Field Guide to Pride Part 3 HUMILITY, PRIDE’S PHOTO NEGATIVE

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble"
James 4:6 ESV

For the past two blogs I've been talking about pride. In essence,  pride wants to be the center of attention: for good or for bad. Pride’s fixation with self can only be countered with one thing:
humility’s forgetfulness of self. Humility is the photo-negative of pride.

We will begin killing pride when we experience more and more of pride’s photo-negative: humility. If pride puts us in a position of opposition to God, then humility delights in taking a posture of dependence upon God. This posture of dependence puts us in a position to receive grace from God.

The apostle Peter expounds upon these points in illuminating ways in 1 Peter 5:5-7 (read also James 4:6), "Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you."

First Peter says,“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5). This the promise of humility. God is personally and providentially- supportive of the humble. And the grace He extends to the humble is indescribably rich. Nothing could be better than to have an infinitely powerful and wise God treat us graciously. Grace is a wonderful word. It means we are recipients of the favor of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. When we are humble, we are in a place to receive His grace which He lavishes upon us. Isaiah 57:15 "For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Peters wording here again speaks of continual action. God has always and will forever continue to give grace to those who humble themselves before the Lord.

Next, he defines humility more spatially. Humility pitches its tent in a certain place: “under the mighty hand of God” (1 Pet. 5:6). The word “humble,” as it’s used in verse six, is not only a reference to an attitude, but to a position as well. God gives His grace to those who recognize their lowly position in the presence of a holy and righteous God by honestly assessing ourselves in light of God's holi­ness and our sinfulness. That is the twin reality that all genuine humility is rooted in: Gods holiness and our sinfulness.

Fenelon explained, "A peasant shut up in his village only partially knows his wretchedness, but let him see rich palaces, a superb court, and he will realize all the poverty of his village. He cannot endure its hovels after a sight of so much magnificence. It is thus that we see our ugliness and worthlessness in the beauty and infinite grandeur of God.” In the same way, it's easy for a man or woman to be proud until they catch a glimpse of God's holiness. John Piper says, “Humility can only survive in the presence of God. When God goes, humility goes. In fact, you might say that humility follows God like a shadow.”

John Calvin wrote, “It is evident that man never attains to a true self knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look at himself.” Without an honest awareness of the reality of God’s holiness and our sinfulness, all self-evaluation will be skewed and we'll fail to either understand or practice true humility: We'll miss out on experiencing the promise and the pleasures of grace that God offers to the humble. That is why I want to direct you to God's help for evalu­ating your life honestly, to understand whether you're growing in the humility that draws His gaze and attracts more of His grace.

Finally, Peter then answers the most obvious question: how can someone be humble? Answer: we humble ourselves by “casting all [our] anxieties on him” (1 Pet. 5:7). If pride stubbornly insists on carrying our own cares, then humility is quick to cast our cares on God. Humility even knows what to do when we don’t know what to do: keep looking to him!

When faced with impossible odds, king Jehoshaphat knows enough to look at the King Eternal and say,“we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chron. 20:12).

In the quest for humility, we must be sure to avoid pride’s counterfeit version of humility: self-deprecation. What’s the discernable difference? Humility is not obsessed with tearing ourselves down. C. S. Lewis stated the distinction memorably: “Humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less.” In other words, humility is fundamentally a form of self-forgetfulness as opposed to pride’s self-fixation. And humility’s self-forgetfulness has a certain flavor: joy. It’s not dour or sour. The joy of self-forgetfulness comes when a superior satisfaction in God overpowers our self-preoccupation.

Humility does not join pride in treating others with contempt. We are too busy looking up at God’s glory to look down on others or feel smug about ourselves. And unlike pride, humility does not have to be the center of attention. Humility is not self-promoting; it enjoys pointing out evidences of grace in others. It can celebrate their accomplishments.

What are you building with your life? A marriage? A family? A business? A church? A career? A ministry? A friendship? In all your ven­tures, are you aware of your need for God's grace to give your efforts lasting value? So many human ventures have failed because humility was lacking. Ultimately, there can be no effective expansion of your life’s mission and ministry, no growth and maturity, no fulfillment of the specific purpose that God has called you to, apart from the cultivation of humility in your heart and the weakening of pride in your life. But I don’t want you rooting out pride because of its perils and pitfalls. Our pursuit should be driven by the amazing promise Peter and James gives that humility holds out to us: God gives grace to the humble!

