Far be it from me to contribute to a thread that “goes downhill,” but I am compelled to, as is my habit, to post a rather long-winded thread.
I have discovered a disturbing trend in my walk as a Christian. It has to do with the fact that as I grow, I look back on where I was and am often repulsed by where I had been that I had, at the time, perceived to be spiritual. It seems to me that having our minds “renewed” as we are transformed unto the mind of Christ is a rather messy operation. I often have wondered why it does not seem to happen for me over night, and it is simply because I cannot, in any way, handle it. So I find myself, ever so incrementally growing and transforming, just like my daughter is physically growing every day. (There are even times where the growth is so imperceptible for such lengths of time it is frustrating.) I cannot give her a driver’s license because she cannot even tie her shoes very well yet. But she is four years old, and I can give her art supplies and she writes cards for people...thank you cards, kind notes, thoughtful little things. I can only entrust her with the responsibilities she is capable of handling.
A number of years ago, the Lord was very gracious with me, and pulled me from the life of being a habitually lascivious grace hacker. I thought I could cheat God of his grace because he was under obligation to give it. In many ways, I was like my daughter; I had very limited scope of vision concerning my inheritance and or Christ’s potential in my life. Just as she has no idea what responsibilities she will some day be forced to grow into, though we try hard to prepare her. I had no idea what grace was capable of doing beyond keeping the flames of hell off my feet. What separates my daughter and me? Chromosomally and chemically speaking, we are not so different; we are the same species, even the same family we even share a strong resemblance (surprise.) Is it age that fundamentally separates us? Maybe in a sense, but the other day I spoke with a 40 year old man who was no older than my daughter in maturity...granted his mind is broken, and he is physically disabled, but he acts as a foil for the concept of the child trapped in men’s bodies all over the world as it were.
One area where growth has been harder and slower, dawning yet veiled behind broken clouds, only occasionally revealing a faint nimbus of light, is my understanding of sin. Or “iniquity” as our Lord called it. Some of my attitudes toward “it” or proponents of “it,” have been where there has been both victory and shame for me.
When I finally saw my own sin in all of its coiled danger, waiting and crouching...seeking to destroy me, I cried out to God for a sanctifying solution. He began to teach me to walk in the Spirit, but still being far from “whole” sanctification (otherwise known as glorification), I began to develop a judgmental attitude toward people in sin, a.k.a. brothers and sisters who did not seem to live up to the bar as it were. Then I started trying to find a source for the deception to blame, and I looked to my own past and thought I had discovered the fault in others...I began to hate sin, as I ought...but I was slightly off. I hated it in the wrong way, not only that but I discovered my own willful self-deception. I don’t think I hated it (sin) the way the Lord did. There was something too, I don’t know, human in it all.
Then it was about a year ago that the Lord opened a passage of scripture for me with Revelation that helped me to see things the way he did. Sure it is not perfect sight, but it is better than the sight I had before.
I had to study Leviticus 26 for a particular purpose, and in doing so, the nimbus of light began to dawn upon my mind with greater frequency and intensity. You see, Leviticus 26 is the chapter of Blessings and Cursings. Being forced to study the Old Testament a lot in the last year or two has brought me to the conclusion that this chapter is far more significant in its impact concerning the thematic of the O.T. than I had ever known before. I have started to see the implications of it weaving through story after story from Numbers to Malachi.
Basically the chapter can be divided into two themes...walk in Gods ways and be blessed, turn your back on his ways, and God would become as an adversary to you (if you were within the scope of the mosaic covenant.) At first it seemed like just another chapter in Leviticus, which if we are all honest...we are pretty bored with as gentiles. As I read it over and over, I began, not to see it as law per se, but as God’s heart. I started seeing the way the Lord views sin. There is no distinction between our sin, and God’s necessity to destroy it. Not only is it reprehensible to him, but it is, by its very nature purely destructive. All throughout the O.T. now I see God’s pleading heart, it is as if he begs his people time and time again to throw off the shackles of sin and iniquity, because it is not only against his will, but it is purely self-destructive. He hates it, not with an arbitrary, despotic attitude, but rather his heart is the heart of a Father. He really seems to desire to bless his people, it is us that choose to walk in the absence of blessing because we choose to drink from filthy cracked cisterns which hold no water.
If you diagram the chapter you discover that for every blessing offered to Israel for walking in God’s ways, there was an exact opposite cursing for failing to do so. All throughout the old covenant, God’s heart pleads and pleads with his people to turn from their wicked ways. He pleads with the voice of his prophets to the point of the near dissolution of his people...to the point that where every glimmer of hope has almost vanished and God utters in Ezekiel that he was finally at last going to make a new covenant with Israel, and HE would CAUSE them to walk in His ways...
You can hear this angst from God when he weeps over Jerusalem, “O you that stone the prophets...how I would have gathered you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks.”
We can focus on the problem...and fail to hear God’s heart about it. If I am not careful, I will be swept under the tide of iniquity in our world that rises higher and swifter than any tsunami ever attained to, simply by having the wrong attitude toward it all.
A simple warning to not let our love grow cold cannot, in any way be “going downhill” brothers. Jesus saw fit to warn us. He gave us a clue as to how to avoid the tsunami as it were. He has offered us a tree to climb, a lifeline straight from the throne of grace. We must learn to stoke the fires of love in our lives, overcome evil with good. We will be unable to look out over the entire world and not grow intimidated or even grieved as rbanks is.
A number of years ago, my wife admonished me that we need to, above almost every thing; begin praying that God shows us how to not let our love grow cold. Please join us brothers and sisters, in praying this for all of our lives. And please be salt and light in every relationship that you have. Do not be overcome with the evil you see, but please grow in an attitude that desires to “strengthen what remains.” Please:
Pump with zeal and fervency the bellows
Let not down, each one your fellows
Lose not flavor lest trampled ye be
Pray in His name with two or with three...
Exhort ye daily and daily be exhorted
Lest the spirit of Demas leave thee extorted
Communion not with Diotrophes keep
Least love grow cold and faith slump in sleep
