The apostle Paul cried out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” and answered his own question with a joyful prayer, “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” He was proclaiming the fact that God set us free from this body of death when he sent His Son for our salvation.
Old Testament saints such as the writer of Psalm 119 expressed similar joy, only then it was a forward-looking hope: “My soul faints with longing for your salvation, but I have put my hope in your word " Psalm 119:8. When he receives by faith the salvation he longed for God sets him free by changing his heart so he writes, “I run in the path of your commands, for you have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32. When God sets our hearts free, we want nothing more than to obey Him. We delight ourselves in the Lord.
Why then do we still experience struggles such as Paul described – he doesn’t do what he wants to do and he does what he hates? It’s because, when Christ saved you, you were made new, but you are still you. If you were trying to live without God for any amount of time before He saved you, your sin nature was being formed in ways that are unique to you alone. The apostle Paul refers to this as the “old self,” which is still hanging around, fighting against the “new self.” Eph 4:22-24. But be of good cheer, God knows you better then you know yourself. You were his workmanship even before you were saved, he isn’t finished with you yet, and now that you know Him and can see His hand at work in your life you already have the victory. God is changing you into the image of Christ, and that is the best thing for you in the whole world.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Blameless
Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD.
Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. Psalm 119:1,2
These verses from Psalm 119 express the same promise as Psalm 37: 4, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This message has been the subject of my meditations as I seek the “true wisdom” that consists of knowing God and knowing myself in relation to God. Blessings come to those who walk according to this “true wisdom.” But who can say that his ways are blameless before the Lord. Who can say that they seek Him with all their heart?” As I go about my daily living, choosing to experience God’s presence and being honest with both God and myself, I often find that instead of feeling blessed I feel uncomfortable. My heart resonates with the apostle Paul when he writes, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Roma 7:15ff). I am so glad that God’s Word shows us real people experiencing the same struggles we do, then finding victory. Like Paul I remembered that it is Christ who sets us free from this “body of death,” and I cried out, “Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart. Psalm 119:1,2
These verses from Psalm 119 express the same promise as Psalm 37: 4, “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This message has been the subject of my meditations as I seek the “true wisdom” that consists of knowing God and knowing myself in relation to God. Blessings come to those who walk according to this “true wisdom.” But who can say that his ways are blameless before the Lord. Who can say that they seek Him with all their heart?” As I go about my daily living, choosing to experience God’s presence and being honest with both God and myself, I often find that instead of feeling blessed I feel uncomfortable. My heart resonates with the apostle Paul when he writes, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Roma 7:15ff). I am so glad that God’s Word shows us real people experiencing the same struggles we do, then finding victory. Like Paul I remembered that it is Christ who sets us free from this “body of death,” and I cried out, “Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Know Yourself
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
We saw last time that you delight yourself in the Lord by learning of Him, opening your heart to Him, and savoring Him. I must now add that, as you savor Him, thinking of His goodness, you become more and more conscious of your own failures. It is then that His grace – the favor you don’t deserve – becomes irresistible. As you give Him that burden of sin, and experience what it is to be free in Christ, only then are you really delighting yourself in the Lord. He gives you a new heart and puts His Spirit in you, so that you are moved to follow Him. (Ezek. 36:26,27). The condition for the Lord giving you the desires of your heart has been satisfied. You are delighting yourself in Him.
Now I turn to the promise in the scripture we have been analyzing. It has become clear that the promise is only for those who have a new heart and a new desire – a desire for God. This desire begins to overshadow all other desires. Delights that used to be so captivating begin to lose their power. Christ has set the captives free. God declares you righteous, but not because you have observed His law summarized in the Ten Commandments. You have not! The apostle Paul writes: “… no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Romans 3:20 NIV). We become conscious of sin as the Holy Spirit within us brings things to our remembrance and we become aware of the vast difference between God and us, and between who we are now “in Christ,” and who we were before God gave us that new heart. God will give us the desires of our heart as we yield to the Holy Spirit, follow Christ, and grow in our knowledge of both God and ourselves in Christ. It is an on-going process that requires advancing in both parts of what John Calvin called “True Wisdom.”
We saw last time that you delight yourself in the Lord by learning of Him, opening your heart to Him, and savoring Him. I must now add that, as you savor Him, thinking of His goodness, you become more and more conscious of your own failures. It is then that His grace – the favor you don’t deserve – becomes irresistible. As you give Him that burden of sin, and experience what it is to be free in Christ, only then are you really delighting yourself in the Lord. He gives you a new heart and puts His Spirit in you, so that you are moved to follow Him. (Ezek. 36:26,27). The condition for the Lord giving you the desires of your heart has been satisfied. You are delighting yourself in Him.