Do you long for God's providen­tial help and blessing? Then let's allow the promise of humility to shape our life and choices, so that your life will begin to be colored in every area by grace. God clearly states that He is drawn to the humble. He's also clear that He opposes the proud. These two, humility and pride, cannot coexist. Where one is fostered, the other is defeated. Which will you pursue? If you feel convicted of pride in any form, of failing to humble yourself or failing to glorify God, take the time right now to flee to the cross and receive the forgiveness for this sin of pride that God hates. Humble yourself before Him and confess it specifically to the one whom you have offended. And receive the grace of His forgiveness. Tell Him that you want to declare war upon pride in your life- that you want to declare war on this active, daily tendency towards self-sufficiency, this desire to live independently of Him when in truth we are dependent upon him for every breadth. Gladly announce make a declaration of dependency. Make this confession humbly and daily for the rest of your life. Hold on to the promise God gives to those who are humble before Him: GOD GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE!

Pastor Bill

A Field Guide to Pride Part 2:3 Surprising Forms of Pride

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble"
James 4:6 ESV


it comes to diagnosing our hearts, those of us who have the disease of pride have a challenging time identifying our sickness. Pride infects our eyesight, causing us to view ourselves through a lens that colors and distorts reality. Pride will paint even our ugliness in sin as beautiful and commendable.
We can’t conclude that we don’t struggle with pride because we don’t see pride in our hearts. The comfortable moments when I pat myself on the back for how well I am doing are the moments that should alarm me the most. The moments when I am holding a pity party are equally as dangerous.

What we need is a field guide for pride. So, let us survey pride’s various forms to provides a clear line of sight so that we can place pride in our crosshairs and shoot to kill.

can appear in forms that look like polar opposites summed up in 2 categories.

The Pride of Building up
The Pride of Tearing down

Here are six interrelated forms:

Building Up:
Self-Exaltation,
Self-Promotion,
and Self-Justification

Tearing Down:
Self-Degradation,
Self-Demotion,
and Self-Condemnation

Last week we looked at the most common views of pride which are tied with building up self. But today I want to discuss the subtle forms of pride which involve tearing down.

The common denominator for all six species of pride is self-preoccupation. Pride wants to be the center of attention: for good or for bad.

The surprising yet equally dangerous forms of Pride.
Self-Degradation
Self-Demotion
and Self-Condemnation

pride can shift into the shape of self-degradation and self-demotion when we beat ourselves up for our failures. We are still obsessed with ourselves. In the first form, we are obsessed with our successes; in the second, we are obsessed with our failures.
for our failures. We are still obsessed with ourselves. In the first form, we are obsessed with our successes; in the second, we are obsessed with our failures

Self-degradation, self-demotion, and self-condemnation all come when the shoe is on the other less fortunate foot. They are the opposite of the forms of Pride where we build up the self. They emerge as we stew over our losses and others’ successes. Rather than raising a toast to successes, these three forms of pride throw a lavish pity party.

1.Self-Degradation
First, where self-exaltation elevates and builds up the self, self-degradation is a form of demolition which tears down the self.

2.Self-Demotion
Second, self-demotion throws a public and pathetic party to highlight the fact that we have performed worse than others, we have it worse than others, or we have less than others. Self-demotion plans the funeral for our ego. Why would we want others to see these things? Ironically, self-demotion can be a sneaky form of self-promotion because we’re actually fishing for the affirmation and reassurance we believe we deserve.

3.Self-Condemnation
Third, self-condemnation passes judgment on us when we fall short of our own standards. Sometimes we carry out the painful judgment on ourselves. We can mentally replay poor performances in order to beat ourselves up repeatedly over our failures. Self-condemnation does not feel vindicated in the sight of others, but feels shame for falling short.

Pride is wholly consumed with self. Pride may shout out to every person it sees, “Look at me! I am amazing!” It also might shout, “Look at me, I am horrible. I am ugly, I am no good. I am dumber than anybody I know!” Pride is so inwardly focused that even when it hates self with utmost vehemence, it cannot remove its burning eyes from self! It continues to utterly abhor self, even to the point of suicide. This is not humility. This is pride; pride in its most pitiable, sorry form.

