How to Win: The Real Battle

Joshua is the leader of the people of God as they win the most important battles in their history.  In the book that carries his name we hear the stories of victory. The Israelites win time after time…in battle after battle.  We all desire to win in the battles that matter in life…over and over again.  “How to Win?” is the question.

Winning comes from the strength to stand the courage to obey.

God commands Joshua to lead his people to conquer the Promised Land.  He promises to be with him wherever he goes, yet he also tells him where to go.  He promises to be with Joshua as he was with Moses, yet he tells him do everything I commanded Moses to command to you.  He tells him he will never leave him nor forsake, yet he also tells him what to do with his life.

Victory is not only possible it is promised.  Often we lose because we are trying to win wrong battles.  The battle that most of us, as Christ-followers, struggle with is the not the battle between absolute rebellion and absolute obedience.  It is the battle between excellence and obedience.  Excellence can be defined as winning by our definition.  Obedience is winning by God’s definition.  Excellence is our attempt to create the perception of obedience. 

Are you willing to accept God’s absolute standard of obedience or are you okay with the perception of obedience?  Are you a man living without the “hint of sexual immorality” or are you living by the world’s view of excellence that you can “look but not touch”?  Are you a lady living by God’s Word commanding “modesty” or are you accepting the world’s view of excellence that being “proud” of your body means showing that body?

Excellent standards typically are half-truths.  It is excellent to not touch, but it is obedient to not lust.  It is excellent to be confident in who and how God created you physically, but it is obedient to “not cause another to stumble.”

Obviously these are two simple examples of what excellence vs. obedience looks like in real life.

What are you striving for?  Winning at things that do not matter in life does not matter in life. 

Lulled and Dulled

In the book of Amos, God speaks (as he does in many of the minor prophets) about how the nation has gone astray by the way they treat the poor.

Jesus speaks of feeding hungry people, clothing naked people, and visiting imprisoned people.  Why?  Because to do for the "least" is to do for the Lord.

God is very serious about the use of financial and material blessings for common good.  In Acts we see believers selling what they have to give to those in need.  

Jesus tells us that we cannot serve both material and Him.  It is one or the other, never both.

The real life problem is that we know this, yet somehow we still struggle to live out the difference.  In our culture it is impossible to not struggle with the pressures of prosperity.

Here is how prosperity pressures us...

1.  The more you have the more you must do.

If you have a house, you have to clean it or you are a poor steward.  The bigger the house...the longer the time or more expensive the pay to keep it clean.  Same is true with cars and yards and boats and fields, etc. 

2.  The more you do the less you realize what you do not do.

The busier you are doing what you "have" to do the less you realize that you are not doing what  you "have" to do.  We get so busy doing what we have to do because of what we have we fail to realize what we are not doing.

3.  The more you do with what you have the more you desire to have more to do with.

The more you focus on what you have, even in the simple realities of the care of it, the more you see what is not there.  A nice house, but it needs a new porch...or new carpet...or new paint.  There is always greater and better which robs us of the joy of contentment.

That is the pressure of prosperity.  The problem is that it is a subtle and silent life killer.  Prosperity lulls us away from God's purpose for us and dulls us to God's calling for our lives and we never knew it happened.

So beware the pressure of your own prosperity.  Be grateful for, not given to, what you have been blessed with.  Be given to the One who blessed you with it.

Monday Insight 6.17.13

Amos declares that he is not a prophet nor the son of a prophet.  Amos is a shepherd that God calls from the Northern hills of the Promised Land to speak into the rebellious nation of Israel.

Amos speaks of the great prosperity that the People of God had received from Yahweh (the Lord God).   He then begins to speak in chapter 4 of all the calamities that have been brought up on the people.  At the end of mentioning a calamity that God had brought against them he states, “Yet you have not returned to me, declares the Yahweh God.”

God had blessed his people with prosperity and had brought calamity and loss upon them yet they did not recognize or acknowledge him.  God desire is that you return to him.  He desires a return to the person of God. 

A person that returns to the person of God experiences right relationship and restored purpose, but that purpose is God’s.  For us to return to the person of God we must return to the purposes of God.  If we love Christ, we obey him.

So before we venture further into why we wander, confess to the Lord how you have wandered…and repent.

In this book we find 4 heart issues that lead us astray.
1.  Religion void of compassion.
If you do not love your brother, you do not love God.
2.  Prosperity lulls and dulls.
The more you have the more you do to upkeep and maintain what you have.  The more you do with what you have the less you realize what you never do.  Before you know it, your prosperity has lulled you and dulled you about God’s purposes.
3.  Insincere worship insults God.
False worship is found in special occasion centric faith, public gatherings as the pinnacle of faith, insincere gifts to God, and singing without meaning.
4.  Privilege involves and invokes responsibility.
He who is faithful with little will be given much.

I challenge you to be about God’s purposes because you are passionate about the very person of God.

The grace He has given you is given freely, received faithfully, and lived obediently.

Poured Not Measured

In Joel, God says,  “I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”

The powerful imagery here is that God is going to pour out His Spirit upon all people freely and willingly.  In the Old Testament God measured out his Spirit.  The Spirit came upon particular people at particular times for particular purposes.

On the Day of Pentecost (and ever since), God has poured out His Spirit upon us.  The Spirit literally dwells within us.  The power to do all that God desires and demands is dwelling in us and empowering us.  The problem is that too many of us live powerless lives as if the Spirit of the Living God was not real.

I challenge you to seek the power of the Holy Spirit, but that means seek the Person of the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit “convicts of sin and righteousness.”  If you do not desire to hear the Lord speak of what is wrong and what needs to be right in your life, you do not desire the presence of the Spirit.  You will never experience the power of the Holy Spirit without living in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Many believers simply want to avoid all conviction because then life is easier and happier.  I challenge you to embrace the touch convictions of the spirit because with such convictions comes the power to walk through them.

Unjust Justice

Justice is an easy concept to have an opinion on but a rather difficult reality to establish.  The problem with justice is that we all have an opinion.  Justice does not exist unless a standard exists first.

The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him.  Proverbs 11:1

God detests skewed scales.  Modern culture is in love with relativity and a misconception of the concept of tolerance.  Tolerance is no longer tolerating.  It has been turned into forces approval. 

The root cause is that we have skewed scales.  We judge people, not by a standard, but by the situation.  Honestly, not even by the situation, but by the emotion that situation causes within us.  The loss of absolute truth is one of the most damaging cultural realities of the last 50 years.

We, as Bible-believers, have an issue demanded us about justice.  We are to love justice.  We are to do justice.  We are to establish justice.  Yet, often, we fail too.  Often our problem is not a lack of a standard but a lackadaisical approach to the application of it.

Here is what I think is the root cause of injustice.  Injustice, for the average person, is not intentional, it is emotional.  I believe we have this emotional struggle.

1.     We believe we deserve credit for all our good.  And no penalty or consequence for all our bad.

2.     We believe that bad people (according to us) should receive all punishment for their bad, but no credit for their good.

This is not justice.  Justice rewards each accordingly and accurately.  So the root problem we have with justice is that without a standard it is all up to us.  We are not nearly absolute enough for such a job…none of us.

But there is ONE who is Righteous.