mdemchsak

17
Aug
2021

Practical Issues of Giving

The previous blog on giving laid a foundation, and that foundation involves a right heart.  Now let’s build on the foundation.  Some principles for practical giving.

Give Everything

Sometimes when we talk about giving, people think only about money.  This is a mistake.  Some people are merely one-dimensional givers.  They will write a check or tithe online, then wipe their hands and live the rest of their lives for themselves.  They may consider themselves givers because they gave some money, but Biblical giving involves much more. 

When your heart belongs to God, you give Him everything.  Don’t give just money.  Give your time to God’s kingdom.  Give of your home, your car, and your skills to help the needy, to build the church, and to advance the gospel.  Everything you have should be in God’s hands to use as He pleases. 

Give Sacrificially

When Jesus was at the temple watching everyone put their gifts into the collection box. He claimed that the poor widow’s two coins were a greater gift than the gifts of all the others, “for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” 

God does not measure giving in dollars and cents.  He measures giving by sacrifice.  The greatest givers are not necessarily those who give the most money but those who give up the most in order to give.  The charitable foundations of the rich make the headlines, and people applaud the millions of dollars they give, but the givers behind those foundations still live their plush lifestyles.  In the end, they have given little. 

Your giving should impact your lifestyle.  I’m not saying that we must live in poverty in order to give properly, but I am saying that sacrificial giving is a sacrifice, and when you sacrifice, you go without things you would otherwise have.

The story of the poor widow addresses specifically the giving of money, but the principle Jesus mentions applies to other types of giving as well.  Give sacrificially of your time and skills and resources.  If you do, you will have to sacrifice not just material comforts but activities you might otherwise want to do or personal desires you might otherwise have.  Maybe you cannot attend a concert you would like to attend because you are busy teaching some women the gospel.  Maybe you have to sacrifice your desire to sleep in order to pray or you have to miss a meal in order to help someone.  Giving sacrificially can involve all of these examples.  But whatever it involves, it will change how you live. 

Give Now

I have had many people tell me that they want to give to God’s work but can’t because they are not financially able.  But one day when they have money – then they will give.  They misunderstand giving.  They think the main part of giving is the money. 

People who put off giving until a time when they have enough money rarely give, for when they get more money, they still don’t have enough.  I think again of the poor widow at the temple.  If she had put off giving until a future time, she never would have given at all. 

Giving is not for the future.  It is for now.  People who talk about how much they would give if they had the money are not typically givers.  Givers are people who give regardless of what they have.  And they rarely talk about it.  They just do it.  And they do it now. 

Giving is Good for You

Giving is medicine for the heart.  Jesus talked a lot about money and possessions because they are powerful forces.  They will steal your heart if you are not careful.  The most potent antidote to the love of money is to give it away.  When we give, we let go.  God wants us to hold on tightly to Jesus, not to our stuff.  Giving is, thus, one of the most freeing disciplines a person can practice.  It frees your heart from slavery to this world.  

I remember talking to the dad of a person in our church.  This dad was not a Christian and was angry that his son tithed to the church, and the dad challenged me about it.  He said, “Why do you have to give to God?  God doesn’t need your money.”

I replied, “You’re right.  He doesn’t need my money, but I need to give for the sake of my soul.  I give partly because it is good for me, not because I think God somehow needs my money.”

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28
Jul
2021

Giving

Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.  (II Cor 9:15)

Father, you have given me all I have.  Make me a man who gives to you all I have. 

God gives.  He so loved the world that He gave.  He saves by grace, and grace is a gift.  Eternal life is a gift.  Your own breath is a gift.  Food and home and friends are all gifts.  Forgiveness is a gift.  A new nature is a gift.  The Holy Spirit, peace and joy are gifts.  Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of lights.  God is not merely a giver but a lavish giver.  He gives exceedingly and abundantly above all that we could ask or think. 

God is a lavish giver because He is a lavish lover.  God gives because He loves, and He gives lavishly because He loves lavishly.  Love gives.  The more you love, the more you give.  When a man and woman love each other, they give themselves to each other in marriage for life.  No greater love is there than to give your life for your friend.  God loves us so deeply that He has given His life for us.  He now asks us to give our lives for Him. 

If we do not love God, we will not give our lives for Him, but when we love Him, we give everything for Him.

The Christian life is a life of giving.  Christ calls people to lay down their lives and follow Him.  It’s expensive.  You have to give Him everything.  If you don’t want to give Him everything, don’t follow Him.  If you want to give Him everything but find it hard . . . well . . . me too.  Come join me and let’s walk this path together.  It may be hard, but it’s full of joy and freedom.

Typically when we think of giving, we think of money and possessions, and, of course, giving certainly involves money and possessions, but Biblical giving is so much more.  Biblical giving begins with the heart.  To God writing a check without your heart in it, is a bit shallow.  The heart is the foundation to giving, so let’s lay that foundation.

Here are some principles that are part of the foundation for the type of giving that God wants from us.  No particular order.

Understand where everything comes from.  Do you have a family?  God gave it to you.  Do you have a job?  God gave it to you.  Your bank account, your home, your education, your time, your ability to play the piano, your skill with numbers or words, your compassion?  God gave them all to you.  Is there any good thing you have that God did not give you? 

The Christian must understand deep in the heart that everything he has came from God.  We cannot give what we do not have, and we have because God first gave.  We love because He first loved us, and we give because He first gave to us.  Everything we give originated with God.  A father gives his child spending money.  The child takes some of that money and buys a gift for his father.  The child thus gives to his father what his father had first given to him.  Christian giving is like this. 

