Fall on God’s grace

When I talk with a couple looking towards marriage, I always encourage them to pursue premarital counseling.  The reason?  Well, would you purchase a house without a home inspection? Or if it is a new building, would you skip the punch list walk-through?  No, purchasing a house is such an investment, maybe one of the largest of your life, that you would take care before signing on the dotted line.  I would posit that getting married is a far greater decision than building a house.  And all of us have been living separate lives before dating and getting engaged.  I share that all of us have been issued “emotional Samsonite suitcases” we pull throughout our lives: storing all the good things, the bad things and the ways we have learned to deal with the issues of life.  Sharing the good times isn’t hard, but it is much more difficult to open up and talk about how we deal with the negative circumstances of life.  

Think of your own life — how do you deal with frustration, with rejection, with angry or volatile situations, to mention a few.  Our reactions and ways of relating to others come from what has protected us in the past as well as what has enabled us to get the things we desire.  And if we are honest, not all those reactions, feelings, attitudes are positive, good or God honoring.  Here is what James 4:1-5 says: “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”?  

James is pointing to the reality that our old patterns of thinking and behavior (what we are carrying around in those emotional suitcases) are causing disunity.  Even to the point that if we won’t change, then we are creating an adversarial relationship with God.  Not allowing the Holy Spirit to wash out our minds with the Word puts us at odds, at war with God.  Why would any of us who have been truly saved by the Lord want to then be at war with Him over the things He saved us from and their consequences?  

It isn’t always an easy process to learn new patterns of thinking, especially long-held manners of how we look at the world. But as children of God we must!  But how?  Let’s keep reading in James 4:6-17: “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another? Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.”

Fall on God’s grace rather than your strength and wisdom.  Submit — surrender — to God.  Don’t stay and argue with the temptation, but run!  And don’t run blindly, but intentional to God and His Word.  Repent and correct (with Scripture) your thinking, feeling and behavior by relying on the power of the Holy Spirit.  And He will lift you up.  Then the next section of verses is a reminder that He is God and we are not.  We don’t determine right and wrong, sin or godliness; He does.  So thinking, feeling and acting outside the character of God is always sin.  

I have a constant struggle with unreasonable and frustrating people, especially when calling mail order drug companies.  There have been times in the past, when by the time I finished the call, I felt like I had become so angry that I had thrown up on the inside.  That awful taste and burning remained even after the call was over.  I have learned that “a soft answer turns away wrath.”  (Proverbs 15:1)  

It doesn’t make the other person less frustrating or unreasonable, but it deals with me, my answer and my attitude.  I Corinthians 10:13 tells us that God will provide a means of bearing up (dealing with) under a temptation.   I now can hang up from those calls, with the Lord’s help, and not feel like I need to call back and apologize because I was not the representative of Christ I am called to be.  It is worth the battle for the Christian mind so that we are a sweet-smelling aroma to ourselves and to those we encounter.

Pressing On…

Ron Tipton, Senior Pastor