Tag: steadfast

The Storm of Your Life

The hurricane warnings are up in the Atlantic and the Caribbean, and all around the world. We learn daily of some of the geo-political, and local, political intrigues and manipulations, and of the huge economic manipulations and strategies. We have learned that due to inflation, the buying power of a dollar today is about 20% of what it was when the Twin Towers fell in 2001. As we watch the world turn, we all constantly wonder about what is going to happen, and when is it going to happen. The “it” is, as we perceive, something huge and serious and harmful. Even as we understand that we are called to share in the sufferings of Christ, as His followers, as we bear the crosses appointed for us, we are still, most of us, apprehensive of what is to come. We see Christianity, and Christians, mocked in our daily lives, in the media and, often, in the market place and sometimes around the dinner table with our extended families. We also see the continuing global anxiety against Christians, and we see it expressed in terms of assaults on religious freedom, under the guise of policing hate speech, and in other ways. In other areas of the world, that anxiety against Christians is expressed more rawly and painfully in the persecutions of beatings, rapes, burnings and thefts, and of deaths – martyrdom. In America we see the continued erosion and assaults on the foundational, Christian principles of our country. And we look to our family in Israel and we see so many powerful world forces manipulating politics and economics and military might, seeking to remove the nation of Israel from the global map on nations. And we have also going on our personal struggles and issues: of illness, of aging, of overcoming our mistakes, of overcoming the woundings and scarrings from events in our life over which we had no control, of rejecting the burdens of nurturing of offences, of walking freely in grace and forgiveness, given and received.

We are in the storm of our lives, and it is time to grasp and keep a steady hand on the tiller of our individual lives, like Joshua and the Israelites of so many years ago, to be strong and courageous in the face of what we see as the world turns. The reality is that there is nothing new under the sun, Ecclesiastes 1:9.

In keeping a steady hand on the tiller, we see and feel and hear the storm-tossed waves around us, the wind howls, the storms thunder and fill the sky with sharp and vivid and dangerous lightning, and our boat – our personal life raft – tosses, turns, pulls and falls, as we manage the sails and use that tiller to hold the boat’s nose up towards the wind, and as, still, the water at times pours over us.

In such circumstances, there are some basic things we need to do to hold onto life, and we need to be reminded of them frequently – a personal safety check, if you will, kind of like the fire drills from school days.

First, are you waring, securely, your PFD, your personal flotation device? That is are you living your life in repentance of sin, in belief in the Name of Jesus Christ, loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and are you loving your neighbor as yourself? Are you reading the Bible daily, growing in wisdom as the Holy Spirit makes ever more manifest the secrets of the Holy Scripture, the desires and

plans of our Hold Father? These attitudes and commitments will keep your PFD securely fastened to you, so that the storms of this life will not rip that PFD away from you!

Second, are you choosing to live in the fear of God as well as obedience to His commandments, as in Ecclesiastes 12: 13-14, knowing that God will bring each of your works into judgment including every secret thing, whether good or evil?

Third, Do you trust God? Do you trust your creator with such life as you have on this earth, and with your eternal life? Do you trust Him enough to know that He is enough for you, do matter the storm? Can you join daily the chorus of the generations who have shared, and who share, in the confidence and trust of the 23rd Psalm? “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for You are with me; your rod and staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of mine enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever!”

Fourth, are you aligning the tiller to drive your boat, yourself, if you will, according to God’s plan, in the direction he requires, even if it looks like you are headed for even more trouble in the storm of your life? Most of us, using our brains and experience, are always looking for a way that seems right to us to solve our problems and to escape the risk of the storm. But, as we are reminded in Proverbs 14: 12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” So, even if your hand is on the tiller of your little boat, are you the captain, making all the decisions, or are you merely the helmsman, taking orders from the captain, God-Jesus-Holy Spirit?

Fifth, do you take joy in the process God has ordained of producing in you an unquenchable, undeniable, eternal hope that does not disappoint, a hope, Romans 5: 1-6, that God has poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, after Christ’s death for our salvation, a hope born in our justification by faith, through which, even in the midst of the storm we have access to grace and peace, a hope tempered like fine steel, in the tribulations requiring our perseverance, which have built our character out of which our hope has been forged as steel. In that hope, hand to the tiller as you fear, trust and obey God, do you keep your forehead set like flint, Isaiah 50: 7, as did Jeus, knowing that God will help you and not disgrace you, as you travel in the course God has ordained for you, personaly?