The person who best gives sees that everything he has came from God.

Understand that everything we have is by grace.  This principle relates to the one above but focuses on something different.  The first principle states simply that God is the source of every good thing in our lives.  This second principle focuses on merit.  It’s not just that God is the source; it’s that we do not deserve any of the good things He has given.  You have air to breathe and water to drink, but you did nothing to deserve such.  In Christ, you have forgiveness and peace, but you did not deserve them.  You have a thousand blessings at your right hand, and you have done nothing to earn them. 

The Christian who sees his heart knows that he deserves nothing.  And yet God has given us everything.  This is grace.  You have work by God’s grace.  You have a family by God’s grace.  You have a home by God’s grace.  You have a clean heart, a renewed mind and a new nature by God’s grace. 

Sometimes the rich and powerful receive gifts because they are rich and powerful, and people court their favor.  But God does not need your favor.  He gave to you when you were lowly and poor.  You were nothing but He gave you life.  You were naked but He clothed you.  You were hopeless but He gave you hope. 

Christians sometimes think that salvation is the only thing they have received by grace.  This could not be further from the truth.  Everything we have has come by grace.  This fact should affect our giving because it should touch our heart.  We should be grateful for what we have and not demanding that we receive more. 

The Christian who best gives is the Christian who sees that he deserves none of God’s good gifts. 

We need new hearts in order to give.  I suppose you do not technically need a new heart to write a check or to volunteer to lead worship.  Many who write checks have old hearts, and many who lead worship are merely performers.  But Biblical giving goes beyond externals.  If we are to give as God desires, we need new hearts, and these new hearts require God to make them new. 

Ask God to give you His heart.  The heart of Christ wants to give, and the heart of Christ comes only from Christ.  You cannot make yourself give.  You cannot clench your fists and will God’s heart.  You cannot change yourself.  Only God can do this.  So go to Him.  This is where giving is interconnected with everything else we have been discussing about walking with God.  Get your heart into the Scriptures, into prayer, into a Christ-honoring church.  Trust in the Cross and Resurrection, and lean on His Spirit.  Look to Christ for your new life.  When you do, and when He gives you a new heart, you’ll give – from the heart. 

Giving is grace.  This principle is different from the principle about grace above.  That principle says that what you have received is grace.  This one focuses on what you give. 

When Paul encourages the Corinthians to give, he uses as an example the churches in Macedonia.  He says, “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia.”  Paul then describes the giving of those churches and  concludes with “ . . . see that you excel in this act of grace also”  (II Cor 8:1-7). To Paul, the giving that the Macedonian churches practiced was by the grace of God, and the giving that he encouraged the Corinthian churches to practice was also by the grace of God. 

When we give, we give out of the grace of God.  This principle flows naturally out of all the principles above.  The money, time, talents, and resources we have are by grace.  God gave them to us.  The very heart to give is also grace.  God gave it to us. 

All aspects of Biblical giving are grace.  God graciously gives us the resources, the ability, the heart, and the privilege to give.  Thus, when we give, we should be grateful. 

We must give ourselves before we give our things.  Paul says of the Macedonian churches, “they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us” (II Cor 8:5).  One of the biggest mistakes people make when they give is that they give only their things.  This sort of giving usually arises out of either legalistic motives – “I did my duty” – or a desire to feel good about ourselves – “see what a kind person I am!” 

In this type of giving, the self is still at the center.  We may let go of some money, but we haven’t let go of ourselves.  God wants so much more than your stuff.  He wants you.  He wants you to give Him yourself and not just some material goods.  Of course, when you give God yourself, He gets your stuff as well.  Giving God yourself is not a substitute for giving Him your resources.  It is the motivation and power for doing it. 

When it comes to giving, keep first things first.  Giving your resources is not first.  It flows out of a life given to God. 

Healthy giving requires contentment.  Godliness with contentment is great gain.  When we give ourselves to Christ, we have Christ, and if we have Christ, we have all we need.  We are rich.  In fact, we are richer than if we had merely a trillion dollars.  The Christian who sees this is content with what he has.  When we are content with what we have, we are freer to give.

If we are not content in Christ, we are not truly content.  We will always want something more, and when we want more, we tend to hold on to what we have or we give grudgingly.  Scripture says God loves a cheerful giver, and a cheerful giver is content.  Contentment is essential to Biblical giving.

The principles above focus on our hearts.  This is where giving begins. 

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12
Jul
2021

The Christian Life: A Summary So Far

Over the past months, I have been discussing how to live the Christian life.  I want now to stop and summarize what we have seen so far.  This is, thus, a review, a satellite picture of a portion of the Christian life.  When you live the Christian life, what should it look like?  What helps us live the life Christ calls us to live?  So here goes.