Pride seeks everyone else’s sympathy and pity, and is angry when it does not get it. If someone does need encouragement in their trial, Pride would only defend its position as having the worst trial there is, leaving the other crushed and without hope. It relies wholly on other people to pity it, and perhaps build it up for a while to keep it from total self-destruction. This form of pride is subtle, and builds slowly. It leaves you helpless and entirely unhelpful to the rest of humanity. It may be the most subtle, most deadly form of pride.

So how do we fight pride? Don’t be suckered into thinking that to battle the first kind of pride you must use the second.

The common denominator for all six species of pride is self-preoccupation. Pride wants to be the center of attention: for good or for bad. Pride’s fixation with self can only be countered with humility’s forgetfulness of self. Humility is the photo-negative of pride.

To be continued...

A Field Guide to Pride Part 1

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble"
James 4:6 ESV

Pride is a cosmic crime. As finite creatures, we cannot fully grasp God’s infinite revulsion against pride’s rebellion. God hates pride.
When James says “God opposes the proud”, the verb here is the Greek antitassetai, which literally means 'to arrange against'. It is a military term which could be translated `to set in array as in a battle', and the picture it conjures up is vivid and terrifying. Whereas the humble, godly man has the hosts of God encamped around him, the arrogant, godless man has the God of hosts arrayed against him! James is saying nothing less than that.

But is his language too strong? Is he overstating the case? Not in the least. From God's perspective, pride seems to be the most serious sin. There is nothing God hates more than this. God righteously hates all sin, of course, but biblical evidence abounds for the conclusion that there's no sin more offensive to Him than pride.

His Word reveals that there are seven things "that the Lord hates and that are an abomination to Him” It is the proud man’s haughty eyes that head up the list (Proverbs 6:16-17). Another time God speaks out, "I hate pride and arrogance" (Proverbs 8:13). And consider the divine perspective on pride revealed in Proverbs l6:5, "Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished." Stronger language for sin simply cannot be found in Scripture

What makes pride so singularly repulsive to God is the way that pride “contends for supremacy” with God himself. Pride sets itself in opposition to God. The only fitting response is for God to oppose the proud ( James 4:6; 1 Pet. 5:5). That is probably why pride is not simply another sin among many, but a sin in a category of its own. Other sins lead the sinner further away from God, but pride is particularly heinous in that it attempts to elevate the sinner above God. The heinousness of pride means that it really does deserve to die.

As seriously dangerous as pride is, it’s equally hard to spot, much less kill. Jonathan Jonathan Edwards said pride is “the most hidden, secret, and deceitful of all sins.

So, when it comes to diagnosing our hearts, those of us who have the disease of pride have a challenging time identifying our sickness. Pride infects our eyesight, causing us to view ourselves through a lens that colors and distorts reality. Pride will paint even our ugliness in sin as beautiful and commendable.
We can’t conclude that we don’t struggle with pride because we don’t see pride in our hearts. The comfortable moments when I pat myself on the back for how well I am doing are the moments that should alarm me the most. The moments when I am holding a pity party are equally as dangerous.

What we need is a field guide for pride. So, let us survey pride’s various forms to provides a clear line of sight so that we can place pride in our crosshairs and shoot to kill.

On a general level we could sum up what pride looks like in three ways:

1.The self-preoccupied person. This is the person who thinks continually about himself. He might be a self-effacing person, and so look in a way humble. But inside his cocoon all he is consumed with is thoughts about himself. He may not even like himself.But he is still the center of his attention. His self-hate has no power to produce humility, it just makes his pride pathetic and miserable.That is a subtle and deadly form of pride.

2. The self-infatuated person. This person really does feel quite good about himself. He is not only occupied with himself, but likes being the center of his own attention and thinks others would probably like it as well. He may or may not be outgoing,but he finds himself entertaining or intelligent or handsome or shrewd and enjoys preening himself, even if nobody is impressed.

3. The self-exalting person. This person goes beyond self-preoccupation and self-infatuation to active efforts to display his qualities. He does care if others see and admire. He wants praise.

