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March 31 - June 9, 2019
But today would be a good day to get this stuff out into the open, and to understand that whatever control you think you’re exerting by being so careful and hesitant and micromanaging is really an elaborate illusion.
And the more you experience and apply this gospel-bought freedom—the more areas of your life that lose their ability to unnerve you—then the more you’ll realize that He is increasingly becoming your primary love,
You don’t get chiseled abs in six seconds.
And for believers, this means (1) renouncing what is old, (2) rerooting in what is new, and (3) perpetually asking God for help to keep this transformation happening.
Remember today how dead you were before.
were
And some of those roots are tough coming up. They’re the kind of roots that led us into “carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,” that led us into bearing the rancid, unpleasant fruit of anger, abuse, self-hate, lust.
It was more like a steadily building opposition, an ever-widening distance between Him and us.
When we see it on display in Scripture, God’s wrath is often seen as He allows people to pursue whatever they want, knowing (of course) it’ll be the death of them, but waiting until they finally reach such a confining, desperate, dead end that they cry out for rescue.
made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:4–5). We’re no longer past tense now;
Thus, life stays hard. Because roots often die slowly. And they don’t usually respond to silver bullets.
there’s a reason why the pain points of wrestling with your sins and fears are so troubling and upsetting to you. And you ought not despise these difficult experiences that tug on your heart and ache to the core. Because God’s the one who’s doing it. God’s the one who knows you’ll never be whole if the only solution He ever implements in your life is just pruning back the bad behavior.
“It makes me feel like I’m not saved.” No, no. It’s actually some of the best evidence of the exact opposite.
So that’s why the Holy Spirit’s hands are clasped around some of those jumbo roots in your life, the ones that feel like their tendrils must
Renounce the root, but not the Gardener. And replant yourself into gospel ground, where new, sanctified roots can grow into much more delicious fruit.
These roots, again (just to be clear) are the desires of our hearts. And the problem is not the fact that they’re present—the fact that we have desires. The problem is where we’re seeking to plant them, where we’re rooting them.
But if we root these same desires in the kingdom of heaven—in the truths and promises of God—they will instead produce the fruit of the Spirit within us (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—Gal. 5:22–23).
But this renouncing and rerooting business is not “once and for all.” It’s day by day, whereby “our outer self is wasting away” and “our inner self is being renewed”
And one of the reasons why God manages the process in this manner is because it keeps us asking of Him, keeps us pleading.
We just focus on winning the day. That’s the objective. Win the day.
Jesus said, is to “love the Lord your God” with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, “and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). And there’s a reason for this sequence, why one comes before the other.
If reconciliation with other people is ever going to be genuine, not meant to prove a point but simply to demonstrate the love of Christ and the transformation He’s brought about in our hearts, then we must first be vertically aligned and at rest in Him.
We look to ourselves, trying to be good enough. To others, seeking their approval and acceptance. To the world, hoping it’ll keep our tank filled up. Even to religion, turning faith into a game we play.
Anytime we’re not converting to others the same glorious realities that sealed our own redemption in Christ, we’re always an inch or less away from doing something wicked to somebody else—from not listening to them, not caring about them, not working hard for them, not valuing them, and all the various, ugly expressions that our lack of real love can embody.
Whenever believers are involved in conflict with other people, God remains the authority—not us.
These stumbling blocks of iniquity—these things we value, love, even idolize—skew our ability to see rightly, and then cause us to make decisions based on those distortions.
that we’re actually sinning against God when we let these logs (or even our own specks!) continue to pile up. And before they’ve finished doing damage, they will have led us repeatedly into pride and self-protection, distancing us from brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, parents and in-laws, and whatever other people we could personally name that we’ve mistreated, misused, or misunderstood.
Therefore, we can never disregard God without also disturbing our peace and unity with others.
a new rhythm in our heart, a joyful celebration of His undeserved grace and mercy.
the rhythm of reconciliation becomes one fluid motion of vertical worship and a quest for horizontal unity.
Sin, sort of like a municipal building project, is almost always more costly than people think or expect it to be.
We can make triple sure that we’re coming to this confession with a heart that’s fully repentant and confident in God’s forgiveness, with our only aim the prayer that we can establish peace with this person, if peace indeed can be won.
1. We can own it.
2. We can avoid all accusations
3. We can make no excuses
Whenever restoration fails to take place, it’s because someone on either side of the equation isn’t grabbing hold of the promises God has made.
It is our “glory,” the Bible says, “to overlook an offense” (Prov. 19:11). One of the marks of Christian maturity is a willingness to absorb and forgive any ugliness or injustice that’s tossed in our direction, and to let our desire for retaliation or rebuttal fall peaceably to the ground.
But there are ways to tell when healthy deflection has morphed
One of those warning signs is when we begin to detect in our hearts what the Bible calls a “root of bitterness” (Heb. 12:15)—when we can tell we’re just getting really frustrated and peevish with somebody, when we’re losing the ability to interact with them without kinda hating their guts or at least thinking very unfriendly things about them.
It makes up part of the percentage of overall blame that we’ll need to take personal ownership for. To repent of.
Bitterness is a powder keg. Pay attention to it.
How do we sustain it?
So the problem that sustainability needs to fix is not the ebb and flow, the stop and start.
What we’re wanting to sustain is the snowballing of those small, regular, faith-infused moments that can build on each other, gain momentum, and propel us steadily ahead—what
how do we do that?
The simple answer—let’s just get right to it here—is joy.
Joy. We all want joy.
the gospel is the place for you.
Life with Him is better than anything else. Knowing Him and being reconciled to the Father through Him is the one space in which we find the most pleasurable, long lasting, irreplaceable joy known to humanity.
the reality of life is that God intends us to be a little tired. Few things are more dangerous and disappointing than a bored man with too much time and energy on his hands.