  • The Christian life requires a Christian.  This is basic.  To live the Christian life, you must first have the life of Christ in you.  Unconverted people cannot live converted lives.  Christ must change you.  You must be a new creature in order to live a new life.
  • The Christian life requires Christ.  The Christian life is a life of “not I but Christ.”  It is a life of being dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.  The Christian who relies on his own strength will not live the Christian life.  But the Christian who looks to Jesus and leans on Jesus and trusts in Jesus will find in Jesus the power to live for Jesus.  In the Cross and Resurrection, God has done the work to make us righteous.  He has cleansed us from all sin, crucified our sinful nature, and given us new life through the Spirit.  Believe these truths from the heart.  Rest in them and let them lead your life. 
  • The Christian life requires the Spirit.  In Christ, God has come to dwell in you through His Spirit.  It is His Spirit who convicts you of sin, judgment and righteousness.  It is His Spirit who brings holiness.  It is His Spirit who applies the power of Christ in your life.  Let Him do so.
  • The Christian life requires perseverance.  We live in a fallen world, and those who are in Christ still fall, but when we fall, we confess our sin, we trust in the Cross of Christ to make us whole, and we get back up.  We don’t quit.  Ever.
  • The Christian life requires desire.  You cannot die to self unless you have a greater desire for Christ.  The Christian life is not about forsaking our desires but about fulfilling a higher and deeper desire for Christ.  You must have passion for Jesus if you are to live for Him successfully. 
  • The Christian life requires a church.  God made His people to be a body in which each member needs the others.  You need a church, and the church needs you.  People who choose to live outside a Christ-honoring church are not living the Christian life.  In fact, they cannot live it until they choose to participate with the body of Christ.  Christians should grow in their relationship with God, but God designed them to do this within the context of a Biblical community.
  • The Christian life requires the Scriptures.  If you want a healthy soul, feed it healthy ideas.  If you want to know God better, learn what He says.  God’s words are in the Bible.  Read it.  Meditate on it.  Listen to it.  Take it to heart.  Obey it.  If you want to live the Christian life, the Bible is essential.  It points you in the right direction.  It centers your soul on Christ.  Those who best live the Christian life spend significant time daily feeding their souls from the living word of God.
  • The Christian life requires prayer.  If you want to live the Christian life, you need to know God, and if you want to know God, you and He need to talk . . . intimate talk . . .  soul talk.  Not just “grant me these three requests” talk.  You need to pour out your heart to God, and this heart-to-heart communication needs to happen daily.  Indeed, it needs to happen as you live life, so that you talk with God from the heart throughout the day.  The more you pray – real prayers, not just scripts – the closer your relationship with God grows, and as you draw near to God, He changes you, and you will see Him work through you.  A Christian life without real prayer is not a Christian life. 

All of the above represent a summary of the past several months blogs about how to walk with Christ.  I felt it necessary to stop and recap before we move on, for we have so much more to address, and it is good from time to time to stop and bundle things up. If you want more details, go back and read the blogs, but even they are incomplete.  There is so much more to the Christian life than can be written.

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08
Jul
2021

Sharing Your Life

that I may know Him (Phil 3:10)

Lord, I want to know you.  In the end, nothing else matters.  Let me know you.

When I married Leanne, we became one and began a life together.  I married her because I knew I wanted to be with her.  But when I married her, I also began a lifelong process of getting to know her.  I knew her but I didn’t know her.  I knew her because I had spent time with her, had talked with her, and had seen her life.  But when we married, the time with her, the talking with her, and the seeing her life multiplied intensely.  After 27 years of marriage, I now know her much more intimately than I did on our wedding day.  We have shared life together.  We have walked together through unemployment, a miscarriage, deaths of parents, divorces of loved ones, ministry failures and successes, the births of our children, homeschooling, graduations, and more.  We have shared life.  Today I am a richer man because I have gotten to share life with Leanne.

Scripture says that our relationship with God is like a marriage.  Just as Leanne and I have shared life together, so, too, are you and I to share life with God.  He wants us to share life with Him for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.  He wants to walk with us and us with Him through unemployment and promotions, miscarriages and births, cancer and healing, ministry failures and successes.  God wants a marriage with you. 

Now one of the most basic practices of a good marriage is that the husband and wife talk.  They share their pains and joys, their doubts and certainties, their frustrations and pleasures.  As life happens, the communication of all these thoughts and feelings happens.  It’s part of marriage. 

And it’s part of what God wants from you.  God wants you to know Him and to grow in knowing Him.  This growth happens as you share life with Him, and sharing life with Him requires you to talk with Him.  There is no other way.  If you want to know God, you will pray.  If you don’t pray, you will not know God.  Prayer is where your soul touches God.  Prayer is where you pour out your heart.  It’s where you share with God your pains and joys, your doubts and certainties, your frustrations and pleasures, and you share these thoughts and feelings as life happens.

For too many Christians, however, prayer is flat and one-dimensional.  They come to God to ask for stuff – heal my mom’s knees, give me this job, help me on that test.  While such prayers are certainly legitimate, if this sort of praying is all you ever do, you are not sharing life with God. Quite the opposite in fact.  You are keeping your life to yourself and coming to God when you want something.  What if my wife spoke to me only when she wanted something from me?  What kind of marriage would that be?  That would not be sharing life together. 

Our growth in Christ depends on our willingness to share our souls with Him.  If you want to live the Christian life better, then get to know Christ better.  Come to Him and share with Him your heart and let Him share with you His heart.  The people who best live the Christian life are the people who best know God. 

Indeed, this is why Jesus died:  so that you may know Him. 

So get to know Him.

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16
Jun
2021

Food for the Soul

Man does not live by bread alone . . .

Feed me, O God.  Feed me yourself, that I might know you more closely, love you more strongly, walk with you more constantly.  I need to hear and to heed your words – not mine, not those of my friends or family or government or culture.  I need to hear from you.  How my soul thirsts for the living God and for a word from Him! 

A growing boy needs to eat.  When I was a child, I remember my mother saying, “Now eat your dinner.  If you want to grow strong, you’ll have to eat.”  And, of course, she was right.  People who don’t eat, grow thin and weak.  They are more prone to cold and sickness; they move more slowly and are often more irritable.

