energy

Mind Over Muscle

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1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. – Colossians 3:1-3 ESV

13 But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.…

19 …they think only about this life here on earth. 20 But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. 21 He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.– Philippians 3:13-14, 19-21 NLT

There is a very real sense in which the doctrine of sanctification has come to be understood as a byproduct of human effort. When we read verses that tell us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12 ESV), we can’t help but assume that Paul expects us to put some sweat equity into this thing called the Christian life. We’ve been indoctrinated with the sage wisdom contained in such homespun phrases as “there’s no free ride” and “you don’t get something for nothing.”

We have no problem believing that our salvation was a gift from God, but for some reason, we have taken full responsibility for our sanctification. After all, didn’t God command us to be holy, just like He is holy? That sounds like a call that’s going to requires some serious effort to be achieved.

Paul asks us, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?” Then he follows it up with the admonition, “So run that you may obtain it” (1 Corinthians 9:24 ESV). The New Living Translation puts it this way: “So run to win!”

There are literally dozens of passages that call us to live out our faith, and all of them require effort on our part. The Christian life is not intended to be a spectator sport. It requires our full participation and our whole-hearted commitment. Which is why Paul told the Philippians, “you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner worthy of the Good News about Christ” (Philippians 1:27 NLT). He shared the very same message with the Ephesian believers, pleading with them “to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God” (Ephesians 4:1 NLT).

But the problem lies in how we perceive and apply these kinds of verses. Is Paul suggesting that our quest for living a worthy life is all up to us? Is he teaching that Christlikeness is achieved through self-effort and discipline? 

Do you see the subtle danger underlying this mindset? If we’re not careful, we can turn sanctification into a works-based doctrine, where we become responsible for achieving a higher state of righteousness and earning favor with God. But here’s the problem: If we’re the ones who put in all the work, we end up believing that we deserve all the credit. We wrongly assume that we became more holy through hard work. It was all the time we put into reading the Scriptures, going to Bible studies, attending worship, praying, giving, serving…doing.

But Paul won’t allow us to go there.

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. – Ephesians 2:8-10 NLT

Notice that Paul stresses the God-ordained nature of our salvation, but also of our sanctification. He says we were created anew so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago. God not only came up with the plan, but He provided the power to pull it off. We are His masterpiece. Not our own.

This does not mean we are puppets on a string, helplessly dependent upon the whims of God, the divine puppet master. We are not mindless robots, programmed by God to do His bidding, with no effort required on our part. We are new creations, individuals who have been created anew in Christ Jesus so that we can do what we were incapable of doing before: Serve God faithfully and obediently. Because of the Holy Spirit’s presence within us, we have a capacity we didn’t have before. We have access to a power that was formerly unavailable to us. Which is why Paul was able to say, “I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13 NLT).

So, what is our role in all of this? If we’re not puppets on a string, but we’re also not the masters of our own fate and the determiners of our own holiness, what part do we play? How hard are we to work at this thing called our sanctification?

The answer to these questions lies in the balance we maintain between muscle and mind or, to put it another way, effort and thought. You might say that the motivation behind the use of our motor skills is the key to understanding our role in our sanctification. We have to constantly ask the why behind what we do. If the goal behind all our effort and expenditure of energy increased righteousness in this life? Is all our running done in order to reach the prize of holiness here on earth? Or, as one author has put it, to achieve “your best life now”?

Paul presents us with a vital piece of advice, of which many of us are either ignorant or simply choose to ignore.

…seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth – Colossians 3:1 ESV

There is a real sense in which we run the race to win the prize in this life. We live with the mistaken impression that all of God’s blessings are supposed to come in the here-and-now, not the hereafter. For some reason we have been trained to expect pain-free, joy-filled lives this side of heaven. We want happy marriages, successful careers, obedient children, and glorified bodies now, not later. We want to live forever and do everything we can to prolong our lives here, while forgetting that our citizenship is in heaven. Which is why our mindset has so much influence over how we expend our energy.

Paul said he strained forward to reach what lies ahead. He pressed on “to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 3:14 NLT). He was focused on the return of Christ and the resurrection of his own earthly body. Paul knew that the key to his future glorification or his ultimate arrival at sinless perfection was based on the resurrection of his body. That was the goal he ran towards. His mind was set on the finish line. And because he constantly had the end of the race in mind, it determined how he ran every step. He ran to win, but he didn’t expect to receive the prize in this life.