But I'd like to go even deeper in identifying pride because fighting pride is like fighting a shape-shifter. It can appear in forms that look like polar opposites summed up in 2 categories.

The Pride of Building up
The Pride of Tearing down

Here are six interrelated forms:

Building Up:
Self-Exaltation,
Self-Promotion,
and Self-Justification

Tearing Down:
Self-Degradation,
Self-Demotion,
and Self-Condemnation

The first three responses usually show up when we succeed and others fail. The latter three are more common when others succeed and we fail.

First, pride puts on the smug face of self-exaltation when success comes its way. Self-exaltation takes credit for the good things in our lives. Second, self-promotion is an extension of self-exaltation because it puts those good things forward so that others will give us credit for them. Third, self-justification is more specific in that it focuses on taking credit for morally good works as a way of being right before God or in the sight of others. Taking credit for being in the right makes it more likely that we will blame others for being in the wrong. The Pharisees displayed all of these species of pride. For instance, they paraded their self-righteousness before people to get praise from others (Matt. 6:1–2). Jesus said everyone who exalts himself (like a Pharisee) will be humbled (Matt. 23:12). These three forms of pride all propose a toast to self, celebrating and showing off our successes. And they often raise their glasses with an acute awareness of the failures of others. The Pharisees not only “trusted in themselves that they were righteous,” but they also “treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9)

...Yo be continued. Next week we will look at 3 surprising forms of pride.

HOW LONG,OH LORD?

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance." 2 Peter 3:9

The apostle Peter tells us that “the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness” (2 Peter 3:9).

I must confess I am a frequent member of the "some" group. In my humble opinion, God moves as slow as molasses at times in my life. As a matter fact, at times he seems to move even beyond slow, he has stopped dead in his tracks!  Sometimes, I wish he would pick up the pace and I advise Him about this on a regular basis.

At some point, each of us joins the “some” group. We reach places where it’s painfully clear that our sense of time and feelings of urgency must be very different than God’s. And it is. We prefer to measure time in minutes, rather than months.

But Peter tells us that God has a very different way that he measures time. He measures time by millennia,
"But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. " (2 Peter 3:8).

Our loving and caring God compassionately understands and knows that he sometimes appears slow to us, which is one merciful reason he has given us the Bible. This book, which God took a thousand years to assemble, shows us that God is not slow, but patient in working out his redemptive purposes in the best ways (2 Peter 3:9). And it shows that he is compassionate toward us when we wait for him for what seems like a long time.

Abraham and Sarah were not only the parents of all of God’s faith-children (Romans 4:16); their lives are perhaps the most famous picture of God’s redemptive purposes in what seems like his painfully slow pace.

Abram (as he was first called) was already 75 years old when God promised to make him a great nation that would bless all the families of the earth and to give his offspring the promised land of the Canaanites (Genesis 12:1–3).

However, there was a problem: Abram had no offspring. His wife, Sarai (as she was first called), was barren (Genesis 11:30).

Years passed. Still no child. So Abram prudently planned to make his servant Eliezer to be his heir. But God said, “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir” (Genesis 15:4). Then he took Abram out and showed him the night sky and told him that his offspring would be so numerous it would be like counting stars.

But years later, it was still just Abram and Sarai in the tent.
Sarai became desperate and gave up on waiting. She decided that her maidservant, Hagar, could be a surrogate child-bearer for her. This sounded humanly reasonable to 86-year-old Abram, but he did not consult God and the solution backfired, big time.

Thirteen more years went by before God finally told the 99-year-old Abram that 89-year-old Sarai would bear a son, and he changed their names to Abraham (father of a multitude) and Sarah (princess). A year later Isaac is born.

It was 25 years of waiting, while any earthly reason to hope for a child went from highly unlikely to impossible. Their only hope was God’s promise, which was precisely God’s purpose in the long, confusing wait.

Paul describes this in Romans,
"No unbelief made [Abraham] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised." (Romans 4:20–21)
God determined that all of his true children would be born again through faith to a living hope (1 Peter 1:3) and then live by faith (the faith of Abraham, Galatians 3:7) in his promises alone (Romans 1:17). So God took patient pains to cultivate faith in Abraham and Sarah, and he does the same for us.