But when it comes to food, the message, “Eat” is incomplete, for growing boys need not just food but the right food.  That’s why my mother would also say, “No dessert until you eat your vegetables,” for she knew that a healthy growing boy needed to fill his belly with healthy foods and not just any food.  In fact, in America at least, we have all sorts of health problems not because people don’t eat but because they gorge themselves on cakes, chips, sodas, and fast food.  If you eat too much junk, pretty soon your body becomes junk.  You really are what you eat. 

The soul is this way, too.  Just as the body needs healthy food so, too, does the soul.  But food for the soul is not beef or broccoli.  Food for the soul consists in the thoughts you think, the ideas you read, the attitudes you see in movies or TV, the words you hear and speak – in short, the worldview you expose yourself to.  And just as people often eat too many cookies and donuts, so, too, do people often feed their souls on too much junk food.

In the spiritual realm, healthy food is Biblical food, and junk food is everything else.  Some of that junk food is spiritually neutral.  It’s background noise – the cooking channel, a soccer team, your job.  Everyone has such noise in their lives, and, like chocolate, it is not necessarily harmful in and of itself, but a diet consisting mostly of background noise will not move the soul toward God.  Too many people cannot hear God through the noise.  Other junk food is poison – sexual content in movies, celebrities who proudly mock Biblical teaching, peer pressure to think like your culture.  These phenomena actively move the soul away from God.  What you expose your mind and heart to affects how you think and live.

In the physical realm, the solution to too much junk food is simple.  Eat more meat and vegetables and fewer pies and cakes.  The same is true in the spiritual realm.  The soul that feeds on the Bible grows strong, while the soul that neglects the Bible withers away.  The soul with heavy exposure to the surrounding earthly culture and light exposure to God’s culture becomes thin, shallow, and distant from God.  You really are what you eat.

This means that the Bible is essential for a vibrant spiritual life.  The Bible is God’s message for the human race.  It grounds people in ultimate matters and places their lives firmly on a solid rock, so that they can stand even when the waves of culture hit.  Remove that rock, and people just bob in the sea, flowing back and forth wherever the waves take them. 

The Bible points the soul to God.  It shows us how God thinks, what He is like, and what He has done.  It shows us why we are here and where we are going.  It shows us our own hearts and what God wants those hearts to be.  It shows us what a new life looks like and where the power comes from to live that life.  The Bible is the meat and vegetables for a healthy spiritual life.  It is where you go to renew your mind.  It is what the soul must feed on.  Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. 

Most souls, however, do not consume the Bible, and a majority of souls that identify as Christian do not consume the Bible.  I don’t mean that none of them ever reads the Bible at all.  I mean that most people in the church pay such scant attention to the Bible that they might as well not read it.  The lack of Biblical content in the average “Christian” is staggering.  Most people who identify as Christians spend minimal (if any) time each day feeding on the Bible but hours a day on social media, viewing movies, or listening to pop music.  In other words, they feed on junk food.  And their consumption shows.  They have difficulty standing against the culture they feed on, and their walk with God is shallow.   They feed their souls large amounts of donuts and cupcakes every day but rarely eat healthy.  

They don’t know how God thinks because they don’t take the time to find out.  They grow weak, fat and spoiled, and they hurt themselves and the church. 

If you want to walk with God, you have to set time daily to get to know what He has said in Scripture . . . to meditate on it from the heart . . . to yield your soul to its authority.  If you have access to the Bible and choose to ignore it, you cripple your soul. 

But if you devote yourself to it, you have something substantial to build your life on, for it will point you to Christ.  You are what you eat.  Even in the soul.

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30
May
2021

Needing the Church

I mentioned in the previous blog that the church is necessary to your spiritual life. When I talk like that, I occasionally get pushback from people who feel they can walk with Christ apart from His body. 

Here are some reasons people give for separating from the body of Christ.

The church is dysfunctional.

Of course it is.  And so are you.  Some churches are more dysfunctional than others, and some churches you should get out of, but let’s not throw away the church with the dysfunction.  Trying to follow God all by yourself is dysfunctional.  If you, thus, abandon the church because it is dysfunctional, all you are doing is trading one form of dysfunction for another.

We live in a fallen world.  Dysfunction is everywhere, and dysfunctional people in the church give you the opportunity to learn patience, to show grace, to practice hospitality and forgiveness, and to help you see how you look to God.

The church has hurt me

I’m sure it has.  I do not question the pain.  If I could offer an apology on behalf of the church that hurt you, I would gladly do so, but I am aware that an apology coming from me isn’t the same.  I want you to know simply that I sympathize.  I, too, have been hurt by the church.

Likely the pain you feel has come from the dysfunction we just discussed.  I do not question the dysfunction. 

But the church is your family, and families are full of dysfunction, and often they hurt us, but they are still family.  What I want to ask you to do is to look beyond the details of your pain and to Christ.  You should then see that the specifics of your case were not likely a result of people following Christ. 

So follow Christ.  But understand that if you do follow Him, He will point you back to His church.  He always does. It is His Bride.

If the specifics are such that you cannot return to the same church, then find a different one.  But find one that honors Christ and Scripture. 

I don’t need the church in order to worship.

That’s a deceptive sentence.  It’s like saying “I don’t need a family in order to live.”  It is technically correct on one level but completely off base for life. 

You see, technically, I have had worship experiences by myself, and technically God can show special grace to an Iranian Christian imprisoned for his faith.  In neither case, however, is the person choosing to separate from God’s people.  Why then, would someone choose to separate from God’s people and use this reason for doing so?

The fact of the matter is that in normal life you do need the church in order to worship, for corporate worship is commanded.  God desires not just individual praise but corporate praise, and you cannot do that by yourself. 

