The Wisdom of Fife

2 Timothy 1:7 says that God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.  I often glaze over this verse but what is it really saying?  What are the implications?

The way this verse is hitting me right now relates to the sin in my life, specifically, the resistance of it.  I'm rarely confident that I have what it takes to resist a temptation--any temptation, it doesn't matter what it is.  I tip-toe down the path until I'm entangle in it and end up wondering why I let myself go. 

But it doesn't have to be like that.  God gave us power over ourselves, all we have to do is claim it.  Romans 8:26 says, "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness."  Again in 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, "But [Jesus] said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

 

Which sounds more confidence inspiring:

• I hope I don't do THAT again.
• I WON'T do that again.
  

One is timid. One has power.  Sad to say, the first one is the one I say in the deepest, most honest part of me.  I am aware of the Spirits power, but so often I choose to go away from it.  I willingly refuse its power.  So I say through my guilt and shame, I hope I have what it takes next time. 

I never do.

In the profoundly deep film I Love You, Man, Sydney Fife (played by Jason Segel) says to his friend, "trying is having the intention to fail."  We need to stop trying not to sin.  Galatians 5:16, "Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature."

 Be bold, in Jesus name renounce the strongest sin in your life.  You will feel like a liar while in mid sentence.  But once you've punctuated your renunciation you will feel the Spirit's power flowing through your veins.  

Try it.

Two Masters: God+Mammon

For a much better version of what you are about to read, consult The Pursuit of God, ch. 2 The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing by A.W. Tozer. I will try not to steal his ideas word for word, but be prepared for a barrelful of Tozer references.  Consider this a summary.   

Before God created Man, He lavished the earth  with useful and pleasant thing.  These things were for man's livelihood and enjoyment and in the beginning, these were simply "things."  They were made to be external and subservient to him.  Inside the Man was a throne that only the Creator was worthy to sit on.  "Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him (Tozer)."

But when sin was introduced, it forced God off of His central throne and allowed all of those "things" to sit in His place.  "There is within the human heart a tough, fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess.  It covets things with a deep and fierce passion.  The pronouns my and mine look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant.  They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease (Tozer)."  Think about things you consider "yours."  Are they on your throne or is God?  

"Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended.  God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution (Tozer)."  

Jesus said it this way in Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13, "No one can serve two masters.  Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Money."  The King James version says, "You cannot serve both God and Mammon."  Mammon is used to describe material wealth or greed, most often personified as a deity, which is why 'Money' is capitalized.  

So it really is just that simple.  There are two masters we can worship--Mammon or God.  Mammon/Money offers a sense of security because we can see and hold it.  If we wanted to we could smell and eat it.  I get anxious and scared when I have none and I feel a sense of power when I do.  But it never seems to last, does it.  It always gets spent.  Quickly.  Lately, it seems to be getting spent faster than ever.  So, in my wisdom, I begin to save and budget.  These are wise habits and the Bible will back that up.  My point is, and I'm speaking about me personally, that it is very easy for me to look at my wise budgeting techniques and feel that sense of warm security wash over me.  Mammon still has control over me in very insidious ways.  

But it doesn't have to be like that.  Tozer says that the only way to defeat Mammon is by the cross.  "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me," said Jesus in Matthew 16:24.  "The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things.  The blessed ones who possess the kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing.  They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering.  Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things.  'Theirs is the kingdom of heaven' (Tozer)."    

This isn't just another doctrine to be understood and stored in your brain.  Take this seriously.  The path away from Mammon is difficult, but it leads to God, who never intends to harm you.  There is no fear with Mammon except when your money runs out.  God works the other way.  When you step out in faith and fear, God proves Himself faithful, trustworthy and secure.  

Consider the story of Abraham and Isaac.  "The baby represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream (Tozer)."  As Isaac grew into a young man, Abraham's heart grew even fonder.  Soon his relationship bordered on perilous.  God said to him, "Abraham! Take your son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.  Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about (Genesis 22:2)."  Can you imagine what went through Abraham's mind?  "The ancient writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form wrestling convulsively alone under the stars (Tozer)."  

I'm just going to let Tozer keep going...

"How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, 'In Isaace shall thy seed be called,?"  This was Abraham's trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible.  While the stars still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleep Isaac lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind.  He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead.  This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night, and he rose 'early in the morning' to carry out the plan (Tozer)."  

Abraham didn't understand God's method, but he had correctly sensed the secret of God's heart.  God let Abraham suffer up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat and then refused him to lay a hand on the boy.  Heaven was convinced that Abraham feared God.  Tozer says that God never intended that he should actually slay the lad.  God only wanted to remove Isaac from the temple of his heart that He might reign unchallenged there.  God wanted to correct the perversion that existed in Abraham's love.  Take the boy.  