All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step… – 1 Corinthians 9:25-26 NLT

Paul was purposeful. He was diligent. He said, “I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should” (1 Corinthians 9:27 NLT). But what was the motivation behind all his discipline and training? The finish line. And what was that finish line? The future resurrection of his body.

…we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control. – Philippians 3:20-21 NLT

That’s the goal. It is God planned from before the foundations of the world. What we experience here is temporary and fleeting. It is not meant to last. Which is why we are to focus all our efforts and energies on what is to come. God has not promised us our best life now, but He has assured us of eternal life to come. Which is why the apostle John lovingly warns us:

Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. – 1 John 2:15-17 NLT

Eternal life. That’s the goal. That’s the objective. And that never-ending life will include sinless perfection made possible by glorified bodies. That is why Paul encourages us to seek the things that are above and to set our minds on the things above. In other words, we have to get our heads right, so that our hearts are right. And when we do, we’ll end up putting all the muscle we can into running the race in this life, because our minds are set on the prize of eternal life.

English Standard Version (ESV) The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Permanent Text Edition® (2016). Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson

 

 

 

Proverbs 6e

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Entomological Life Lessons.

“Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise!” – Proverbs 6:6 NLT

Nature is full of lessons if we will just stop long enough to look and learn. It seems that God has wired into His creation some valuable and highly practical illustrations from which we can glean insights for living. In this verse, the lazy person or sluggard, is told to wake up long enough to examine the work ethic of the ant. They’re small, apparently leaderless and lacking anyone to make them work, yet they labor hard all summer gathering food for the winter. These tiny, insignificant creatures instinctively know how to diligently sustain not only themselves, but their entire colony, through hard work. Don’t don’t sleep in or shirk their responsibilities. Every one of them does their fair share of the work to help make the colony successful. But the lazy individual thinks only about himself, and prefers sleep over work. They just can’t seem to get out of bed in the morning. Elsewhere in the Proverbs they are described to be like a door on hinges, they just keep rolling right back into bed every time they attempt to get up.

It would seem to me that if God has wired the ant with a basic instinct for hard work and diligence, the same thing would be true of man. Man was created to work. Man was created to be creative. But what has gone wrong? In short, the fall. Sin entered the picture and muddied the water. Because of the sin of Adam and Eve, work became drudgery. What used to be enjoyable became laborious and required sweat and effort. And because work became difficult, man began to look for shortcuts and workarounds. He began searching for a better way, an easier way. Because God had wired man to work and create, Satan began to tempt him with alternatives and distract him with easier options. Sleeping in seems so much more appealing than getting up and going to work. A few more hours of rest beats work hands down. But when we choose the Enemy’s options, we find ourselves in rebellion against God. Just as Eve listened to the serpent and ate the forbidden fruit, in direct violation of God’s command, every time we give in to the temptations of Satan and shirk our God-given responsibility to work, we are sinning against Him.

Laziness is sin. When we fail to work, we are refusing to obey God and do what He has created us to do. But wait, you say, “I get up early every morning and put in a full day at work. I never sleep in and I work long, hard hours.” But you may still be lazy. Because when all is said and done, the work we are called to by God is to do His will. Ants are created to work hard for the colony. They are communal creatures whose soul purpose in life is to minister and contribute to the good of the whole. You don’t see ants starting side businesses or taking a well-deserved two-week vacation to Barbados. From the minute they are born to the second they die, they are laboring, not for themselves, but for the community. And all they do, they do in conjunction with others. They labor together, not individually. There is a sense of shared responsibility and corporate cooperation. Too often, our hard work is self-centered and for our benefit only. We live in a society that has lost its corporate and communal sensibility. We have become Lone Rangers, doing what we do with diligence and determination, but with little sense of our responsibility to the body.

As believers, we are called to labor for the cause of Christ within the context of the body of Christ. But many of us have become so distracted with other cares and concerns. We work hard, but we have lost sight of our mission. We spend countless hours earning a paycheck and accomplishing work that benefits primarily just ourselves. But when it comes to the work for which God created us and for which Christ redeemed us, we can become lazy, disinterested and distracted by other concerns and cares. God has work for us to do, but we are too busy doing what we want to do. We have become lazy about accomplishing the will and the work of God. And we make excuses, justifying our actions and attempting to make ourselves feel good about all we are accomplishing – for ourselves. “Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise!”

Father, it is sometimes so easy to be lazy about the things You would have me do. I can put off Your work and replace it with my own. I can delay doing Your will in order to accomplish my own. I can also become so self-centered that I lose sight of the Body of Christ and my responsibilities to it. Help me learn a lesson from the ant and diligently do the work You have created me for and called me to do. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

Proverbs 26b

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A Pandemic of Spiritual Laziness.

