IF/THEN: If I Were Discerning
IF I WERE DISCERNING, THEN I would know the difference between Law and Grace. I would certainly know that the law can’t save me, but my discernment would need to go much deeper than that because my entire Christian life is based on keeping these two in balance. Balance, however, has never been the Christian norm, so in order to make myself feel good, I lean on my trusted friend Rationalization to come to the rescue. It helps me feel good about keeping the law because it appeals to my self-righteousness. It convinces me that by keeping God’s law I will move up the ladder of righteousness a few rungs and can then look down on the rest of the motley bunch below me. It tells me that grace is my ticket to do whatever I please.
If I were discerning, then I would know that I am not under the law but under grace (Rom. 6:14). I would also know that Jesus said He did not come to do away with the law but to fulfill the law (Matt. 5:17). The law is also holy and just and good according to Paul (Rom. 7:12). So how do I put these together? Not being under the law does not mean I am free to break the law, but should I do so, it can no longer condemn me. It is not a means by which I obtain God’s approval. God’s grace is the power to live the life that he has called me to live (I Cor. 15:10).
If I were discerning, then I would know I need to have a right relationship to the law and to grace which is provided in the person of Christ. However, if you are like me, then you realize we all lack discernment to fully understand all there is to know about law and grace. But there is one thing I am confident in: I am rightly related to the law and rightly related to grace because I am rightly related to Christ who kept the law for me and by his grace gave me the righteousness that the law demands.
VIDEO: Fearfully & Wonderfully Made: Joe & Heidi
Joe and Heidi share the story of their struggle with infertility as part of our teaching series called Fearfully & Wonderfully Made.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. -Psalm 139:15-16
Sharpie Party
After many years of praying and planning, Sunday, May 2nd was the first church-wide event at the new building. RBCers were invited to tour our new buildings then grab a sharpie and leave messages of gratitude to the Lord and thanks for the construction workers on the cement floors of our new church home.
Underneath the carpet and tiles of the floors of our church are now written many verses, prayers of petition and thanksgiving to God for His blessings to us.
Walking around the building, you could almost feel the pleasure of the Lord while reading the graffiti-laid floors as children and adults alike wrote notes of thanks to the faithful men who are working so hard to build this building. Prayers for guests, the leadership, the congregation, and all who will enter through the doors of RBC were written everywhere, often in significant places throughout the building. Verses of thanksgiving, requests for wisdom, commands, and the Gospel mark the floors of our building as prayers for RBC and reminders of what God has called us to at Reston Bible Church.
The Sharpie Party was a great joy as our congregation united together to celebrate what God has done and will do in this place.
IF/THEN: If I Delight in the Lord
IF I DELIGHT IN THE LORD, THEN according to Psalm 37:4, I will be given the desires of my heart.
Rationalization has a field day with this verse. We consider this to be carte blanche, and whatever we ask we will be given if we delight in the Lord. So let’s analyze this for a moment. I want a new BMW and since I am delighting in the Lord He will give it to me. Since when is someone delighting in the Lord when material possessions become the main focus? Their delight is in stuff and not the Lord. “Love not the world neither the things that are in the world” (1 John 2:15).
There is another more troubling way to look at this verse. “I really want children” or “I really desire to be married” is the cry of many who have delighted in the Lord, yet these desires have not been fulfilled. But these are normal desires and are not necessarily the result of delighting in Him.
A third understanding is that God places strong desires on our hearts when we delight in Him that cannot be fulfilled in any other way but by supernatural grace.
So if I am delighting in the Lord, then I might expect that He will give me an overwhelming desire to advance the Kingdom in ways that are beyond my normal desires and capabilities. A missionary call or a deep desire to start a Bible study at work may well fall into this category. After I came to know the Lord, I had a passion to plant a church which at the time made no sense at all (and was well out of my comfort zone and training.) But God’s calling is His enabling: “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it” (1Thess. 5:24).
If I delight in the Lord then I can expect Him to move in ways that I am not familiar with. Such ways are exciting and have no human explanation attached to them. None of us, however, fully delights in the Lord, yet we have this record of Jesus: “…. for I do always those things that please Him” (John 8:29). When we are in Christ, then what Jesus has done in total obedience to the Father is credited to our account. “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” (Prov.3:5-6)
A Story from Conversations
I love hearing stories of how God is at work in His church. Such stories remind me that it is normative for Jesus to be active in the lives and hearts of His people, and they remind me of the greater context in which we “do” church.
If you’ve been around RBC much at all, you already know that each year for the past six years we have hosted a stage production called Conversations the week before Easter. Through hospitality, music, real life stories, and dramatic vignettes, we seek to communicate the power of the Gospel of Jesus in a loving, practical and relevant way. There are many stories that can be shared about how Christ has used Conversations as a means to reach hearts for His glory, and I wanted to take time to share one with you in the form of an email that one of our staff received after this year’s production:
Thanks so much for your emails and for the personal card and gift in the mail. I really appreciate you reaching out, and have been meaning to write back to you for a while because I wanted to share an encouraging story with you. I hope that you will share this with others who may also be encouraged.
I have been looking for a new church recently, and Ali has recently joined me in my search over the last month or so. Ali has a mixed-faith background and described herself to me as a “seeker” when I broached the subject when we first became friends (just a few months ago). We came to visit RBC on Palm Sunday, and heard about Conversations. God has most certainly been pursuing Ali through various circumstances that have come together in just the right timing.
