Working in a War Zone

The Battle that Never Seems to End

In our war with sin, we're often looking for a breaking point--a point of rest and refuge where the battle thins and some of the dust settles to reveal the sunrise. But the reality is, all of us have likely noticed that it just doesn't "happen" that way.

Disaster at Every Turn

The true way to describe our daily battles, especially if there is an obvious area of struggle again sin we are facing, would probably be something like this:

"At every turn I face yet another temptation.

At every sign of hope I am reminded of my failures.

At every inch of growth I am crushed by a mile of backsliding.

At every Word of Christ's, the enemy is ready to smash me over the head yet again."

It really is hard to procede when we're working in a spiritual warzone.

Then Where is the Rest?

Does that sound like you? Do you ever feel that not even the Words of Christ can stay true in your mind long enough to have effect?

Know this, fellow Christian:

He Who does not let you stray hopelessly will neither let you fight battles hopelessly.

THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE.

He Who provides words of hope IS the hope.

THERE IS ALWAYS HELP NEAR.

He Who designed growth will give it to you.

THERE IS ALWAYS A PATH OF OBEDIENCE AND RESULT.

And "He Who did not spare his own Son but freely gave Him up for us all,

HOW WILL HE NOT ALSO WITH HIM GIVE US ALL THINGS?"
-Romans 8:32 (ESV)

The rest you seek is in His Word. Fill your mind with truth of God and weakness will dwindle. Rest your body with prayer in mind and trust that He will keep you from harm.

The battle rages on for life, but God blesses on for eternity.

---

Recommended Resources
The Word of God

Full of Starvation - A Spontaneous Poem of Conviction and Joy

"Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you."

~James 4:8 (ESV)

---

Full of Starvation

This morning, I am hungry but I do not want to eat. Food sounds, for what reason might be, non-appetizing.

Hmmm....

I believe the Lord is speaking to me from this odd little situation this morning. This strangely reminds me of how I often treat God's Word and time with the most wonderful Being in existence--our awesome God.

Where's the tie? Well, hunger is not easy to ignore when present. When our stomache growls, our prompt and desire is to fill it. Spiritually, however, it is far possible to go days, weeks, months, and for many, years starving.

We usually know when we are starving spiritually. I have gone long periods without the Word or minimal Word and the effect is more serious that I've thought. I feel dry. I feel empty. I am far more prone to fill that void with other content. I run after something other than God to satisfy me--something other than God to be God.

A Void is an Entrance for Worldliness

What are your temptations? When there is an open tank in your heart for other things to fill it, what are you tempted to "drain" into your heart? How easy it is for us to fill our being--which God and God alone can rightly fill--with other things such as TV, video games, pornography, isolation, idleness, food, friendships, social activities, work, education, study of less-important things, internet, online "social" networks and "communities," e-mail, instant messaging, texting, phonecalls, shopping, spending...

...and you may have guessed my next line--the list, of course, goes on. You are more likely to know what your temptations are than me.

The Deathbed Lesson

I wrote a post once upon a time called, The Deathbed Picture. When I reach that day when I lie upon my deathbed (should the Lord will that to be the manner in which I leave this earth), I don't want to regret having neglected the Word. And oh, I have. But there is grace to change. Whether there is time is unknown, and is sobering.

The True Reason to Absorb the Word

But is shortness of time the only reason to fill ourselves with the Word? No, it isn't reason, but a helpful push toward the true reason:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might."
~Deuteronomy 6:5 (ESV).

In exposing yourself more and more to the Word, He will refresh you! As you position yourself not as a confident, self-sufficient "I'm gonna love God more" person but as a student of the Word, He will form you into a matured son or daughter of God who is confident in His grace always for spiritual water. The Word is sweet. Dive in. God wants to work in you through it!

The Word is Sweet
A spontaneous Poem of Conviction and joy

The Word is sweet,
It is filled with the face of God
Sweet language of highest wisdom,
Let me leave you not

How much I miss,
When His value I dismiss
Yet, how much I gain,
When I return to it again

Where now are the things,
With which I filled my life
The things I've called my gods,
That shut out Christ's pure light?

Where now are the friends,
I thought would stay my side
The ones whose faithfulness,
I always would confide?