In addition, this objection assumes that the only purpose of the church is to help you worship.  But the church helps your spiritual life in so many other ways as well.  It helps you know God’s Word, it helps you pray, it provides a need for you, it shows you how to give, it helps you walk with integrity, and more. 

Now you could say that all of these are part of worship, and I will not quarrel with you, but I would say that if they are, then you need the church in order to worship. 

I don’t need the church to walk with God

That is like one of your hands saying, “I don’t need the eyes.”  Or a foot saying, “I don’t need the ears.” 

Do you really think that by yourself you can provide all the wisdom, faith, generosity, teaching, evangelism, leadership, service, and compassion that you need? 

The notion that Christians can intentionally neglect meeting together fits America quite well, but it does not fit the Bible at all. 

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20
May
2021

The Church Command

As iron sharpens iron, so does one man sharpen another (Pr 27:17)

Lord, I praise you for your people.  I thank you for surrounding me with them.  

If you want to be good at something, it helps to see others who are good at it.  Doctors do residencies so they can follow other doctors.  They don’t learn medicine all by themselves.  Instead, good doctors build good doctors.  The Christian life is like this.

A basic principle of the Christian life is that it requires a church.  You cannot live the Christian life all by yourself.  You grow in Christ as you interact with a body of Christians.  Christians need each other as soldiers need each other, as teammates need each other, as family members need each other. 

Other Christians will pray for you, teach you, encourage you, rejoice with you, challenge you when you sin, and help you walk through a difficult problem.  Other Christians understand the difficulties of living the Christian life.  They know how hard it is to stand for Jesus in the midst of your culture.  They can sympathize with your struggles.  They’ve been there.  Other Christians can talk with you on a deep level about the most important thing in your life – Christ.  Non-Christians cannot do this.  They don’t understand.  You need Christians.  You need a church.

Many people, however, talk about being spiritual without the church.  In the West today, such talk is rampant.  People want to follow God their own way.  They live as if Christianity is merely a preference.  You like roses, I like tulips.  You like BMWs, I like Toyotas.  You like yoga, I like Jesus.  They live as if they get to decide what the Christian life is.  They become the arbiter of how to follow God, as if God had nothing to say about the matter. 

But God does have something to say about the matter, and one of the things He said was that His people should not forsake meeting together.  God built the church with the blood of His Son.  He loves the church.  It is the bride of Christ, and the Christian who lives the Christian life loves the church and is committed to her.

The church is necessary for spiritual growth.  One function of God’s people is to build each other up in the faith.  Christians who put themselves in healthy churches become part of a community that will help them walk in Christ.  Anyone who wants to follow Jesus needs a church.  It is one of the tools God uses to sharpen our lives.  You cannot follow Jesus by yourself.

And you can be by yourself in different ways.  Some people are by themselves because they never attend a church.  Others are by themselves in the midst of a church.  They attend weekly, but they don’t know the people.  They are part of the crowd on a Sunday morning, but they are not part of the life of the church.  They listen to a sermon and go home, but they don’t know anyone.  To belong to a church requires relationship and not just shoes in the room.  When people lack relationship with the body of Christ, they fall away.  Their walk with God grows weak, insipid.  They become more like their culture and less like Christ.  But they think they are spiritually fine because, after all, they are attending a church.

Being part of a church flows out of a desire for Christ.  The people with the greatest desire for Christ are in a church . . . by choice.  They surround themselves with the body of Christ . . . by choice.  Because they have great passion for Jesus, they have great passion for the church.  The two passions go together; in fact, you might say that the desire for a church is a visible expression of the desire for Christ.  The church is the body of Christ.  If you want Jesus, you want to be around those who have Him.  This is rather basic. 

God designed His people to be together.  In heaven all His people will be together in unison.  Church on earth prepares us for that day.  Would you forsake God’s people in heaven?  Then why would you do it on earth?  The attempt to have Christian spirituality without Christian community is absurd. 

Now I suppose I need to say a word about what a church is.  This will be brief.  If you want more, go here, here, and here.  A church is not necessarily an official organization with a Christian name that meets in a building.  You can attend many such meetings and not be with God’s people. 

A church is a community of Jesus followers who fit the following criteria:  they believe Scripture to be the Word of God and, consequently, adhere to the gospel of Christ; they meet regularly to worship Jesus, proclaim the Scriptures, and build one another up in the faith; they partake of communion and practice baptism of new believers; they share their faith, they desire to live a holy life and care for those who need help; they have elder leadership.  These are broad parameters, and in the real world a church can look as different as a megachurch of 10,000 or a house church of four.

Whatever it looks like, this community is necessary for your spiritual growth.  Life in Christ involves life in the church.  When you intentionally put yourself outside the church, you harm your soul. 

And many people today do just that. They harm their souls but have no idea the harm they cause. Let’s just get this straight. The church is not merely a nice addition. It is necessary for life — spiritual life.

Posted by mdemchsak, 0 comments
18
Apr
2021

Desires

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Lk 9:23)

. . . I die daily.  (I Cor 15:31)

Father, grant me the heart to give up my very being to you.

Living the Christian life is the hardest thing you will ever do. 

It is also the most fulfilling thing you will ever do. 

But isn’t that normal? Aren’t the hardest things in life usually the most rewarding?

Sometimes people act as if God made us just so He could forgive our sins, and then we could go live our lives as we wished. I know. It’s silly thinking. When you read Scripture you find that God made us for Himself, that we went and lived our own way, but that He responded with the Cross in order to remake us. He wants us conformed into the image of Christ. He then wants us, in Christ, to present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to Him.  To make such a sacrifice involves dying to self, and the soul does not want to do it.  And yet, in Christ, the soul wants it.  This is the irony of following Jesus:  we want the very thing we don’t want.  We have desires on different levels.

