Archive for June, 2024
Always Faithful – Part Three
Galatians 5: 22, 23
The Marine Corps motto Semper Fe is a good one for a Christian in all of life. A spastic, herky-jerky, on-again, off-again fidelity dishonors the Lord, disillusions the world, and depresses the inconsistent doer. Vacillation gives no victory.
Would you dare to be as intolerant of your unfaithfulness as you are of certain other things? Do you apply the same standards to yourself that you expect in other areas of life?
If your car started once every three tries would that be reliable?
If your paper boy skipped every Tuesday and Thursday would he be trustworthy?
If you went to work only three days out of five would you be a loyal employee?
If your refrigerator were to stop for a day or two every now and then would you say, “Oh, well, it works most of the time?”
If your hot water heater were to give one ice-cold shower out of every ten would that be acceptable?
If you missed a couple of mortgage payments every year would the lending agency say, “Well, ten out of twelve isn’t bad?”
If we have such high standards how can we expect God to be less faithful in requiring the upholding of His standards?
Resolve, as did Bill Borden, to obey Christ. Borden was an outstanding athlete at Yale, the heir of the Borden Company fortune, when called by God to be a missionary among native Americans. After serving among them for a short time he developed consumption and died at a young age. He abandoned a life of luxury for the role of a servant. The entry in his diary the evening before his death reveals his dedication. It reads simply: “No reserve, no retreat, no regret.”
Having no reserve and no retreat caused him to have no regret. We can spare ourselves a lot of regrets tomorrow if our today self will have no reserve and no retreat from a high standard lived under our own banner of SEMPER FE.
We are to be good stewards of all of life, not just our finances. Stewardship involves managing the possession of another. The New Testament illustration of stewardship is of a person who is entrusted with the keys to one’s house. Giving a person the keys to your house means trusting them with everything you have.
“Moreover it is required in stewards that one be found faithful” (I Cor. 4:2). That is reasonable. Who would want to turn over the keys of their house to an unfaithful person? Yet, that is what our Lord has done for us. He has made us stewards of His house. That doesn’t just include possessions, but our personality, mentality, and physical being. Regarding all we are to be SEMPER FE.
Always Faithful – Part Two
Galatians 5: 22, 23
There are three areas in which we are wise to be faithful.
First, is to be faithful to ourselves. Wisely the poet Shakespeare said, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, Line 65).
Inconsistency incriminates individuals. One reason there is so little faithfulness to God and people is there is little basic faithfulness to our own higher self.
We are created in the image of God. If we are unfaithful to that image we are less than we were created to be, and are living an unfulfilled life. That inevitably results in a feeling of frustration which deteriorates into bitterness, resentment, and eventually hate.
Who are you anyway? You are the person you have chosen to be. Sure, we are modified by genes and genealogy but each of us chooses to what we will commit. Some choose to become a slave to their thyroid or pituitary glands. They let their emotions or feelings control them. Some choose to be driven by testosterone or adrenalin. At birth you came equipped with a perpetually developing asset that can override all these glandular drives. It is called a mind and a free will. You are the person you choose to be. Choose to be controlled by Jesus and you can be.
The marvel of life is we can change. Will James, father of modern psychology in the western world said, “The greatest discovery of the Twentieth Century is that a man can change his life by changing his mind.” A classic example of this is found in I Corinthians 6: 9 – 11a. Therein individuals with various devious natures are listed and then it is said, “… and were some of you.” Distill that sentence into a word of importance and it is “were.”
Past tense, they were, but they changed. How? The rest of verse 11 explains: “But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
This verse informs us that when we turn to Christ in trust, He immediately does three things.
1. He cleanses us of all past sin (You were washed).
2. He sanctifies us. That is, He sets us apart as someone very special to Him whom He desires to use in a distinctive way.
3. He justifies us. Acting as our Judge in that moment and for all eternity He declares us to be innocent. This is the legal basis for the cleansing provided.
It is wise to establish your belief standards and commit yourself to them. That is, this I will or this I won’t do. To those standards always be SEMPER FE.
Always Faithful – Part One
Galatians 5: 22, 23
Jesus said, “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much…” He then added one of His most pointed comments: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” Luke 16: 10 & 13.
Members of the U.S. Marine Corps have as their motto that which is becoming of followers of Christ. Their motto: “Semper Fe,” means “always faithful.”
Having trained together and sharing mutual goals they bond themselves to the corps and each other with a pledge to always be faithful.
Do you approach your calling as a Christian with less commitment? Are you perpetually making excuses for yourself? Do you allow yourself liberties our Lord never intended?
In Galatians 5: 23, “faithfulness” is listed among the fruit of the Spirit. That is, in the Spirit filled believer’s life one characteristic is faithfulness. The Greek word translated faithfulness is “pistis,” meaning “the character of one who can be relied on.” It means we are obedient to God and loyal to our associates.
The text does not say “fruits,” plural, but “fruit.” These are not nine separate virtues we are to seek to develop. They constitute one body of excellence that are the natural product of the Spirit-filled life. They are not some things we do, they are what we are.
Consider this seventh characteristic of the nine aspects of the fruit of the Spirit.