One of the most profoundly comforting things about Scripture is how it reveals God’s compassion for us impatient waiters. He knows that he can appear slow to us. He knows that at times we are going to feel like he’s forgotten us and is hiding his face from us. He knows that as he patiently works out his purposes, we will experience circumstances so difficult and confusing that we cry out in bewildered pain.

And so he not only gives us stories like Abraham and Sarah to help us see that we are not alone; he also gives us songs like Psalm 13 to sing.

 "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? (Psalm 13:1)

One of the many reasons I love the Psalms and spend so much time in them is because they are so full of raw poetry, more raw and blunt than many of us are, even when confiding our pain to a trusted friend.

Think about this, Psalm 13 was a congregational song! The people of Israel would sing them and cry out in lament together.

"HOW LONG?"

Could you even imagine today in our typical churches with light, happy, upbeat, positive sing-alongs if suddenly the entire church lamented together and cried out "how long oh Lord?"? But that's exactly what the Jewish community did over and over again as they would sing out and pray the Psalms of lament

And from this, we are to hear from God that he knows our waiting for him can be hard. He knows it can feel to us like he is is taking too long. He gives us permission to ask him, “How long is this going to last?” He reminds us that when we feel like he’s forgotten us, it is an experience common to all his children, common enough to warrant congregational singing about it.

And as we pray or sing such psalms, they remind us that God, in fact, has not forgotten us, that what we feel isn’t always real, and that God’s promises are truer than our feelings.

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

Waiting is learning to adapt to God’s chosen pace, as well as submitting to his chosen place for us. Because, that bewildering, confusing, painful place where we feel like we’re stuck is redemptive even more re than we know. There is more at stake than we can see and more going on than meets our eyes.

But here are two gracious promises God gives to us when we are waiting long:

From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him. (Isaiah 64:4)

He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:29–31)

Like Abraham and Sarah, God is working for you as you wait for him, and he will bring renewal to your weary heart.

So “be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD” (Psalm 31:24). He is able to do what he has promised.

Watching and waiting,
Pastor Bill

HOW I AWAKE MYSELF TO GOD

I am very thankful for alarms. My iPhone is equipped with a fantastic alarm and always keeps me from staying in my slumber when I need to get up. There have been days that without that alarm I would've missed my sunrise weddings or even slept so long in my fatigue that I would've missed my day. Alarms are necessary to rouse us out of our sleep state and get up out of bed. Are you awake or asleep to God? To put it another way, are you cold or hot to God? Are you dead or alive to God? Every day of our lives we are engage in a battle to be awake or asleep to him, to be cold or hot to Him, and to be aware, alive, or dead to Him. The battle rages daily for the world and the things of this world to lull and keep us in a sleepy state, a cold state, and a dull state where God is not trusted, cherished, treasured, loved, and exalted in our hearts, minds, affections, and lives .

Lately I've been asleep, cold, and dull,and it has shown. It shows in my thought life, my attitudes, my emotions, and behaviors. The way I know I'm asleep is this; I will spend way too much time thinking about myself, my problems, my circumstances, my regrets, my fears, my anxieties, my future. and when I do I will I find  myself in a very low place. The fruit of those thoughts was depression, discouragement , despair, doubt, unbelief, loneliness, emptiness, and feelings of hopelessness. I found myself overwhelmed and overcome with darkness as I look all around me outside and inside. Most of all, I find out a serious deficit in my thoughts and heart towards God because I am so asleep. No wonder, for when all of our thoughts are centered upon the world around us and ourselves it will make it difficult for our hearts to burn with passion for God.

I need something  to wake me and to renew my heart from my spiritual dullness and sleepiness. How do I wake myself up and stay awake and alive to God. How do I turn s cold heart into a burning heart? This is what I do. This is my strategy to keep me awake and alive to Him.

It is very simple. I look to great biblical truths to fuel the fire to awaken me to remain a God-centered soul. One of the most powerful  means I use is Colossians 1:15-20.

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things were created through him and for him.
17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.
19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

The Apostle Paul has just prayed for the Colossians that they would “be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:9–10).

