I'll Never "Get It"

     Long week for me.  Circumstances, events and relationships just weren't coming through for me the way that I would have wanted.  Can you relate?  I struggled to believe.  Everyday. Overwhelmed and frustrated as I sought to believe the gospel, but it just didn't seem to be bringing me the peace that it has in the past.  Where was God in all this?  You know, those days when you come upon a hardship, God gives you the grace to find the gospel message in the midst of it and it calms all of your fears and gives you stability?  This just wasn't happening for me.   I found short, but not in depth moments in the Word, my journal.  My day would continue with anxieties mounting.  Life was about ME.  
     This weekend I had more extended time with Jesus and He revealed something to me that I want to share with you.  This does not seem that profound, but for me it was!  The enemy was planting a lie in my head that once I "got" the gospel and had received it that it was there to stay.  I was healed.  It was something to be achieved....I would "arrive".  All I had to do was remember what the gospel meant to me and quote it in my head in a very rote way.  (Chanting a mantra of "I'm a well provided for daughter and my righteousness is in Christ.")  I knew that this was true but no peace was there. You see, life quickly becomes more about me and less about HIM.  Struggle.
     God showed me that the gospel is like water.  I can be very thirsty and go to drink but I will get thirsty again.  Just quoting my position in Christ, although this is beneficial, doesn't take the place of long, quiet, private, personal worship.  He wants to show it to me everyday in different ways through His Word.  Dependence on Him to do this strengthens my faith in ways that are unimaginable.  "Because we can never leave off sinning (unbelief), we can never leave off the gospel."  All for His glory.


Here are some powerful questions that Elyse Fitzpatrick writes in a book called Because He Loves Me.  (highly recommend)

1.  If I were to tell you that this book was a book about God's love for you, would it make you want to yawn?  What does God's love mean to you today?

2.  Are you more focused on your performance for Him or His performance for you?

3.  At the end of the day is there a rest in your soul because of Him or is there a guilt and a determination that tomorrow you're going to "do better"?

4.  Do you still feel the need to prove that you're not "all that bad"?  Do you get angry when people criticize or ignore you?

5.  You know that Jesus is the Door.  Do you see how He is your life?  Could you tell me exactly how He has transformed your daily life?

Quote John 3:16 out loud .  

Now quote it again with the purpose of hearing the gospel message that God has for you today, right now, right where you are.  This is a message for the believer...not just the unbeliever!  Write this passage in your journal using the words "me" and "I" in first person.  Focus on the word "believe".  Define the word "believe" for your every day life.

Opportunity in weakness

In walking with people bogged down by sin, I have noticed a consistent trend: an independence from God. This observation is further enforced in Scripture. Genesis 3:1-24, Romans 1:1-32, John 15:1-27 and countless other texts point toward the realities that exist when man operates outside of God. To sum this behavior up in one word, you could call it “pride,” but another factor at work is weakness. Mankind is overwhelmed by weakness. In the beginning, when God creates Adam and Eve in a perfect, sinless Eden, He creates them with need for His provision (Gen. 1:28; 2:16-17). Before sin enters the world, there is a need within mankind – there is a weakness. Neediness in and of itself is not sinful, but it is where neediness is directed or terminates that creates problems. In Genesis 1:1-31 and 2:1-25, God supplies everything that mankind needs, and there is never any worship tied to creation. God creates and says that it is good, and man responds to Him with praise. There is a beautiful dependence of mankind upon God. Sin enters the world in Genesis 3:1-24, and this dependence upon God – and God alone – becomes a dependence on creation. In Romans 1:1-32, Paul describes this shift as the preferring of creation over the Creator. Pride is most often seen when this dependence or neediness is unacknowledged and hidden. People frame their lives to make themselves look strong and calm when, in reality, they are weak and burdened. The beautiful picture of Adam and Eve resting perfectly in the provision of the Lord is exchanged for a pseudo provision aligned with whatever hides our weaknesses. An incredible opportunity is missed in this vulnerable state. The Psalmist says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1-8). He understands his weak and compromised condition and that provision is found in God alone. If this is the humble response, then how would our pride have us respond in moments of weakness? One response is to address the weakness in our own strength and bolster our vulnerabilities, but this response only increases pride in the heart. A second response is to sit in our weakness as a victim and justify doing so because of how we have been wronged. This response is equally prideful and steeped in self-pity. However, the gospel frees us up, in our weakness and brokenness, to find rest and refuge. In our weakness, He is strong. There is always an opportunity in weakness, and that opportunity is to press in and look to the mountain – Christ – where our help comes from.    ~Lee Lewis


(read the above twice and let it sink in)


Questions for thought-


1.  How does the author define "weakness".


2.  List certain areas where you are feeling weak today.


3.  What are you not believing about God when giving in to this weakness?


4.  Underline the resolver/victim in the last few sentences.


5.  Write out any of the above passages that brought you encouragement.




Tedashii had a concert at Briarwood last week.  This rap song couldn't address making war against our weakness any better.  Listen...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASU6kCbgxfs

my eyes are always scanning

Working Your Way Up

Why do we all seem to want more?