“As a door swings back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person turns over in bed.” – Proverbs 26:14 NLT

“I’m too tired.”

“I just don’t have enough time.”

“I had to get up early to go to work.”

“The baby was up all night.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Excuses. We all make them. And as Christians, we tend to make a lot of them when it comes to have our “quiet time” or daily devotionals. We inherently know we’re supposed to read our Bible and spend time in prayer, but we just keep putting it off. In those rare moments when we do set aside a few minutes for reading the Scriptures, we discover it’s tough going. We don’t know where to begin and aren’t sure what we’ve read when we’re done. And if we attempt to pray, we find our minds wandering all over the place and spend more time thinking about what we have to do that day than actually talking to God. The whole experience is less than enjoyable, so it makes it even harder to conjure up the will power to attempt it the next day. That’s when the excuses come in. And we can get very clever with them. But the excuses are simply a cover-up for our own spiritual lethargy and laziness. We don’t want to spend time with God, so we come up with all kinds of reasons to justify our inaction. And we justify our laziness with busyness.

The Book of Proverbs has a lot to say about laziness, and while it doesn’t necessarily deal with it from the spiritual stand point, it most certainly applies. I am certain there are those of us who are lazy when it comes to work, chores, paying the bills, cleaning the house, maintaining our cars, doing our homework, and a myriad of other day-to-day responsibilities, far more of us struggle with spiritual laziness. Think about what Solomon records in this chapter.

“The lazy person claims, ‘There’s a lion on the road! Yes, I’m sure there’s a lion out there!'” (Proverbs 26:13 NLT).

This is a far-fetched, desperate kind of excuse that justifies inaction due to inherent danger. It seems ridiculous and hard to believe. But to the one making the excuse, it is all he or she needs to keep them from doing what they need to do. They conjure up all kinds of reasons for not meeting their obligations. We do the same thing with our spiritual lives. We can come up with all kinds of pathetic, unrealistic excuses for not spending time with God. And after a while, we can begin to convince ourselves they’re true.

“Lazy people take food in their hand but don’t even lift it to their mouth” (Proverbs 26:15 NLT).

This is really pathetic. This pictures a person so lazy they don’t even have the energy to feed themselves. But think about that image when it comes to our spiritual well-being. We have access to the Word of God, all kinds of spiritual tools and resources at our disposal, Bible studies galore, and yet we can’t muster up enough energy to feed ourselves spiritually. So we starve to death spiritually surrounded by everything we need to grow and mature.

“Lazy people consider themselves smarter than seven wise counselors” (Proverbs 26:16 NLT).

When someone is spiritually lazy, you can’t get them to listen to reason. They have bought into their own excuses and will refuse to listen to any counsel that suggests they’re wrong. You can tell them about the importance of spending time with God. You can give them helpful tips on how to study God’s Word more effectively. But they won’t listen. Because the reality is that they don’t want to study God’s Word. They find it difficult to do, so they rationalize away any responsibility on their part. They’re lazy and unteachable.

“As a door swing back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person turns over in bed” (Proverbs 26:14 NLT).

We hit the snooze alarm. We grant ourselves a few more minutes of precious, well-deserved sleep. We roll over in bed and squander any time we might have spent in God’s Word. We’ll get up early to go on vacation, hit the gym, go for a run, head into the office, or a hundred other activities we WANT to do. But we can make up all kinds of excuses to avoid spending time with God. And our laziness results in spiritual lethargy and anemia. We find ourselves low on spiritual energy and our minds devoid of spiritual understanding. We operate on fumes and go through our days lacking the spiritual vitality to deal with the struggles of life. Back in chapter 24, Solomon warns us of the danger of spiritual apathy and laziness. It does have consequences.

“A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest – then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber” (Proverbs 24:33 NLT).

We need to wake up, get up, and get into God’s Word. We need to stop making excuses and start making time for God. Spiritual laziness is killing us. It’s leaving us spiritual impoverished and easy pickings for the enemy. We are too weak to defend ourselves against the assault of the enemy and too spiritually malnourished to survive the daily onslaught of the spiritual battle in which we find ourselves.

Father, wake us up. Help us get rid of all our excuses and get into Your Word on a daily basis. Forgive us of our spiritual laziness. Replace it with a zeal for You and a desire to spend time in Your Word so that we might learn Your ways and be equipped to fight Your battle as members of Your spiritual army. Amen.

Ken Miller

Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org