In verse 14, he begins a litany of amazing truths about Jesus Christ that are probably the most concentrated description of the glories of Jesus in the entire Bible. I will mention all fifteen of them.

In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (v. 14).
He is the image of the invisible God (v. 15a).
He is the firstborn of all creation—that is, the specially honored, first and only Son over all creation (v. 15b).
By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities (v. 16a). All things were created through him (v. 16b).
All things were created for him (v. 16c).
He is before all things (v. 17a).
In him all things hold together (v. 17b).
He is the head of the body, the church (v. 18a).
He is the beginning (v. 18b).
He is the firstborn from the dead (v. 18c).
In everything he is preeminent (v. 18d).
In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (v. 19).
He reconciles all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven (v. 20a).
He makes peace by the blood of his cross (v. 20b).

This is worth memorizing. This is where you want to visit over and over again to awaken you to the excellencies and supremacy of Christ over all things. If your heart ever wavers and grows cold, come here. Memorize this litany of glories, and prayerfully ask God to give you affections that correspond to the measure of this supreme greatness, infinite in beauty, immeasurable, incalculable in its worth. If any person or any power or any wisdom or any love awakens any admiration or any amazement or any joy, let it be the greatest person and the greatest power and the greatest wisdom and the greatest love that exists—Jesus Christ.

Pastor Bill

GOD NEVER COMMANDS YOU TO DO SOMETHING THAT HE CANNOT DO! The Humbling Impossibility and the Liberating Possibility of Obedience

 What if I told you that you can become tenderhearted when once you were callous and insensitive. What if I told you that you can stop being dominated by bitterness and anger. What if I told you that it is possible to become a loving person no matter what your background has been.

This statement could be most liberating and encouraging for the hopeless or this could be a really depressing for the self reliant. It may be depressing because you could say that you have tried but it did not work.  God is requiring you to do something that you cannot do .You tried to muster up all the willpower you could find and all the energy you could exert and you have failed. You desire to be these ways but cannot seem to change. The ongoing sin in you stands in the way of your ability to be the way you want to be and do what you want to do.

Fundamentally most of us know that it's because of our sin nature. But others of us believe it's because of our personality, temperament, upbringing, genetics, disposition, environment, and all sorts of determining factors that mitigate our ability to truly live the kind of life that God would have us to live. Our This radically affects our perspective on God and his commandments. Some think that the only virtues God can require of me are the ones that I am good enough to perform. Many people will look at the Commandments of God and because they cannot live up to it will say things like, "nobody's perfect". "God knows I can't do this", "I'm doing the best I can", or deep inside you feel deep guilt and shame at your failure to live the Christian life.

But it can also be most liberating and encouraging as well. This is why, because God never requires us to do something that HE cannot do !!!!!

The Bible assumes that God is the decisive factor in making us what we should be. Only God can make us want what we ought to want and do what we ought to do. With wonderful bluntness the Bible says, “Put away malice and be tenderhearted” (Ephesians 4:31–32). It does not say, “If you can…” Or: “If your parents were tenderhearted to you…” Or: “If you weren’t terribly wronged…” It says, “Be tenderhearted.”

This is wonderfully freeing. It frees us from the terrible fatalism that says change is impossible for me. It frees me from mechanistic views that make my background my destiny.

Imagine if you were in prison and Jesus walked into your cell and said, “Leave this place tonight,” You might be stunned, but if you trusted his goodness and power, you would feel a rush of hope that freedom is possible and you'd walk out the door.

If it is night and the storm is raging and the waves are breaking high over the pier, and the Lord comes to me and says, “Set sail tomorrow morning,” there is a burst of hope in the dark. He is God. He knows what he is doing. His commands are not throw-away words.