Abraham was a wealthy man.  He had sheep, camels, herds and goods of every sort.  He had a wife, friends, and his son Isaac by his side.  But he possessed nothing.  "There is the spiritual secret.  There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation (Tozer)."  So I ask again, who is on your throne?  

"The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the tough old miser within us will not lie down and die in obedience to our command.  [Mammon] must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw.  He must be expelled from our soul by violence, as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple (Tozer)."  In the fear and uncertainty, God will reveal Himself.  "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"  These are the words of Jesus, taken right after he told the crowds that you cannot serve both God and Mammon (Matthew 6:26+27).  

God's good, original design was to be intimately connected to us. Money, possessions, and the false sense of security have taken over our minds. Take some time and consider what you can not live without. If there is an answer, perhaps you can compare it to God's importance in your life.

 

Profoundly Simple

Growing up in a church is a great experience, but it has the potential to have an adverse effect on spiritual development.  It had an adverse effect on mine.  At an early age I became aware of the fact that there is a major gulf separating me from Heaven.  I also became aware that there is a laundry list of things I could do to get in--and if I didn't do it I was screwed.  

But that's not what the Bible teaches.  To paraphrase John Ortberg, "the Bible is not a list of minimal entry requirements to get into Heaven when you die."  That path does not lead to life.  Jesus taught of only two commandments.  First, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: 'Love you neighbor as yourself.' (Mark 12:29-31)"  That's so simple.  Actually doing that on a consistent basis is difficult, it's a simple command. 

Jesus isn't changing the law of Moses.  He was/ is the fulfillment of that law.  Romans 5 talks about sin entering the world through one man (Adam).  It explains that "before the law was given, sin was in the world," and consequently, so was death.  I love Romans 5:15 which simply says, "But the gift is not like the trespass."  It continues: "For if the many died by the trespass of the one man [Adam], how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift is not like the result of the one man's sin."  (Romans 5:15+16).  

Adam, who is human, brought sin into the world.  Jesus, who is God, brought justification.  God is so much greater than mortal man, we all agree on that.  So what He brings into the world is greater as well--freedom, justification, mercy and love.  This basic Christian doctrine which bombarded me as a child is starting to take on flesh in my life today.  I just needed to see it through the a different lens.  

So where does that leave us?  Now that we understand what Jesus did to sin, how do we respond?  As Believers, we can put off spiritual striving.  "Don't complicate the gospel.  It's good news," said a professor of mine.  Don't be like the Pharisees in Mark 12.  Jesus says, "Watch out for the teachers of the law.  They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets.  They devour widows' houses and for a show make lengthy prayers."  

It's the simple mentality of the first being last and the last being first.  In Matthew 11 Jesus thanks His Father for hiding these things from the wise and learned and revealing them to little children.  "For this was his good pleasure."  Right after Jesus had explained that all things in Heaven and on earth have been committed to Him by God he says, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." 

It's two commandments.  Love God.  Love everyone else.  That may sound difficult, but look what Jesus just said--"learn from me."  Psalm 103 says that God knows we're just dust.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  He knows loving everyone doesn't come naturally to us.  So He gives us the Spirit who teaches us and speaks to God on our behalf.  And the evidence of that Spirit living in us are, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."  These trump the law.  This is the recipe for living out the only two commandments we need, and the awesome thing is that when we are in tune with the Spirit, they come to us like second nature.  John the Baptist says, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentence."   

I love Jesus' response to the Pharisees and Herodians when they asked him about paying taxes to Caesar.  Jesus asks for a denarius and says, "Whose portrait is this?  And whose inscription?"  "Ceasar's," they replied.  Then Jesus said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."  Time after time after time crowds come to Jesus assuming there are rules and requirements and He keeps giving them these simple answers.  Flipping the coin back at their chests He says, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."  It doesn't have to be complicated!  The best part of that story is that they were amazed at His answer.  It was profoundly simple.  

So take heart if you feel like you can't live the "christian" life.  If you are doing something that is pure, peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy, good fruit, impartial and/or sincere, then you are pleasing Heaven.  Don't worry what you heard in church, or what other christians might think.  Richard Foster said, "Jesus rejoiced so fully in life that he was accused of being a wine-o and a glutton.  Some of us might live our lives with such sourness that we couldn't possibly be accused of such things, and we think thats good."

I'll end with a quote from Gary Haugen (another hero of mine).  He says, "Something is wrong if Jesus' yoke is light, and somehow mine is heavy."  Don't complicate the gospel.  It's good news.