The things of earth have failed me,
My friends are off and gone
Though perhaps they have not sinned against me,
There is no faithfulness as God's Son

There is no reassurance,
No solid hope in all the world
Except that which is spoken to me,
In the pages of Thy Word

Oh, help me, God, to get this,
Incline me to Thy Word!
For to continue to live without it,
Means a life purpose pathetically served

But make Thy glory my only goal,
I know my prayer You have heard!
May the days ahead see me know Thee more,
Sweet Savior and Thy Word

(c) 2010 Franz Schneider

---

Challenge and Application Questions

• What is the Word of God? It is a helpful refreshing of our desire for the Word when we remind ourselves once again what we hold in our hand!
• How precious is it and has it been to you?
• What are the common things (idols) with which you are tempted to replace God's Word
• Have you asked the Source of strength, God, to help you find satisfaction in Him and His Word? As you do, He will answer! He will increase your staisfaction in Him as you taste more of His Word day by day--as you "taste and see that the Lord is good!" and realize that "blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!." (Psalm 73:25).

Share

Recommended Resources

Can Singing About the Gospel Become Rote?

This article was revised on January 19, 2011

I read an article today by Bob Kauflin on the Gospel and worship. While I do not agree with all of his content or theology on worship, the emphases on making the Gospel a major part of our diet is a valid and critical point. Here's a bit of personal elaboration on the point.

Not only can the Gospel become a familiar and repetitive (even monotonous if we're not careful and intentional) subject of our daily worship (not just Sunday song), but the temptation to become in effect "annoyed" or merely act on obligation to include words of Gospel in our daily diet exists.

And aren't we all familiar with words becoming "just words?"

The Gospel is not a set of words from Sunday school. It's The Gospel of God!

"The cross stands for all that was accomplished through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. It focuses on his substitutionary death at Calvary but includes everything that gave meaning to that act. His preexistent state in glory. His incarnation. His life of perfect obedience. His suffering. His resurrection. His ascension. His present intercession and reign in glory. His triumphant return.

It’s our responsibility as leaders to make sure, as the Puritans said, that we always 'labor to be affected by the cross.' The gospel of Jesus Christ is the greatest news the world has ever heard and our singing should show it.

What have you done to make sure that singing about Christ’s redemptive work on the cross never becomes rote?"

-Bob Kauflin

From Can Singing About the Gospel Become Rote? from WorshipMatters.com - January 29, 2010

And the natural effect of the Gospel, when it sinks into our hearts, is to affect our lives for God's glory and overflow to our worship. Honestly, if we are not passionate about the Gospel, and if we have no interest in singing to the Lord with a might shout of thanks, something is wrong--but we're not hopeless. Find hope in this: As you expose yourself to the Gospel truth--that while we are weak, our sins are paid for and we are FREE to LIVE, and that God has an amazing desire to teach us about and display to us His glory--you can be affected and transformed!

I hope that served you, friends! Thanks for reading and contributing. God bless.

Share

Daily Thought: So Distant Now

Does the Father's face seem distant to you now? Does the embrace of His love and warmth that you once experienced and held dear seem as a distant memory? Is your race as a Christian seen through your eyes as nothing but a heap of lost hope?

Fear not, for we have a Savior Who knows our weaknesses and in fact sympathizes with them. Further, He experienced them as we have:

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).

So passionate is He for His glory that He is not willing to hide His face from you. He will let His mercy shine forth with the light of countless mid-day sun upon you. He will grasp your soul and fill it with truth to shake sin at its root and see it tremble to the ground as you do in awe of Him. Take heart, Christian! Your road it excruciating. But your hope is not in ease of pain, but peace of soul found in free, saving grace.

Share

Recommended Resources

Song: The Prodigal

Daily Thought: Use of a Hammer

The use of a hammer, as many tools, by design takes many swings--many repetitive motions to get the job done. In rare circumstance will you swing a hammer once and complete your task. Instead, you swing again and again until you have pierced a surface with the full length of a nail.

So it is with sin. We all may wish that sin could be defeated and thrown out of our lives in a snap--that we could turn from it cold-turkey style. But the more we live, the more we are able to accept that that's just not the way God designed life. Killing a sinful habit takes fleeing time and time again. Putting a sinful trap out of our life takes taking the hammer to sinful opportunities and desires again and again.

So don't give up, soldier. Don't lose hope in a battle that's already been won by the nails in our risen Savior's hands. He has won it--He has provided everything you need to win.

"His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence..." ~2 Peter 1:3 (ESV)

Recommended Resources

This little book is an easy read for the not-easy things of life such as: Remembering the Gospel daily, escaping condemnation, being free from the paralyzing bondage of guilt. This is among my favorite read-and reread books!