You know, not all of us – indeed, none of us – are perfect in all of our ways in this journey of life. Yet, He is perfect in all of His ways. Fortunately for us, in God’s system of justice, mercy always triumphs over judgment, James 2:13, so as we admit to Him and ourselves our shortcomings (I John 1: 9) He is always faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Thank you, Lord, for your mercy and forgiveness!

The prophetic voices are many to assure us of great trouble ahead, and in the short term of our lives. So, today, I leave you with those five questions about your life, and I leave you with the assurance of God’s mercy and faithfulness to forgive you and me. And I leave you with this encouragement from the Book of Jude, verses 17-21: “But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ: how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time who would walk according to their ungodly lusts. These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit. But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

Especially when the winds around you are contrary, look to Jesus, and know Him when you see Him, and be of good cheer! If you have Jesus, and really have him, all is well, all is well, and you have nothing to fear but a reverent and awesome fear of God. With that special PFD, you will survive into eternal life the storms of your life.

Christian Character Part 13

The Struggle for Steadfastness in Life

Let us re-read from our Call to Worship, Psalm 95: 6-7, and continuing through v. 11

Oh come let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker. For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand. Today, if you will hear His voice: “Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, as in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers tested Me: they tried Me though they saw My work. For forty years I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘it is a people who go astray in their hearts, and they do not know My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest.”

This passage is telling us some foundationally important aspects of the struggle for steadfastness of faith and decision in the life of every person, and particularly every man and woman of God. This passage is a foray into the sophisticated and intricate ways in which life challenges our faith, by challenging our double-mindedness. This passage explains how we achieve the stability in life that only comes from bringing ourselves into the Presence of God, into His throne room to receive His Wisdom, His Wise Counsel, believing in Him, in our single-mindedness, not double-mindedness (see James 1:5-8). That stability is a direct result of steadfastness of faith and decision, which only comes from single-mindedness about God’s word and will!

Let’s pick out these foundationally important aspects of the struggle for steadfastness of faith and decision in our lives:

  1. God is God, our God and Creator.
  2. We are His people – corporately and individually.
  3. We are directed to humble ourselves before Him.
  4. We are directed to worship Him.
  5. We see His works and miracles in our lives.
  6. We have a choice, an option, to listen to God, to hear (and read) His word.
  7. We have a choice whether to harden our hearts.
  8. If we make the choice to harden our hearts against God’s word, we are testing God and trying His patience and mercy.
  9. By hardening our hearts against God’s word, if that is the choice we make/made, God will not allow us to enter our rest. Will we be in that generation that rises up, to take its place with selfless faith?.

We know that God’s word says that God is our healer (Isaiah 53:5, 1 Peter 2:24), and many of us have witnessed and personally experienced God’s miraculous healings of our physical wounds and diseases, of our childhood and adult woundings and guilts, or our emotional imbalances and lack of self-control. Thus, like the Israelites in Psalm 95, and in the Exodus and desert travel, we, too, have seen His work! So we ought to embrace, in faith, God for who He says He is, also, because we have seen the proof!! Yet not all do that: many are distracted (yielding to double-mindedness), by an unwillingness to walk away from bondage (our personal Exodus) and through the desert of life with its tribulations, threats and temptations. We are not alone in our distraction to unbelief and resulting disobedience and rebellion against God: in 2 Kings 1, we have the history of Ahaziah (1 Kings 22:51-53 tells us Ahaziah was King of Israel in Samaria, reigning for only two years, who did evil in the sight of the Lord, made Israel sin, served Baal and worshipped him and provoked the Lord God of Israel to anger). In 2 Kings 1:2, we learn that King Ahaziah fell through the lattice of his upper room and was injured and sent messengers to go to Baal and inquire whether he would be healed of this injury or not. The messengers returned early because they encountered the prophet Elijah, who told them, as God instructed him (verses 3-4), “Is it because there is no God in Israel that you are going to inquire of BaalZebub, the god of Ekron? Now therefore, thus says the Lord: ‘You shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone up and you shall surely die.’” The messengers reported this to King Ahaziah, and he sent several companies of soldiers, in sequence, to see Elijah and bring him to the king, and he called down fire from heaven to burn them up. The fire came and each of the several companies of soldiers was burned up. The last captain and company of soldiers to come to Elijah, verses 13-14, humbled himself, and acknowledged that Elijah was a ‘Man of God’ and asked that their lives be preserved. In the ensuing verses, we learn, in the history of King Ahaziah, that an angel of the Lord visited Elijah and told him to go with the captain to King Ahaziah and to speak the word of the Lord directly to him. Elijah did so, and King Ahaziah heard it and then promptly died.

