August 4, 2010
Dear Brother,
No view of the Bible is complete; not even your dads, and least of all mine. The Holy Spirit is the great teacher. He must make God’s word jump alive to each of us within His plan. I know just enough to realize that God has His divine purpose for my life and for yours. He will be glorified through you and in a magnificent way not because of who you are but because of who He is. He will make of you what He desires you to be (Philippians 1:6). After all, He is God and He is an amazing God. He alone has the capacity to turn all of our weaknesses and failures into His strengths and His successes (Romans 8:28). Point: He is in no wise finished with you yet, my still young brother in Christ.
You cannot change people, or fight your battles, or make people understand you, or even understand yourself. You do not have to. What you must do is train your mind to focus, not on this present world and all its glitz and glitter, but on the Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 12:1-2 says, “Since we are surrounded by such a tremendous number of witnesses (this is the list of Christians mentioned in Hebrews 11 who have gone before us and who have chosen to trust in an unseen God regardless of what their human senses were telling them), let us lay aside every weight (all the baggage that we have accumulated up to now, including all of our apparent failures in life and successes), and the sin that so easily entraps us (our addictions and our occasional walks on the wild side in rebellion against God). The passage continues, “And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.” The writer of Hebrews pictures the Christian life as a race. Paul uses this same analogy in his letter to the Corinthians. We enter the race the moment we are saved and we are to run the race in order that we may hear the words at the finish line from our Lord, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
How can we win? The last part of this passage tells us how to run this race with success. It says, “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.” Young friend, in my opinion, that’s the key to success in the Christian life! The Christian life is not lived by having to learn and employ a laundry list of pithy Christian platitudes. It is lived by learning to concentrate our thoughts on Jesus Christ. It is lived moment by moment, day by day, week by week, year by year, with the continuing awareness that Jesus Christ is always with us. He promised never to leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He is constantly aware of our thoughts, our words, and our ways. With that knowledge we are to strive to please Him and no one else. To the extent that we do that, God will be pleased to use us to magnify His Son.
Sounds quite simple doesn’t it. Well, not exactly! Why? Jesus Himself set the pace for our race. The text says that He did this because of the joy that was set before Him. What “joy”? The joy of knowing that God had determined Him to be the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world (2 Corinthians 5:21). He also knew that following that He would be reunited with His Father in heaven and that one day every knee of Adam’s entire race was going to bow before Him and every tongue was going to confess that He is God giving ultimate glory to His father (Philippians 2: 9-11). He knew that He was going to first endure the cross despising the shame. There would be the cross and then the crown. The same is to be true with His disciples. First the cross and then the crown. Remember the words, “Take up your cross and follow after me” (Mark 10:34).
What does bearing our cross involve? We have two great enemies, one without and one within. Our enemy without is Satan. He is temporarily in control of this world system and we are at present passing through his domain. He is our very cunning and powerful enemy and he hates us and would kill us if he could. He is always waiting to ensnare us by using a mine field of appealing temptations that may cause us a lot of grief and heartache. Not a comfortable thought, is it?
The enemy within that is stamped on our soul is our flesh, our likeness to old Adam. This nature will be with us as long as we are in this fallen body. I have often wondered why God allowed this bent to sin to remain. I suppose it is there to constantly remind us of who we are without Jesus Christ and just how far we have come since coming to know Him. Since God the Holy Spirit also lives within us, and His desire is that we be used to magnify Christ, there is a continuing battle going on inside our mind. On the one hand we want to do what is right before God and on the other we have the desire to fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16-17).
The only way to win the race is to learn to focus on the One waiting for us at the finish line. Peter received an illustration of this principle when he asked Jesus if he could join Him for a little stroll on the water. Jesus told Peter to come on in. Peter bailed out of the boat and, looking at Jesus, miraculously he did it! He was walking on the water. As long as he looked at Jesus he was able to do that which is humanly impossible. Amazing! But then he remembered where he was. He began to look at the water and the waves and feel the wind. These distractions caused him to take his eyes off the Lord. Immediately he began to sink. Jesus then became Peter’s lifeguard (Matthew 14:25-33). Jesus has been my lifeguard all my Christian life. He will be yours also.
I don’t know about you, but I have always had problems concentrating on anything for very long. So many thoughts; so many things vying for my attention. But every significant thing I have ever done in this life that has magnified Christ has come because I have learned in some small way to concentrate upon Him. I encourage you to start this process today. Spend a little time alone with Him today and every day.
More later!
Dick