Jesus did too.  At Gethsemane Jesus did not want to go to the Cross.  He prays, “Remove this cup.  Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.”  Jesus explicitly states that it was not His will to go to the Cross.  And yet it was.  He went for the joy that was set before Him.  He went because He delighted to do the will of the Father.  He had desires on different levels. 

The Christian who will live a godly life must want to do so.  And he must want this so strongly that he is willing to die to see it happen.

We don’t talk this way in Christian circles today, but I would propose to you that the reason is that we don’t like the message of dying.  We emphasize the comfortable truths of the gospel to the exclusion of the hard ones.  But the gospel, whatever else it entails, entails a call to die.  And the people who actually do this dying are the people who desire Jesus so passionately that they are willing to give up all for Him.

Dying to self is not so much a matter of exerting one’s will to mortification.  Nor is it a matter of following a set of rules that emphasize self-denial – fastings, prayers, vigils, etc.  People who die to self do so because they desire the kingdom of God more than they desire their personal desires.  Thus, dying to self is not a negative endeavor.  It is not primarily a subtraction of our desires but a fulfillment of a greater desire. 

I’m not talking craziness.  We understand this concept quite well, for people act this way all the time.  When I was a boy, I had a morning paper route and would get up at 5 am to deliver newspapers.  It was not my desire to get up at 5 am, but it was my desire to earn an income, so I died to my desire for sleep so that I could fulfill my desire to earn an income.  In other words, my dying to one desire was not a subtraction or a personal negation.  It was a necessary part of fulfilling a greater desire.  This is why athletes lift weights, students write term papers, and parents drive their kids to soccer.  All of these ordinary activities are pictures of dying to a small desire in order to fulfill a bigger one. 

Biblical dying to self simply puts an exponent on the same principle.  Jesus willingly went to the Cross even though He didn’t want to.  Paul willingly suffered imprisonments, beatings, hunger, thirst, slander, and more, even though he didn’t want to.  Daniel’s three friends were willing to forfeit their lives.  Jeremiah faced constant abuse and opposition but kept preaching.  Peter went to jail for preaching, and when freed he went right back to preaching.  In all these cases and more, someone died to his life and comfort because he desired something higher.  These people had a passion for God and His kingdom.  They denied their desires because they were fulfilling their ultimate desire. 

Without this ultimate desire for Christ and His kingdom, there is no living the Christian life.  You cannot give up the career you always wanted just to die to it.  But you can die to that career if you have a desire higher than that career.  You cannot deny yourself money and comfort just to do it.  But you can deny yourself those things if you desire something higher.

Now I need to say a word here about the nature of self-denial. Sometimes people give up the career they always wanted because they somehow think God wants us to have only the things we don’t want.  They think it is more spiritual to deny themselves what they want.  But this idea is not always true.  Does a good father want his daughter to always deny her desires, or does he want her to actually enjoy some of those desires?  In fact, he may do everything he can to help her pursue her desire to go to law school.  And yet that same father may tell that same daughter to set aside short-term desires to pursue long term benefit.  This is how God is.  Earth is short term.  The kingdom of God is long term.  Biblical dying to self must occur when God lets us know that we need to set aside a particular desire for His sake.  We must not, however, deny self just to do so.  If our driving passion is for God, then the driving principle in our lives must be for what God wants.  Sometimes He wants you to enjoy the desires of your heart.  Sometimes He will call you to lay them down, but when you lay them down, you do so because, ultimately, He is your great desire, and, thus, you are then pursuing the desire of your heart. 

Our desires are part of the foundation for living the Christian life. They are central to the Christian life itself. So look at your big desires. Are they focused on earth? If so, you handicap your ability to live for God. He wants to be your great desire.

Making God our main desire is something that we cannot do ourselves. This change comes from God’s Spirit in us. Perhaps the most basic work of the Spirit in a person deals with transforming the heart.  The Spirit changes our desires, and it is these new desires that He then uses to spur us on to a new life. 

A passion for Christ is foundational for living the Christian life.  You can’t live a life that calls you to die to your desires unless you have a greater desire for Christ.  You won’t let go of earth unless you want heaven.  And you need God to help you want heaven. And the odd thing is that when you get heaven, you enjoy earth all the more. You find your life by losing it.

Posted by mdemchsak in Discipleship, 0 comments
12
Mar
2021

The Christian Life and the Christian Reality

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?  You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.  So glorify God in your body.  (I Cor 6:19-20)

Praise you, Father, for you have made me a dwelling place for your Spirit, unworthy though I am.

Christianity calls you and me to live a life that seems impossible, and, indeed, would be impossible if it was not for the fact that Christ makes us new and indwells us through His Spirit.  He makes us new through the Cross and Resurrection, by canceling our sins, making us clean, crucifying our old sinful nature, and raising us to new life as new creatures.  We are born again – to use Jesus’ term.

In this sense, we are now saints – that is, people who have been sanctified.  This means that, in one sense, we are holy.  Not “we shall be holy,” but “we are holy.”

Yet in another sense, we must put into practice our holiness, and this putting holiness into practice is a lifelong process and struggle.  We do not always live up to who we are.  Sometimes Christians still sin, even though they are already sanctified.  This idea that we are holy in one sense but working on our holiness in another can be hard to grasp, so let me try to illustrate.

