Work in process

It’s easy to get frustrated with your progress in this life. 

You hope to be and do better, but find yourself not reaching that destination quickly enough. 

“Do this, this and this and you’ll get there,” is well-meaning advice, but life doesn’t work that way. 

There are very few instances in which life comes with turn by turn navigation. 

In one sense, you’ve already arrived at your destination. 

You already have everything you need in Christ. He is your portion and your prize. In Him, you are righteous and perfect before The Father. 

At the same time, you’re not quite there. You have a ton of work left to do. Areas to grow, mature and change. 

You’re not a finished product. You’ll never arrive this side of eternity. 

You’ll always remain a work in process. Striving, pushing and seeking to be more like Jesus. 

This life is all about that journey. 

The long toilsome journey from one degree of glory to another. From who you were yesterday to who you’ll be tomorrow. 

Today is but one day in that journey. 

Make it count. 

Rest in the finished work of Christ. 
 
Pursue the Lord faithfully. Seek Him and find Him in His word, through prayer and in the communion of the saints. 

That’s going to require discipline on your part. But you’re up for the task.

Fear Is A Poor Motivator

Fear works. You can use it to get things done and to exert control over yourself and others. 

That doesn’t mean it’s the best or most effective strategy. 

You could walk from New York to LA, but there are more efficient and effective modes of transportation.

Fear based obedience is like walking. It might get you there, but it’s a giant waste of energy and a poor motivator. 

If you’re using fear as your primary motive, here are three effects you should see: 

1. Your motivation will lose power over time. Fear is an intense and draining emotion. You can only deal with it for so long. It eventually becomes exhausting. Slowly, you become too tired to care and indifferent to what happens. Fear based motivation is short-lived.

2. Admitting, learning and moving on from mistakes will be more difficult. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to do things wrong. That’s life. If you’re motivated by fear, you’ll have difficulty owning up to it when you do. You’ll fear reprisal and punishment for not living up to the standard. You’ll be tempted to rationalize and shift blame. 

3. You’ll have trouble enduring hardships. You’ll think that life is unfair and that you’re owed something better when difficulty comes. In other words, despair and bitterness will be the result of suffering if your motivation is fear based. 

Fear is a wimpy motivator. It’s not strong enough to carry you through. Fear might get you moving, but you’re going to need something more to reach the finish line. 

What’s that something more? 

Grace.  

Everything you have and everything you are is a result of grace. You don’t deserve it. It is a gift from God. 

When understood, this should become the greatest and most sustaining motivator in life. 

It is the complete opposite of fear. 

Grace’s becomes a stronger motivator over time. The more you realize and understand that everything in your life is a gift the more grateful you become. The more grateful you are, the more motivated you are to honor that gift with your life. 

Grace provides ground for you to own up to your mistakes without fear. If you're saved by grace, through faith, and everything in your life is because of God’s mercy, then you have nothing to fear from admitting your weakness. You’ll be more likely to share your struggles, learn from, and conquer them. 

Grace will carry you through the hard times. It will be the stone your feet find beneath the quick sand and troubles of this life. It will hold you up and keep you from drowning in despair. If God owns everything, then you are a steward. How you steward things displays your gratitude to God. 

Look To Christ Not Self-Discipline

The default position of the human heart is set towards earning. We assume that we must work and work and work to achieve absolutely everything, including God’s praise. 

“We all automatically gravitate toward the assumption that we are justified by our level of sanctification…We start each day with our personal security resting not on the accepting love of God and the sacrifice of Christ but on our present feelings or recent achievements in [religion]. Since these arguments will not quiet the human conscience, we are inevitably moved…to a self-righteousness which falsifies the record to achieve a sense of peace.” —Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life

Hit pause for a moment before heading out the door to worship or whatever it is on your calendar this day. Look at your heart and life. Consider its defaults position and ask yourself examining questions. Questions like, “Do I place too much stock in my own self-discipline?” Or, “Have I come to believe that I am saved by my own efforts and will?” Better still, “If someone were to look at my life, would they conclude the same?” 