The first three have to do with our UPWARD relationship with God: love, joy, and peace.
The next three are OUTWARD on a horizontal plane, and have to do with our relationships with people: longsuffering, kindness, and goodness.
The final three have to do with our INNER being: faithfulness, meekness, and self-control.
P.T. Forsyth, a giant of a theologian of a past era said, “Unless there is within us that which is above us, we shall soon yield to that which is about us.”
To always be faithful we have to have within us replenishable resources provided only by the Holy Spirit. Our faithfulness is founded on God’s faithfulness to us which stimulates our faith in Him. When we have faith in Him we desire to be faithful to Him.
The core reason we find so little faithfulness today is not that we are too passionate about bad things, but that we are not passionate enough about good things. To be faithful to a person or position we must be passionately committed to it.
Resolutely regarding God and man be SEMPER FE.
Code Red
Consider this scenario.
You express your lack of approval of certain actions you consider being wrong. The respondent abruptly responds: “You are a bigot expressing hate. You should be ashamed of yourself harboring such hate.”
Your response is “I love the person, but I don’t like their conduct.”
The respondent: “You are just trying to cover your hate.”
You are then in the position to respond: “I do love the person. You say I have hate. You are bitter and bitterness is hate on steroids.” Because the one accusing another of hate is unable to separate the doer from the deed they are inclined to hate the person they have accused, you.
Therefore, “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no ‘root of bitterness’ springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled…”. It is not the root that is bitter, it is the fruit it produces that is bitter. The fruit is festered anger and resultant bitterness. The dissenter who accuses a believer of hate is speaking out of a mentality of anger metastasized into bitterness.
Make sure you have no bitterness in your life. A bitter person is someone who has feelings of resentment and deep anger, often because of something from the past that has hurt them. They have a negative attitude and negative emotions. At their core, a bitter person is someone who is deeply resentful of other people.
A bitter person’s baseline mood is often angry, disappointed, or irritable.
Bitter people believe that the world owes them so much. Bitterness involves feelings of sadness, resentment, and anger that has developed over time.
Don’t let bitterness enter into your life. Instead, give it a creative outlet – make it an opportunity to show patience and express love. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly” Hebrews 6: 12.
It’s not what you eat that matters, it’s what eats you. You might have an ideal diet, but if you let bitterness and its companions of resentment, worry, fear, lust, guilt, anger, or any other emotional disease eat at you it’s going to affect your physical health as well as your emotional well being. Therefore, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” Ephesians 4:31-32.
Christians must courageously stand up for their convictions in the face of bitter criticism. This is no hour to suffer spiritual laryngitis. Expect opposition and don’t be silenced by vitriol. Endeavor to please the Lord in your actions. Be like the apostles who rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the Lord. Study issues to be well versed in what you believe and why. Holy boldness is undergirded by the Lord Himself. We are engaged in spiritual warfare.
This is an hour of CODE RED.
Who Am I? Part Five
John 3: 16 – 18
Our loving Lord loves us even amid our doubting. (John 20: 2)
Three days after Jesus died on the cross of Calvary as a living sacrifice for our sins a rumor spread in the early morning that His tomb was empty. Two disciples ran to the tomb. The first one there described himself as “the other disciple, whom Jesus loved.”
In a moment when doubts must have cascaded on him John had a sense of who he was. He was an object of Jesus’ love. God honors honest inquiry. John was questioning for an answer not that there was an answer.
When you fully trust in Jesus, you know His love will never fail you. Circumstances may sometimes cause you to feel forsaken. Even then in reality you aren’t.
You may temporarily fail to enjoy the presence of the love of Christ because of your hurts or fears, but His love is still there. Even if you are in an emotional state of shock, let your mind dwell on the fact you are an object of Jesus’ love.
Circumstances don’t change the reality of Jesus’ presence and love. They may temporarily change your awareness of them. At the tomb initially John wasn’t aware of Jesus’ presence, but he was conscious that even then he was “the disciple Jesus loved.”
You may have been looking for a God who would roll up His sleeves and stride into your life bashing all of your opposition, subduing every opponent, curing every ill, and healing every hurt. He not having done this, you may be beginning to develop doubts. Don’t! Fix your mind on facts, not appearances. He is there at work because He loves you. At the tomb it only appeared He didn’t love them and had abandoned them.
With all of your doubting, don’t ever doubt you are a person Jesus loves. Then set about to interpret your circumstances in light of that reality. Don’t ever question that reality in light of your circumstances.
He loves us in our delights (John 21: 7 & 20).
Twice after the resurrection of Jesus John describes himself as “that disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21: 20). This further identifies John as the one loved by Jesus in the upper room dilemma.
Now on the sunny shores of the Sea of Galilee, in a heady moment of delight, John acknowledges himself to be one loved by Jesus. The circumstance wasn’t the cause but the occasion for this acknowledgment.
The love of Jesus is like the Mississippi River flowing to water a rose. You may be that rose and feeling wilted. You have NO reason to be, the supply is sufficient. You are an awesome spirit being.
When you become aware of who you are out of gratitude you want to help others come to an awareness that they too are objects of Jesus’ love.
Say it to yourself, “I am one who Jesus loves – – – now and forever.”