Scripture says that husbands and wives are one flesh.  But sometimes they live as two, even though in reality they are one, and the fact is that they are still one even when they do not live that way.  Their life does not change the reality of what God has done.  Or try this picture.  Sometimes citizens do not live as citizens ought, but the fact is that they are still citizens even when they do not behave as such.  There is an intrinsic reality, and there is a life, and the life does not always align with the reality.  This is how it often is with the Christian faith.  In reality, those in Christ are saints, dead to sin, alive to God, born again, new creatures, sanctified, holy.  This is the reality.  Christians, however, often fail to live out this reality perfectly. 

But the genuine Christian takes seriously the business of living in holiness.  The genuine Christian pursues a life that matches his or her reality in Christ.  The genuine Christian life changes and grows in the direction of the reality.  Christians fall as they grow, just a toddler falls when learning to walk, but they walk the path that pursues a life that reflects who they are.  They are learning to be who they are, just as a new graduate is learning to be a graduate.  Before the Christian became a Christian, he took his imperatives from the world around him.  But now that he is in Christ, he takes his imperatives from Christ.  His imperatives must reflect the indicative of who he is.  The life must match the reality.  And the reality is foundational to the life. 

To live the Christian life requires first the reality.  You must be a new creature to live a new life.  But even then, this living of the new life is difficult.  We live in a fallen world, and while we may be dead to sin, we still listen to it. 

But God does not leave the Christian to live this life all on his own.  In addition to making us new, He gives us His Spirit.  Now the transforming work of the Cross is essential for the presence of the Spirit, for the Spirit is holy, and holiness will not dwell with impurity.  The mere fact that the Holy Spirit indwells the Christian shows that, in some sense, the Christian is holy.  The work of the Cross in making us new paves the way for the presence of the Spirit.  The work of the Cross builds out of us a home for the Spirit.  The Cross makes us into a temple for God’s Spirit (I Cor 6:19-20).  No Cross and no Resurrection equals no indwelling Spirit.

But in Christ, we do have the Spirit.  This is the next essential piece to the reality of the Christian life.  Not only are we new creatures in Christ, but we have God Himself, through the Spirit, living inside us.  God has changed who we are, and God has come to dwell in us.

Stop.

Meditate on that.

God has changed who you are.

And God now dwells inside you.

Hallelujah! That is good news

Posted by mdemchsak, 0 comments
02
Feb
2021

Not I But Christ

I am crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20)

Praise you, Father, for the grace of the Cross.  I wrestle to live out the life of the Cross.  It is hard.  But it is real and powerful.  As you have given me the grace of the Cross and Resurrection, give me also the grace to live out the Cross and the Resurrection in my life, resting in my Savior.

Living the Christian life does not begin with you.  Christianity is not about you.  It’s not about how good you are or how strong you can be or what wonderful deeds you could do if only you applied yourself or reached deep inside and seized your full potential.  That’s Disney. 

Christianity, however, claims quite the opposite.  It says that on your own you are sinful and utterly incapable of living any kind of righteous life.  It says not only that you sin but that you sin naturally.  It’s not just that you violate God’s will; it’s that you can’t help but do so.  Sin runs deep in your heart, and you can’t get it out. 

The reason we do not live the Christian life is that we cannot live it.  It is too high, and we are too corrupt.  And yet people still think that normal human nature can be godly.  They think this way because they want to, and they justify such thinking by lowering God’s standard of holiness and by flattering our corruption.  I have seen hundreds of people who protest that they are not so bad, but I have never seen one of them actually live for God. 

They say they are good and then explode in anger at their kids or reveal impatience or cut corners at work.  They say they are good and then change Scripture so they can feel good about themselves.  They don’t believe that their lust is adultery or that their greed is idolatry. They say they are good but then live for their own comfort or for a political end or for anything but God.  No.  They won’t live for God, and part of the reason why is that they think they are already good enough.  They don’t need God, and when you don’t need God, you don’t go to Him or live for Him.

People who think they can live the Christian life on their own just by being good are not honest with themselves.  They have sold themselves a pipedream, and unfortunately, if they persist, they will take their goodness with them all the way to hell.  Heaven is for sinners who know they need God.  Hell is for good people who rely on their goodness (Lk 18:9-14). 

Christianity is simply not about you and what you can do.  Christianity begins with Christ and what He has done.  This different perspective is so fundamental to the Christian life that if you get it wrong, you get everything else wrong as well.  Therefore, since the Christian life begins with Christ, let’s focus on Him and on what He has done to bring about in us the life He wants.

But before we see what Jesus has done, we must first see the real problem we face.  Sin is the basic problem of the human race, the cancer in our souls.  Thus, for Jesus to be of any real help to us, He must deal with our sin.  He has done so through two works on one Cross.

The first work of the Cross addresses our sins – our thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds.  The second work of the Cross addresses our sin – the nature inside us that produces those thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds.  Think of it this way.  A criminal produces a crime.  In dealing with the criminal, one must address issues of justice as well as the damage the criminal’s deeds have caused.  But if you stop there, you still have the same criminal who produced those deeds. You have dealt with his crimes, but you haven’t changed him.  Now the Cross and subsequent Resurrection are God’s response to our sins and to our sin nature.  They deal with our deeds, but they also deal with us.

Concerning our sins, the Cross serves justice and repairs the damage that our sins do to our relationship with God.  The blood of Christ appeases the wrath of God (Rm 3:25), administers the justice of God (Rm 3:26), declares us righteous (Rm 5:9), cleanses us from all sin (I Jn 1:7), redeems us from the pit (Eph 1:7), brings forgiveness (Eph 1:7), and makes peace with God (Col 1:20).