Although I consider myself a strong Christian, the last two years have been the toughest of my life. My faith and my motivation for evangelism has waned lower than ever. However, despite my recent brokenness and struggles, God used RBC and me to draw Ali to himself. When we attended Conversations that Tuesday night, we were both incredibly impressed and moved to tears. Afterward, I invited Ali in to chat, and I had the privilege of leading her in a prayer to give her life to Christ, just before Easter. I wanted to share this with you because I know that those involved in Conversations will be greatly encouraged to know that they were a key role in Ali’s decision. Conversations also greatly encouraged and softened my somewhat hardened heart – praise God!
Ali and I are signed up for the Starting Point class that begins this coming Sunday, and she is eagerly reading her bible daily, always excited to pray and worship and attend church. I not only praise God for bringing Ali into an eternal relationship with Him, but also the incredible encouragement she is to me!
Thanks again for the warm welcome to RBC.
For His Glory,
Kristin
While church productions and programs come and go, the work of Jesus remains steadfast and strong and will endure for eternity. What a humbling thought that He would use so small a thing as a stage production to do a great and lasting work in the hearts of those who saw and heard what Jesus has done in the lives of others. Be encouraged – God is at work in His church.
Have a story to tell from your experience at Conversations this year? I’d love to hear about it.
VIDEO: The Road Less Traveled
To register for the 2010 RBC Marriage Conference featuring Paul Goodnight (May 7-8, 2010), go to www.restonbible.org/marriage.
Spring Clean Update
Praise the Lord for His great blessing this year with Spring Clean 2010. Spring Clean is one of the major ways that RBC youth raise funds each year for summer mission trips. The Spring Clean 2010 was Saturday, April 24th, and we had 190 volunteers come out to work on 57 jobs doing everything from spreading mulch, mowing grass, raking leaves, repairing fences, hauling wood, planting flowers, washing windows, staining decks, cleaning out garages, and even some interior painting. Together, the teams raised $20,000 for their mission trips to Brazil, Croatia, Chicago, and East Asia. Despite a wet forecast, the Lord also provided cover from the sun and held off the rain until after the teams were back.
We are so thankful for the Lord’s perfect provision and for the many volunteers who were used to bless both families in our area and the 71 team members going on mission trips this summer. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. Psalm 100:4
IF/THEN: If I Were Empathetic
IF I WERE EMPATHETIC, THEN I would feel the pain of others. Their poverty would be my poverty, their divorce would be my divorce, their cancer would be my cancer. Rationalization, however, is quick on the draw in such situations. How can I possibly be expected to carry such a load? I have enough problems of my own. But such rationale is soon to fade when we consider how desperate we are in similar situations and wonder where the encouraging word will come from. Where are all the believers when you need them? Have I been forsaken? Why hasn’t anyone called to see how I am doing?
Being empathetic does not mean that I am to carry the weight of the world’s problems. This is not reasonable and certainly not practical for one simple reason – all the world is hurting. The context of life is a world of pain and need. This does not, however, excuse me from being empathetic. Empathy has boundaries, and two things come into play for it to be carried out. First is proximity and second is familiarity. In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians we find in the first chapter that we are to comfort others the same way we have been comforted by the Lord (1 Cor. 1:4). This implies that two conditions must be met if empathy is to transpire. First, I have to be in the vicinity of the one I am to give comfort to, and secondly, I am best equipped to minister if I have been through a similar heartache. So as you can see, I can easily get off the hook if these two don’t line up. However, if I am truly empathetic there is another way to do this. I can find someone who does qualify and encourage them to come alongside the wounded party. “Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that ye might know our affairs, and that he might comfort your hearts” (Eph. 6:22). In such cases, I am showing the love of Christ.
I will never care the way I should for those who are hurting. The Good Samaritan is not realistic. We will never pull over for every stranded motorist. It just isn’t going to happen. There is, however, someone who did more than just pull over. There is someone who has been touched with the feelings of our infirmities. There is someone who has suffered spiritual, emotional, and physical wounding. Where I have failed, He has triumphed and in this triumph I am moved to be like Him. When I am like Him, I will truly be empathetic.
Fearfully & Wonderfully Made
IF/THEN: If I Were Honest
IF I WERE HONEST, THEN I would be honest enough to admit that I’m not, for scripture lays claim to the proper assessment of my heart when it says “let God be true and every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4).
However, the scriptures also tell us of honest people who are upright and have integrity. So which is it? If God is the measuring stick, then the assessment in Romans is correct; but if man is the measuring stick, then certain people can be referred to as honest with respect to others. Rationalization, however, will keep me focused on the latter rather than the former. If I am honest, I will allow scripture to keep these two in proper balance. If I put too much weight on one side of the scale, then I will become self-absorbed and overly introspective about my sin. If I put too much weight on the other side, then I become self exalting, “I thank God that I am not as other men…” (Lk.18:11).
So how am I to see my honesty? Let’s first understand that it is quite possible to be honest and yet at the same time lack integrity. How can this be? Because we can compartmentalize our honesty but not our integrity. Integrity deals with the whole person. The word integrity comes from the same source as the word integer which means “whole number.” A man can be meticulously honest in filling out his income tax while at the same time cheating on his wife. His honesty is compartmentalized. He is an honest man who lacks integrity. So if I were honest, then I would see the need to be a person of integrity, otherwise I will rationalize and think I am honest because I don’t cheat on my income tax.
Jesus was never known for telling the truth, but for claiming to BE the truth (John 14:6). My failure to tell the truth is forgiven by the one who is the truth. He sought the Father on our behalf when he said “Father, sanctify them by your word for your word is truth” (John 17:17).
The word of God is the training ground for truth-telling. I will always be growing in this area if I allow the word to sanctify me. The balance? I have been forgiven for not living up to the holy standard which says I am not to “bear false witness.” Honesty moves me to integrity and I can now see myself the way he sees me: “And you are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.” (Col. 2:10).