Why is it so hard for us to accept less?

Why do we get haunted by bigger and better?

Why is it so difficult to be satisfied?

Why it is so hard to be content?

Maybe it's a better job, maybe it's a more succulent steak, maybe it's a nicer boss, maybe it's a better spouse, maybe it's a nicer car, maybe it's a more luxurious condo, maybe it's a better vacation than last year, or maybe it is as little as a better cup of coffee than yesterday's, but the spiritual energies of your life can be consumed by working your way up. What do I mean by working your way up? I mean that, in reality, you are living in a state of constant discontent. Yes, you are thankful for the joy of the moment, but you do not have your head down in prayerful thanks. No, your head is up and your eyes are scanning for the next bigger, better, more satisfying thing. When you are discontent, you are always in someway working your way up the ladder of personally satisfying delights. You're not really thankful for or committed to what you have because in your heart you think that there must be something better out there and so you are on the hunt.

What is the solution to the "working your way up the ladder" hunt all about? It is about IDENTITY and WORSHIP. When I begin to humbly accept who I am as a sinner (unbelief), when I honestly face the fact that my deepest problem in life exists inside of me and not outside of me, and when I begin to grasp the reality that God sent his Son to free me from my biggest problem - me - then I will quit working my way up. Why? Because I will be so filled with gratitude that the one thing I desperately needed, God freely gave me in his Son, Christ Jesus. What is this one thing? It is the thing in life that I could not do for myself, yet I cannot live without. By an act of his grace, God has freed me from my bondage to me (unbelief). He has freed me from my addiction to having me at the center of my universe. He has freed me from the ravenous and unsatisfiable appetite of sin, so that I may begin to experience true personal satisfaction where it can only be found - in worship of him. He has broken the power of this addiction over me so that I can be increasingly free where I live everyday.

The key to getting off the ladder and experiencing true contentment is not having more or learning to live with less. The key to contentment is worship. It is only when my heart is satisfied because of what I have been given in Christ and so much more delighted with God's glory than in the possibility of possessing the next glorious physical thing, that I will leave the hunt.     Paul David Tripp

For your journal...

1. Where do you struggle with discontent? (doesn't have to be a material thing)

2. Where do you tend to reach for the next best thing?

3. What are you telling yourself that you need? 

4. Do you daily remind yourself of who you really are?
    State who you are...

5. Do you constantly remember your deepest need?   What is that?

6. Are you increasingly satisfied because you have begun to grasp that you have been given everything you need? I Peter 1:3,4

7. And have you realized that "everything" is in HIM? Nothing in your life is outside of His realm.   Pray in this moment and recommit your heart and mind to Colossians 1:16-23

¹⁶ For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. ¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

²¹ Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. ²² But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — ²³ if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.


~One more thing~ In light of marriage, and how our spouses will never fill the gap, please watch this and ponder.  We all have disabilities/ailments...although different, we are the same at the root and need Jesus much more than we do each other.


http://vimeo.com/38033654

mud pies in a slum

Thanks to a "GFF" (gospel friend forever) for sharing this devo with us this week~

       “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 

This is the first and greatest commandment.”

Matthew 22:37-38    

“Despite our extraordinary calling – to experience God’s love and to love Him in return – we fill our lives with idols. Given the greatest invitation in the universe, we treat it as an obligation that we might be able to squeeze in around our interests.  Could anything be more ludicrous? The infinite, holy, jealous, merciful, mighty Ancient of Days makes a straight path for us into His heart of passion, and our response is so often to say, “We’ll see; I’ve got some other things I’d like to do, too.” The angels must be astonished at the squandering of such an opportunity.  The idols of our hearts grip us tightly. We are afraid to let go of them. We are like children content to make mud pies in a slum because we can’t imagine what is meant by the offer of a vacation at the beach (imagery provided by C.S. Lewis).  We hang on to what we know – our idols – because fellowship with God is too incredible for us to grasp.  Our idols are essentially one-night stands. They provide a moment of empty pleasure, but there is no lasting joy in them. They string us along with the offer of contentment, but contentment never comes. They rob us of something far more valuable – an intimacy of infinite depth with a Lover whose love has no limits.  The passions that draw us away from God can be intense. Jesus does not ask us to rid ourselves of passion, but to turn that passion toward God. When we realize this and break ourselves free from the illusions – or delusions – that make us think we can find fulfillment in anything other than Him, our lives begin to resemble watered, fruitful  oases where there was once desert. Determine to pursue God in love as a response to His loving pursuit of you. Leave everything else behind. 
(Chris Tiegreen)

Journal Time:

1.  Read through the devo again slowly.

2.  List ways you can "experience God’s love and express     your love to Him in return" this week. (Fight)


3.  Define the "fight" step in your own words.


4.  How are you making mud pies right now?

5.  What can wash away the mud? Write phrases and words in your journal as you listen... 

6.  Pray and repent of your unbelief.  Recommit to living out your new-found identity in Christ this week.