I Wonder Where _____ Has Been?

Just a quick post...

I find myself throughout the week always wondering where "so and so" is? I remember when I first received Christ and then baptized and joined my first church. As I think back, I don't believe anybody ever told me that I was to be faithful to a church.

I figured that if God saved me and there was this group of people called the church, where we gathered, worshiped, prayed, served, and learned more about the Lord and one another that it was where I was supposed to be. My wife and I never had the conversation whether or not we were going to go to church, we just went. It was the same after we had our children and I don't ever remember any of our children asking, "Are we going to church...?"

We even planned our lives around what was going on at the church. If there was a special service or activity, we always adjusted our schedule and unless providential hindered we were there. Yes, there were times that we really didn't particularly want to go. But we went anyway as we understood that someone had planned, prayed, and spent a lot of time putting together a special gathering or ministry opportunity.

It really comes down to the Great Commandment, doesn't it? If we love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we would love what God loves. Surely, he loves his church. He demonstrated that when he died for his bride - The Chruch. If we love God, we would love others and even prefer them over ourselves. God gave of himself so it's only the right thing to do the same and die to self and live and prefer others.

So where are you? I know this, your pastor and church family would be thrilled to see you sometime this week.

Give Me More of God

I have been unsatisfied as of late of my desire and attitude toward God. These "feelings" are hard to put into words but I think most of us have found ourselves there at certain times in our walk with Christ. For me, it's been an overwhelming sense of despair and that feeling I often got while serving in the military when I put my 120 pound rucksack on my back. Then realizing that I would be jumping out of a plane with it and humping it in the jungle for the next several days - Ugg!

After my study and messages on Romans yesterday, talking with my wife last night and then my devotions this morning, I realize that there has been some discipline(s) that I have not exercised as fervantly in the last few months as I have in the past. Specifically they are fasting and prayer. Yes I have been praying but my sense of urgency and desperateness has not been what it demands. In light of where I'm at in my walk and the sense of being overwhelmed by a myriad of circumstances my greatest need is more of God.

In reading Romans in these last weeks, chapter 13:11-14 have come out of the inspired pages of Scripture as a desperate prayer as we plow through this most influential letter to the Christians at Rome. The time is now to "wake up out of sleep!" The urgency of my sense of despair as well as our circumstances in the snowballing affects of secularization in America; not to mention what is going on in the world around us requires a series wake up call to action.

That action must start on our knees before the Creator God who is the only one who can give the grace to increase our faith to cause change (beginning with my heart) through the Gospel. The answer and solution is always by grace through faith in him.

The fasting part deals directly with our desires. My desires have been far to concerned with the things of this world and even my own despair and sense of being overwhelmed. And so my desire needs to change to being overwhelmed by the presence and glory of God. Piper puts it like this, "The fight for faith is a fight to feast on all that God is for us in Christ. What we hunger for most we worship" (A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer. pg 10). 

The above quote is also the book I'll be reading to assist in fasting biblically and in the right attitude. So through prayer may his grace let my will respond to my Lord, knowing that power to obey is not in me, but that his free love alone enable me to serve him. So here then is my empty heart, fill it with your grace!

Philippians 3:8-11 "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith - that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

Having a Bad Day Spiritually?

We are embarking on a season of revival. It appears that our church is "having a revival" in October but actually there are many other churches that are also "planning and having revivals." It’s what we do here in the southern Bible belt. You might wonder why I have "revival" in quotations marks. And the reason is, we can't really plan nor have a revival but what must happen is for God to graciously give us a revival. J. I. Packer notes that “revival is an extraordinary work of God the Holy Spirit reinvigorating and propagating Christian piety in a community. He goes on to state that ‘Revival is an extraordinary work, because it marks the abrupt reversal of an established trend and state of things among those who profess to be God’s people” (Packer 1990, 318). What this means is we are not really having or planning but praying that God will look at the church that has grown cold and indifferent to God and the things of God and would wake up by the pouring out of the Holy Ghost in an awakening.  

In addition, Packer talked about our piety “being reinvigorated and propagated.” So how’s your piety. Piety means holiness or godliness as will be seen in our devotion to and reverence for God. Maybe this is something we can do in planning and having a revival. Hebrews says, “How much more will the blood of Christ…purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb 9:14). The problem is the church (you and me) have been having some “bad” days spiritually speaking. Jerry Bridges talks about what we can do when this happens:

What should we do when we’ve had a “bad” day spiritually, when it seems we’ve done everything wrong and are feeling very guilty? We must go back to the cross and see Jesus there bearing our sins in His own body (1 Peter 2:24). We must by faith appropriate for ourselves the blood of Christ that will cleanse our guilty consciences (Hebrews 9:14).

In a bad-day scenario, we might pray something like this: “Father, I’ve sinned against You. I’ve been negligent in the spiritual disciplines that I know are necessary and helpful for my spiritual growth. I’ve been irritable and impatient toward those around me. I’ve allowed resentful and unkind thoughts to lodge in my mind. I repent of these sins and claim Your forgiveness.

“You have said You justify the wicked (Romans 4:5). Father, in view of my sins today, I acknowledge that in myself I am wicked. In fact, my problem is not merely the sins I’ve committed, some of which I may not even be aware of, but the fact that my heart is sinful. These sins I’m now so painfully conscious of are merely expressions of my sinful heart.

“But despite my sinfulness, You have said, ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 8:1). Given my acute awareness of my sin, that’s an incredible statement. How can I be without condemnation when I’ve so flagrantly and willfully sinned against You today?

“O Father, I know it’s because Jesus bore those sins in His body on the cross. He suffered the punishment I deserve, so I might experience the blessings He deserved. So I come to You, dear Father, in Jesus’ name (Bridges 2008, 12).

I wonder if we would take his advice and begin praying that prayer? Who knows what might happen to all those “bad” spiritual days we’ve been having.

Bibliography

Bridges, Jerry. Holiness Day by Day: Transformational Thoughts for Your Spiritual Journdy. Edited by Thomas Womack. Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2008.

Packer, J. I. A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990.