing the ugliness and pain of sin and its scars. I still carry in my un-glorified person the carnal nature. But I have and do continue to invite and surrender to the cleansing, purifying work of the Holy Spirit … repenting of, turning away from, every sin that clings to me and so easily distracts (Heb 12:1). Whether the sin – not the temptation, inclination, predisposition, etc. – is pride or greed or envy or rebellion or deceit or (given the context of this discussion) any form of sexual activity that is not strictly within the bounds of heterosexual, monogamous marriage or ultimately whatever else is not strictly of loving God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself (the later flowing inherently from the former), NO sin is acceptable before God or in the Body of Christ. We are NOT welcome to stay as we are. We must first be born again (John 3:6-7). We must be being transformed (Rom 12:2). We must be growing in grace (2 Pet 3:18). We must no longer walk/live as we were (Eph 4:17-19). We must be putting off the old and putting on the new (Eph 4:20-24). We must be continually seeking to be holy as God is holy (1 Pet 1:14-15).