You wonder what would have happened here if Ahaziah had repented and changed his life and led the people of Israel in Samaria to Jehovah God, instead of living and dying in the hardness of his heart, in rebellion to Jehovah God.

In the New Testament, in the latter part of Hebrews 3 and in Hebrews 4, we find a further explication of the message of Psalm 95, and I encourage you to review it this week, noting the congruence of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

REVIEW

Now, I am going to review with you a few related Scriptures, and then we will see how they apply to this issue and difficulty of being steadfast in our faith, as we struggle to mature our Christian Character that we may be steadfast in life:

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who have Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works. Speak these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one despise you.

Titus 2:11-15

[Biblical rebuking should be accompanied by Biblical exhortin/encouraging.]

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I John 1:9

But with balance as to Romans 6:1-4

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

[“Newness of life” describes not only the change to life with the risen Christ, in our salvation, but also describes the constant changes as we struggle with our faith, and grow in steadfastness and maturity in our faith, growing in ever-newness of Christian Character!]

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight – if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast (not double-minded) and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard.

Colossians 1:21-23

APPLICATION

We have struggles, perhaps, from time to time, with unbelief, and then with continuing in the faith, in not getting moved away from the hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ as the tribulations, temptations and threats come against our flesh and souls. We must ask ourselves if we are going to have faith without works (James 2:26), if we are going to be zealous for good works (Titus 2:14), we, in order to live righteously and godly in the present age – our generation –(Titus 2:12), we will honor God with humility and worship, and hearing from him, and extending our faith in obedience. Or, Proverbs 19:3, “The foolishness of a man twists his way, and his heart frets against the Lord.” One or the other.

Each of us frequently faces tests of steadfastness in faith: Have we made a mistake of carefulness and been struggling with whether to admit it, own up to it, and accept responsibility for it? Have we made a mistake based on anger, greed, lust or arrogance – a knowing and intentional sin – and been struggling with whether to admit it, own up to it, and accept responsibility for it? Have we allowed (James 1:14-15) our own desires of flesh and soul to fester and entice us away to sin and death, without preemptively (Romans 6:1-2) denying ungodliness and worldly lusts (Titus 2:11) and taking those desires and temptations to the foot of the Cross and asking God to remove them from us, from our sight? Have we lied to cover up our mistakes of carelessness and intentional sin (Proverbs 13:5)? Have we nurtured lust in our heart that was adultery – physical, emotional, or spiritual – itself? Have we done any or all these things – or one or more of a myriad of others – without stopping them preemptively or repenting afterwards (John 1:9)? The question really asked is this: (Romans 6:4), Are we – you and me – truly walking in newness of life. Are we ourselves, and other people, and God, noticing that from day to day, from glory to glory, we are not the same today as we were yesterday, we are changed, walking each day in the certainty of our redemption, and in extended faith that we will deal with issues of sin in our lives from a place of stableness, single-mindedness as to the word and will of God, being grounded and steadfast in our faith? It is a struggle, and neither I nor you, nor other Christians are immune from the struggle. It is a struggle for steadfastness in the faith as we mature in our Christian Character into the fullness of Jesus Christ Himself . The admonition is from the song we sang today, and often sing, “trading my sorrows, shame, sickness and pain – in the Glory of the Lord!“. That admonition is also in Hebrews 6:12: Do not become sluggish but imitate those – not King Ahaziah – who through faith and patience inherit the promises of God!

Amen

All these things are examples of struggles of being steadfast, grounded, stable in our faith – which, James 1:5, is wisdom for life! This comes from drawing night unto the Lord, into His Presence, knowing He will draw nigh unto us and guide us in His Wise Counsel, His Wisdom!