Now I turn to the promise in the scripture we have been analyzing. It has become clear that the promise is only for those who have a new heart and a new desire – a desire for God. This desire begins to overshadow all other desires. Delights that used to be so captivating begin to lose their power. Christ has set the captives free. God declares you righteous, but not because you have observed His law summarized in the Ten Commandments. You have not! The apostle Paul writes: “… no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin” (Romans 3:20 NIV). We become conscious of sin as the Holy Spirit within us brings things to our remembrance and we become aware of the vast difference between God and us, and between who we are now “in Christ,” and who we were before God gave us that new heart. God will give us the desires of our heart as we yield to the Holy Spirit, follow Christ, and grow in our knowledge of both God and ourselves in Christ. It is an on-going process that requires advancing in both parts of what John Calvin called “True Wisdom.”
Friday, April 22, 2011
Delight Yourself in the Lord
Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4)
This scripture is both a command and a promise. To obey the command I must know God, to receive the promise I must know myself. Today I will focus on the command. How do I “Delight myself in the Lord”? In order to delight in anything I must focus my attention on it and behold all that is good about it. In the case of a material object, I behold it with one or more of my five senses. For example I delight in a peace of chocolate by popping it into my mouth and savoring it with my taste buds. But what about an object (or a person such as God) that might not appear to any of my five senses?
God has made himself known in two ways – by His creation and by His word the Bible. So I come to know about God when my understanding moves me beyond what I perceive in the world to the Creator of the world, and beyond what I read in the Bible to the One who inspired it. But does knowing about God necessarily result in delighting myself in Him? No, learning about God is comparable to reading an ad about the delightfulness of Hershey chocolate. I can’t delight myself in the peace of chocolate until I pop it into my mouth and savor it. Similarly I can’t delight myself in God until I receive Him into my heart and look for his hand in my life. God says, “ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezek.36:26-27) In other words, God says He will give you a heart that delights in following Him. That is how I obey the command to “Delight myself in the Lord.” My next post will focus on the promise, “he will give you the desires of your heart.”
This scripture is both a command and a promise. To obey the command I must know God, to receive the promise I must know myself. Today I will focus on the command. How do I “Delight myself in the Lord”? In order to delight in anything I must focus my attention on it and behold all that is good about it. In the case of a material object, I behold it with one or more of my five senses. For example I delight in a peace of chocolate by popping it into my mouth and savoring it with my taste buds. But what about an object (or a person such as God) that might not appear to any of my five senses?
God has made himself known in two ways – by His creation and by His word the Bible. So I come to know about God when my understanding moves me beyond what I perceive in the world to the Creator of the world, and beyond what I read in the Bible to the One who inspired it. But does knowing about God necessarily result in delighting myself in Him? No, learning about God is comparable to reading an ad about the delightfulness of Hershey chocolate. I can’t delight myself in the peace of chocolate until I pop it into my mouth and savor it. Similarly I can’t delight myself in God until I receive Him into my heart and look for his hand in my life. God says, “ I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezek.36:26-27) In other words, God says He will give you a heart that delights in following Him. That is how I obey the command to “Delight myself in the Lord.” My next post will focus on the promise, “he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Thursday, April 7, 2011
True Wisdom
John Calvin said that true wisdom consists of 2 parts: 1) knowledge of God, and 2) knowledge of ourselves. For many months I have been seeking a better understanding of that second part and finding it difficult to formulate my thoughts in writing. As I read what other Christian writers are saying on the subject I find different points of view, or is it just differences in emphasis? Perhaps the difficulty I am experiencing is not just in me but is characteristic of our postmodern culture, in which secular psychology has dominated thinking about ourselves and our relationships with others, and has even infiltrated Christian thinking about ourselves. Since I am just an ordinary Christian with a layman’s knowledge of the Bible I would not be so bold as to try to critique the other writers I have been reading. After all, they have degrees in Biblical theology, Christian counseling, and other Christian disciplines. I do not! The writers I have been focusing on are John Piper, Edward T. Welch, and Neil T. Anderson. I have found them all helpful. But I need to think through the issues for myself, so I will take the plunge in my next post, which will be a meditation on Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” That scripture is both a command and a promise. To obey the command I must know God; to receive the promise, I must know myself.
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