I struggle and fall into this trap far too often. I can allow how I am doing and how disciplined I am to become the measure of my relationship with God. I feel close and pleasing to Him when I am doing well; and distant and displeasing when I fall short. 

Neither of those things is true. My standing before God does not change regardless of how early I get up, how much time I spend reading the Bible, or how I pray. It also does not shift or change when I choose to sin. 

Right behavior and discipline are not the foundation of our relationship with God. Christ’s is. He measured up in every way we fall short and more.  

Look to Christ for security instead of at your subjective performance. It’s a far more stable foundation. It will not fail. 

The War Within

Mortification is, “a ruthless, full-hearted resistance to sinful practice.” This stodgy religious term is about more than throwing off the shackles of sin in our lives, it is about going on offense, and taking back ground. You may be surprised to learn that the language of the New Testament isn’t as rosy and gentle as you might have been led to believe. No, peppered throughout these inspired writings is the language of war. 

The Christian sees himself smack dap in the middle of a war. A war taking place within their own mind, heart, and body. A war between the light and the darkness. A war between what is good, right and God-honoring, and what is not. The Christian is a ground-bounder in this war. His feet march on the front lines where contact with the enemy is unavoidable and inevitable.  

With this in mind, the pages of the New Testament call for an unrelenting violence upon the baser instincts and desires of your flesh. Don’t confuse this with violence or aggression towards other people; that’s wrong. Violence of action upon the weakness and sin lurking within your heart is the call.  

You must take it out before it takes you out. There is no way around it. You must engage in battle with your flesh and make it your slave. “Be killing sin,” John Owen said, “or it will be killing you.” 

“The very word translated as ‘put to death’ (Greek word thanatoute),” Tim Keller says, “is violent and total. It means to reject totally everything we know to be wrong; to declare war on attitudes and behaviors that are wrong—give them no quarter, take no prisoners, pull out all the stops.” 

This is not the language of a group of soft, weak men and women. This is the language of a determined and strong group of people. People who make it their aim to squash sin and conquer their bodies. A group of people called out to take extreme ownership of every area of their lives, and to pursue radical discipline in pursuit of one goal—holiness. 

The Christian isn’t engaged in conflict with sin, and weakness in order to earn or merit acceptance before God. The Christian already has everything he needs to be right with God, because of the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. They fight sin for a completely different reason—gratitude to their savior who has set them free. 

In Christ, we are called to make war with our flesh. We are enlisted in a great battle that will last the rest of our days in this life, but we are assured the final victory. No matter how we are doing in our fight, Christ has secured our ultimate victory over Satan, sin, and death. We have nothing to fear. Nothing to hold us back except our own insecurities, and weakness. 

Get violent with those things. Take the aggressive and drastic measures required to kill the tiniest of your desires to sin. Don’t sit back and take it easy. Get in the game. Because you can’t lose.  

Where does your mind go?

“Wherever your mind goes most naturally and freely when there is nothing else to distract it—that is what you really live for. That is your religion. Your life is shaped by whatever preoccupies your mind. The overcoming of sin in our lives begins in our minds; and victory over sin is only ever the result of having minds set on the Spirit.”

— Tim Keller

I don’t know about you, but the words above hit me square in the face as my eyes rolled over each new word. I looked back over the last several days to consider exactly where my mind goes in moments of solitude. What I found made me my shudder. My mind doesn't drift to bad or inappropriate places, it just seldom drifts to thoughts of Christ.  

The path of discipline, health, working hard and getting better can preoccupy my mind. These things are important, worth contemplating and the primary focus of this blog. Today, I want to pause and think about exactly where my mind does and doesn’t go in moments of silence.  

What you focus your mind on shapes your life and character. Whatever preoccupies your thoughts has control over you. That’s called an idol in Christian circles. It’s such a big deal it’s the first commandment given to Moses and the one Jesus cites as the most important. 

That’s a big deal and why daily time in God’s Word is so vitally important. It transforms your mind and helps orient it around the person and work of Christ. 

I don’t know about you, but I want to be controlled by those thoughts. Thoughts of Christ, not lesser things. No matter how good or important they may seem.