His commands always come with freeing, life-changing truth to believe. For example,
And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

1. God adopted us as his children. We have a new Father and a new family. This breaks the fatalistic forces of our “family-of-origin.” “Do not call anyone on earth your father; for one is your Father, He who is in heaven” (Matthew 23:9)
2. God loves us as his children. We are “loved children.” The command to imitate the love of God does not hang in the air, it comes with power: “Be imitators of God as loved children.” “Love!” is the command and being loved is the power.
3. God has forgiven us in Christ. Be tenderhearted and forgiving just as God in Christ forgave you. What God did is power to change. The command to be tenderhearted has more to do with what God did for you than what your mother did to you. This kind of command means you can change.
4. Christ loved you and gave himself up for you. “Walk in love just as Christ loved you.” The command comes with life-changing truth. “Christ loved you.” At the moment when there is a chance to love and some voice says, “You are not a loving person,” you can say, “Christ’s love for me makes me a new kind of person. His command to love is just as surely possible for me as his promise of love is true for me.”

IIt is not foolishness, it is the gospel, to tell a sinner to do what Christ alone can enable him to do! This is the central mystery of living the Christian life. Christ has died for our sins and risen from the dead. Because of his blood and righteousness we are forgiven and counted righteous by God in Christ (2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9; Rom. 5:19). Therefore, Christ has become the Yes to all God’s promises (2 Cor. 1:20). Everything promised by the prophets for the new covenant has been purchased for us infallibly by Christ. These new-covenant promises include, “The LORD your God will circumcise your heart . . . so that you will love the LORD your God with all your heart” (Deut. 30:6); and, “I will put my law within them . . . on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33); and, “I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezek.11:19); and, “I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Ezek. 36:27). All of these new-covenant promises have been secured for us by Christ who said at the Last Supper, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). The blood of Christ obtained for us all the promises of the new covenant. But look again at these promises. What distinguishes them from the old covenant is that they are promises for enablement. They are promises that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We need a new heart to delight in God. We need the Spirit of God whose fruit is joy in God. We need to have the law written on our heart, not just written on stone, so that when it says, “Love the Lord with all your heart,” the Word itself produces the reality within us.
* What Christ bought for us when he died was not the freedom from having to obey but the enabling power to obey.
* What he bought was not the nullification of our wills as though we didn’t have to obey, but the empowering of our wills because we want to obey.
* What he bought was not the canceling of the commandments but the fulfillment of the commandments.

In other words, we need the gift of love in God to want it and to live it. Left to ourselves, we will not want it and we will not produce it. That’s what Christ bought for us when he died and shed the blood of the new covenant. He bought for us the gift of love in God.

That is half the mystery of the Christian life—the most crucial half. The other half is that we are commanded to do what we cannot; andwe must do it or perish. Our inability does not remove our guilt—it deepens it. We are so bad that we cannot love God. We cannot delight in God above all things. We cannot treasure Christ above money. Our entrenched badness does not make it wrong for God to command us to be good. We ought to delight in God above all things. Therefore it is right for God to command us to delight in God above all things. And if we ever do delight in God, it will be because we have obeyed this command. That is the mystery: We must obey the command to rejoice in the Lord, and we cannot, because of our willful and culpable corruption. Therefore obedience, when it happens, is a gift.

The heretic Pelagius in the fourth century rejected this truth and was shocked and angered when he saw the way St. Augustine prayed in his Confessions. Augustine prayed, “Give me the grace [O Lord] to do as you command, and command me to do what you will! . . . O holy God . . . when your commands are obeyed, it is from you that we receive the power to obey them."

That is a biblical prayer. It corresponds to the mysteries of the Christian life. God gives his commands. Yet, only God can change our hearts so that we delight in them and desire to do them and are able to obey them. In short, we are thrown back on God utterly. The Christian life is all of grace.

Be encourage your reader,
God Will Never Command Us To Do Something That He Can't Do, in you and through you.
"From him and through him and to him are all things.To him be glory forever."
(Romans 11:36)

Praying with you (and St. Augustine), “Lord command what you will and grant what you command!”
Pastor Bill

THE LONGINGS OF OUR SOUL

Many days a voice inside my mind cries out, "there just has to be more than this". Do any of you hear that same voice inside? As far back as my childhood I have always felt the sense of inconsolable longing. I would look up into the heavens and its vastness and feel there is something so far beyond wrhat I see and I would long. I would be out in nature and look at the mountains and think that there's something so much bigger than me and I would long. I would look out over the ocean and watch the sun set over the vast horizon and I would long. I would sit inside an Anglican Church and hear the songs, observe the liturgy being participated in, and the taking of communion and I would feel, even though I did not understand what was going on, a sense of longing.