Because of the precious blood of Christ, the penalty for our sins is paid.  We are criminals for whom justice has already been served.  When God looks at us, He does not see our sins.  He sees the blood.  Thus, we are clean in God’s sight.  We are righteous in His eyes.  We have peace with Him.  We are forgiven.  When by faith we are in Christ, we cannot outsin the reach of the Cross.  The Cross covers all our sins – past, present, and future.

The Christian must hold onto this fact.  We still sin, and if we are to live the Christian life, we must begin by holding onto the fact that in Christ our sins do not defeat us.  God still loves us.  God is still for us.  God forgives us.  Our relationship with Him is still intact.  In Christ, none of that will ever change.  The forgiveness of God is not an excuse to continue in sin.  It is a comfort that our sins can never separate us from God.  Never.  The Cross makes us right with God.  Forever.  By dealing with our sins, the Cross gives us spiritual security, and this security is foundational to living a godly life.  Resting in the blood of Christ and the forgiveness it procures is foundational to living a Christian life because we cannot live the Christian life without Christ, and when we sin, Satan uses our sins to drive a wedge between us and Christ.  He wants our sins to separate us from Christ because he knows that if we pull away from Christ, we will fail to live the Christian life.  We are then no threat to Satan.  We have to hold onto the Cross because it is the Cross that pulls us back to Christ when we sin. 

But the Cross does more than wipe away our sins.  It also crucifies us.  Here is how Galatians puts it:

                        I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet it is not I but

Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20)

                        May I never boast in anything except the Cross of Christ.  Through

                        it the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. (Gal 6:14)

Here is how Romans puts it:

                        What shall we say then?  Are we to continue in sin that grace may

                        abound?  By no means!  How can we who died to sin still live in it?

                        Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ

                        Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with

                        him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised

                        from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in

                        newness of life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like

                        his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 

                        We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the

                        body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer

                        be enslaved to sin.  For he who has died has been set free from sin. 

                        Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live

                        with him.  We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will

                        never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  For the

                        death he died he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives he lives

                        to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive

                        to God in Christ Jesus.  (Rm 6:1-11)

Here is how Colossians puts it:

                        If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world . . . (Col 2:20)

                        If then you have been raised with Christ, 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.  For you have

                        died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  (Col 3:1-3)

In Christ it is not just that our sins have been wiped away.  In Christ, you and I are dead.  We have been crucified with Christ.  We have been buried with Christ.  We have died and our lives are now hidden with Christ.  Our old self has died.  And all of this happened at the Cross. 

In addition, we have been raised to a new life in Christ.  We have been united with Him in His Resurrection.  We are in Christ.  When He died, we died; when He rose, we rose. 

What all these Scriptures are saying is not just that we have forgiveness but that we have a new nature, a new life in Christ.  In these texts, God is dealing not so much with our sins but with us.  In Christ the old you is dead; the new you has come (II Cor 5:17).  In Christ, you are no longer the same person.  The Christian, thus, is capable of living in righteousness, not on his own but in Christ.  I don’t mean that the Christian always does live in righteousness but that the Christian has in Christ the resources to do so.  The unbeliever does not have these resources.   

The Christian response to this second work of the Cross is to believe it and to set our minds on the things appropriate for the new nature.  Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rm 6:11).  And the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Gal 2:20).  Seek the things that are above . . . Set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things (Col 3:1-2).  If I could describe as simply as possible how to live the Christian life in steps, it would begin this way:

Step 1: The Cross and Resurrection.  In Christ, you are clean and forgiven and nothing can come between you and God.  In Christ, your old, sin nature is dead, and you are a new person.  This step is what God has done in Christ.  It has already been accomplished, it is grace, and without it you can do nothing to live the Christian life.

Step 2:  Believe Step 1. Rest in Step 1.  Live in Step 1. If you do not live in Step 1, there is no living the Christian life.  Period.  The Christian must know in the depths of the heart who Christ is, what Christ has done, and who He has made us to be in Him.  This knowledge is not intellectual knowledge.  It involves heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

Step 3:  Walk in Christ.  You cannot walk in Christ unless you are first in Christ (Step 1) and know that you are in Him (Step 2).  Walking in Christ then entails all sorts of specifics: hardship and suffering, speaking the truth, sexual purity, loving your difficult boss, freedom from greed, humility, joy, service, and more. 

The biggest problem Christians have in living the Christian life is that they focus on the details of Step 3 instead of the foundations of Steps 1 and 2.  They know that pornography is sin, so they grit their teeth and work on avoiding it.  They then fail because they try to fight pornography in their own strength quite apart from the Cross and Resurrection.  They are new creatures in Christ, but they rely on their old self to live a new life.  They know what is good and simply try to do it. 

But the Christian life does not begin with you.  It begins with Christ who lives in you, who loves you and gave Himself for you (Gal 2:20).  The Christian life is a life of “not I but Christ.”  This is a much higher life to live than the life that says merely “go be good.”  That life is cheap and shallow.  That life wants to be good but can’t.  That life cheapens godliness by lowering God’s heavenly standard to what we can do.  That life eliminates Christ and the Cross.  It rips all of the power and depth from life and then pretends to have substance.  It has none.   

The Christian life, however, requires Christ.  It also requires a new nature.  But because of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian has Christ and a new nature.  This is who we are.  When we forget who we are, we have greater problems living how we ought.  And quite often we forget because it is easy to take our eyes off of Christ. 

The Christian life is hard.  It involves struggle and work and hardship and persecution.  But the Christian life is simple.  It centers on Christ.

Posted by mdemchsak, 0 comments