Recovered In Christ

Pinned from: Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Speaking freely about your sins and “mistakes” and confessing them to others doesn’t make you a spiritual giant. Being able to admit when you’re wrong and humbly owning your weaknesses is not enough! The real work is in the quiet commitment to change and be changed. It is in the persistent pursuit of God’s grace to be different – and then actually becoming different.

I am daily inundated with images, quotes and platitudes of others talking about “not being perfect….don’t judge me…it’s so hard for me to get humble…I’m only human….I’m a “real” addict and this is why I behave this way”…blah blah blah. What they are really saying through all the posts, long winded shares and cheesy praise music is that they are not really willing to change.

Real change does not occur when you’ve stopped feeling guilty for your mistakes or because you have finally decided to humble yourself and accept that you have “pride”. How big of you! Umm no sorry! REAL change occurs when you become willing to change. Simple as that.

In the quiet stillness you make a powerful, quiet – committed, no fanfare decision to be willing to go to any length to change. And you know what happens? You don’t keep posting things on Facebook that try to manipulate people to not “judge” you. You don’t keep taking 1 step forward and then 5 steps back. You don’t run away when people challenge you. You stop hiding in retreats/conventions/speaker tapes. You stop being satisfied in what you think is spiritual and begin to actively put into practice what you are taught. You actually change.

I know that a lot of you won’t want to hear this. You want to blame it on being emotionally immature, or on not knowing “how” to change. You want to drag the people who are actually able to walk in righteousness down and make them your equals. You want to spend hours upon hours soaking in your self pity and talking endlessly about how God loves you just the way you are.

One of the best things anyone ever said to me was that yes God loved me exactly as I was…but that He refused to let me stay that way!

Make no mistake about it. The reason why you haven’t changed much is simply because you are not really willing to change. You think you are. But if you were – trust me, you’d be different. But you’re not. And some part of you knows it.

Quietly committing to change, quietly staying humble and taking direction without a weekly rebellious uprising is genuine willingness.

You are free to stay sick, to wallow in your self-indulgent emotionalism that you try to peddle as religious experience, you are more than welcome to stay in the maze of your ego – but I won’t ever co-sign your suicide pact. Because that’s what it is. All of your games, your double mindedness, your attempts to take our inventory (lol), they are all easily seen through as feeble attempts to distance yourself from your own inability to be honest with yourself. Because if you were honest with yourself you would see that you don’t really want to change and that you are the author of most of your confusion and futility. That would be a very scary and terrible place to be so I understand the great lengths you go to try and avoid it – but the great news is that God will meet you there. I guarantee you this – He will not meet you anywhere else, and no real solid, Holy Spirit powered change will ever occur in you without it.

By the way, if you think this is about you  – then it probably is. Who else would it be about?

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“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. So when you have repented and turned back to me again, strengthen your brothers.” (Luke 22:31-32)

‘How unbecoming to the character of a follower of Jesus, is the worldly ambition of being the greatest. Jesus, who took upon himself the form of a servant, and humbled himself to the death of the cross! In the way to eternal happiness, we must expect to be assaulted and sifted by Satan. If he cannot destroy, he will try to disgrace or distress us. Nothing more certainly forebodes a fall, in a professed follower of Christ, than self-confidence, with disregard to warnings, and contempt of danger. Unless we watch and pray always, we may be drawn in the course of the day into those sins which we were in the morning most resolved against.

If believers were left to themselves, they would fall; but they are kept by the power of God, and the prayer of Christ. Our Lord gave notice of a very great change of circumstances now approaching. The disciples must not expect that their friends would be kind to them as they had been. Therefore, he that has a purse, let him take it, for he may need it. They must now expect that their enemies would be more fierce than they had been, and they would need weapons. At the time the apostles understood Christ to mean real weapons, but he spoke only of the weapons of the spiritual warfare. The sword of the Spirit is the sword with which the disciples of Christ must furnish themselves.

Satan in his temptations strikes principally at the faith of God’s people; that being a grace which gives much glory to God, and in the exercise of which believers have much peace, joy, and comfort; both which he envies and grudges; and it is also a shield which keeps off, and quenches his fiery darts, and is a piece of armor he is sadly harassed with, and therefore endeavors all he can to weaken and destroy it, or wrest it out of their hands.

But though, through the power of sin, and the force of temptation, it may fail as to some degree of the steadfastness of it, as to the acting and exercise of it, and as to the sense believers may have of it; yet never as to its principle, it being an irrevocable gift of God’s grace; a work of his almighty power; a solid and substantial grace, even the substance of things hoped for; an immortal and incorruptible seed, and of which Christ is the author and finisher; and to nothing more is its security owing, than to the prayers of Christ, which are always heard, and to his powerful mediation, and prevalent intercession; Christ is the advocate of his people; he prays that they might have faith, and then he prays, that it may not fail; and it shall not, notwithstanding all the opposition of hell, and earth, unto it.

“And when you have turned back to me (converted), strengthen your  brothers” Peter was now an already converted man, and had been for some years; but whereas he would fall by temptation into a very great sin of denying his Lord, and which was attended with such circumstances as made him look like an unconverted, and an unregenerate man; his recovery by the fresh exercise of faith in Christ, and repentance for his sins, is called conversion: and which was not his own act, but owing to the power and efficacy of divine grace. Peter, after his recovery strengthened the faith of his brothers and sisters in the Messiah, and on the day of “Pentecost” preached a most excellent sermon, which as it was made useful for the conversion of three thousand sinners, was, doubtless, a means of confirming the minds of the disciples; and he has left exceedingly useful epistles for the strengthening of his brethren in all ages of time; the design of which is to establish the saints in faith and holiness, that they may not be drawn aside, and fall from the steadfastness of their faith, either by the lusts of the flesh, or by the persecutions of men, or by the error of the wicked.’

Today’s word of meditation: “strengthen”: Make use of your bitter experience for the fortifying of your tempted brethren.

To read the whole chapter and commentary see: http://biblehub.com/nlt/luke/22.htm

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