Daily Need

"Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand..."

~I Corinthians 15:1 (ESV)

---

Hearing What You've Heard

Paul's words as laid out in I Corinthians 15 at basic level communicate, "I remind you of something you've already heard" and even "something you have already believed." Why preach so passionately something already known among this body of believers? Because they, as much as we all do, needed desperately to hear the Gospel again--to be refreshed by the power of the Gospel's transforming grace.

Possible Spiritual Death

We need it, lest we die--the Gospel that is. God has provided all that we need for life and Godliness through the Gospel. In other words, we have no access to the Father or the riches of His mercy (but through the glorious Gospel blood of Christ. He, as our Substitute, has paid the way to the throne of God, and lest we draw near to the throne each day by reminding ourselves of the Gospel we have believed and heard, we cannot keep a clear mind as to the very purpose of our days on earth, and drifting is possible.

Even the Strongest Need It

From weak to the Christian full of faith, we all need to hear the Gospel again every day. Strong saints have met the end of their walk for the Lord when they lost their intimacy with Christ, and all intimacy with Christ begins at the foot of the cross. Nothing else will do, not even other Biblical doctrines, for all guidance from all other Biblical doctrine is pulled into place because of their tie to the cross.

Not to Be Taken Lightly

Our relationship with Christ, our Savior, and the health of it is not to be taken lightly. Are we slowly drifting? Do we think we're not and yet half-hearted interest in God's holy Word or lack of passion in prayer could easily be observed in our times with the Lord? Let this be a gracious yet sobering warning of God's kindness: Our spirits are prone to wander and prone to sin and death lest we immerse ourselves in the Gospel each day.

"Father, what precious life we have been given! Enlarge our hearts to Your Gospel, we pray. May we never minimize it. Reveal lack of passion and heal us, Lord; heal us. May no passion of ours exceed that of the Gospel, and may the Gospel define our passions. Amen."

---

Challenge and Application Questions

• Evaluate your affections for the Lord. Are you slowly drifting?
• Evaluate your passion for the Word and prayer. Where can you grow?
• What is your action plan for daily Gospel? If you don't have one, will you make one? When?
• Do you take your relationship with the Lord seriously?
• Where has pride been displayed in your thinking as far as believing you can do without the Gospel? How can this change?

The Deathbed Picture: Part 1 - In Light of That Day

"But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed."

~2 Peter 3:10 (ESV)

---

The deathbed picture is one of the most sobering pictures for all humankind. We all will face it, and all must come to terms with it. One person accurately said, "...one-hundred percent of us die." This is true, and it is simple. But what will our picture be?

Christ reveals to us in Matthew 24 that no one knows the day or hour in which Christ will return, for the Son does not even know--only the Father (v. 36, 42, & 50). He is coming at an hour we will not expect (v. 44). Yet more sobering, He will come like a "thief in the night" (I Thes. 5:2, 2 Peter 3:10, Rev. 16:15.

Given that we all face death, how is this to affect our lives? Perhaps you are thinking by now that this is a rather gloomy read. But actually the Lord shows us gloom in order to reveal to us grace:

• He showed us the death of His Son to show us His glory
• He showed us we were dead in sin so we might understand why we need a Savior
• He broke us that He might save us from eternal condemnation and give us everlasting life
• He shows us discipline in order that we might bear the fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11)
• He convicts us of sin so that we might turn from it to Himself

Therefore, rather than a mere obligation of fear (though there should be fear of the Lord always), there is the wonderful hope of grace to change and live in light of eternity--that Day when we will all give account (Romans 14:12) and those who believe Him will see His face.

"Father, thank You for revealing Your Son to us. Thank you for the hope of the cross of Christ! You have shown us the depth of our sin, yet what a mystery that you would show of the depth of Your love displayed on Calvary! Who are we that You are mindful of us! O, the mystery of your great love! May we live in light of that day and use the freedom You have purchased for us to ascribe all glory due Your name. Amen."

Next in this series: The Deathbed Picture: What Will Burn?

---

Challenge and Application Questions

• What eternal destiny will you face when you draw your final breath?
• As a Christian, are you encouraged and provoked by the deathbed picture?
• Do you allow the cross and eternity to mould your daily walk?
• How can you better cultivate fear of the Lord and an eternal perspective?