Have you unfulfilled longings that are unsatisfied? Deep inside I think we all feel there is something more, something bigger, better, and grander than what meets the eye.We all long for many things: beauty, happiness, joy, love, good health, harmonious relationships, meaningful lives, safety, security, peace, and prosperity. Sadly, most of us have found that we cannot even find fulfillment in these in a fallen world and when we do, we find both that we can lose them in an instant or we find that they in themselves do not satisfy us.

This is because deep inside we know that there is something more. We join all of creation with this insatiable longing for something more.The apostle Paul says that all of creation is groaning for this "something more",

"For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."
Romans 8;22-25 ESV

We know what we see and experience is neither ultimate nor is it final. We know there is more. CS Lewis, who has helped me to understand the nature of my desires and longings like no one else wrote,
"It was when I was happiest that I longed most… The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing… To find a place where all the beauty came from."

God is so gracious to give us these sweet longings in our soul. I believe that all of our longings point to what is our true, deepest, and ultimate longing, which is for heaven. We long for heaven because it is there that Jesus lives, rules, and reigns. Heaven is a world of perfect, ineffable, infinite, and eternal love. Here on earth we see but black and white, but there there is color. Here we live in shadow, but we know that there it is substance and light. Heaven is our ultimate destination toward which we are all moving.

When we see and experience for ourselves,heaven for what it truly is, we will become aware of how big, grand, and glorious it is in comparison to anything that this world has to offer us. Whatever there was in this old life will be swallowed up by the beauty and grandeur of the real thing. All this will happen because of who is there; we will see God in the face of Jesus Christ.

We only see glimpses of heaven here, as if looking through a portal; but they are only that, glimpses.
For example, miracles and supernatural events and experiences provide such glimpses to be sure. We 
all long for miracles. I have seen several extraordinary ones in my life. The apostle John referred to miracles as "signs" (Ex. John 2:11,23). Signs are pointers that point beyond themselves to something else.  The feeding of the 5000 was a "sign", for the people who ate that day became hungry again. It is Jesus who is the true bread, Jesus who is the true life. The true miracle of every miracle is Jesus. He is more than a sign, He is ultimate reality and the source of all light and all life.

Heaven is our true home and the home we really long for. Jesus is the way to it (John 14:6) and Jesus is the destination. So the longing for home iis really a longing for heaven and our longing for heaven is really a longing for Jesus,

We want more than healing of our illnesses, more than bread that will satisfy our appetites, more than an exotic trip that will satisfy our craving for beauty and peace. We want more than marriage, family, and friendships which satisfy our deep need to love and be loved. Our longings run deeper than
temporary satisfactions.Our deepest desires are not for miracles/signs but for what the miracles/signs point to. We want heaven, we want Jesus. C.S. Lewis understood this and wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world."
Another time he said,
There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. . . . It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. . . . All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered
just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it. C. S. Lewis

May we never make signs and this world substitutes for our deepest longings no matter what good or bad this life and this world bring us. Jonathan Edwards exhorts us to stay focused on the reality of heaven, God, and Jesus:

"The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives. or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. They are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the ocean. Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven, as it becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our lives; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labour for, or set our hearts on anything
else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness?"

Augustine said, “Oh Lord thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts can find no rest except we find it in Thee.” The heart of man is full of restlessness and longing. C.S. Lewis says that "our best havings are our wantings." We are both afflicted and blessed with a chronic restlessness, an insatiable soul-thirst to both "have" and to " want" C.S. describes joy as both in "wanting" and "having".
"The very nature of joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be so stabbed again with joy was itself again such a stabbing." God has given us as a gift this sense of "having" and "wanting" for this reason: that we might keep looking until we find Christ, and that having found him we might be turned back to want Him again and again when we leave His spring to taste of other springs and find them lacking. The more we have a God the more we want him which means, we will always want more of God and we presently experience even in eternity. There will always be more of God to enjoy. Which means there will always be holy longings-forever
"We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still;
We drink of Thee, the Fountain-head,
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill!"










Bernard of Clairvaix

Longing to know the one in the only one, who is in himself all I have ever longed for in all my desires and longings.
Pastor Bill