GOD DOESN’T GIVE UP ON YOU

When you go through difficult times in life you may question God.  You may question His whereabouts.  You may question His promises and faithfulness.  The good news is that He hasn’t left you alone in your trouble.  Notice what God said to Jeremiah when he told the people that God would discipline them for their selfish choices and rebellious attitudes:  “When you tell the people all these things, they will ask, ‘… What have we done to deserve such treatment? What is our sin against the Lord our God?’  “Then you will give them the Lord’s reply: ‘It is because … you stubbornly follow your own evil desires and refuse to listen to me.   So I will throw you out of this land and send you into a foreign land where you and your ancestors have never been … “But the time is coming,” says the Lord, “when people who are taking an oath will no longer say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who rescued the people of Israel from the land of Egypt.’ Instead, they will say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, who brought the people of Israel back to their own land from the land of the north and from all the countries to which he had exiled them.’ For I will bring them back to this land that I gave their ancestors” (Jer.16:10-15 NLT).

This prophecy has now become history.  The people of Israel have returned to the land promised them by the Lord and have become a nation again.  What stands out to me is that God didn’t abandon His people; He disciplined them.  He never disowns His people.  Though He judges them they’re still His.  He keeps His promises and brings His people back in line with His sovereign will.  He restores them.

The Lord disciplines His children because He loves them, but He will never abandon them.  Hebrews 12:11-13 (NLT) reminds us of the results of His discipline:  No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful!  But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.  So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees.  Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong.

When times get hard, whether the Lord is disciplining you or testing your faith, know that He hasn’t left you.  You’re still His, and He will restore you and your strength. 

In the middle of the trouble instead of stubbornly following your own desires and refusing to listen to God, tenaciously follow Jesus and refuse anything that keeps you from listening to Him.  In His timing He will restore you.

YOU HAVE AN ASSIGNMENT FROM HEAVEN

“Life is worth nothing unless I use it for doing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus.  The work of telling others the good news about God’s mighty kindness and love” (Acts 20:24 TLB).

Connecting people with God is a part of every believer’s life purpose.  We each can do three things to carry out this part of our life purpose:

1. ACCEPT YOUR MISSION.

The moment you become a believer your job is to tell other people about Christ.  The moment you become a believer that mission kicks in.  And in today’s world opportunities abound to express the Good News of Christ through many avenues.  That’s our mission.

2. GO WITH GOOD NEWS.

Reasons we give for not talking about our faith are that we feel shy or insecure or afraid of what others will think of us or rejection.  But these aren’t the real reasons we don’t tell others the good news.  The real reason is we forget how good the good news really is.  We become comfortable and complacent with it and we forget what a deal we really have.  If we’ll think about it and realize how good it is, we can’t help but tell people about it.  It’s such good news. 

The Good News can be summarized in three words:

Fulfillment, Freedom, and Forgiveness.  This is what everyone wants.  As a follower of Jesus you have these.  You have what everybody in the world is looking for.  It just needs to be explained in terms so people can see how much they benefit from knowing God. 

3. LOVE PEOPLE.

The right motive for telling others the Good News is love.  We do it out of love.  For Christ's love compels us, (2 Corinthians 5:14).  God has never made a person that didn’t matter to Him. 

God loves them.  Jesus died for them. 

When as a believer you realize that your mission is to tell others of Christ, and one day, since God told us to do this, He’s going to say to you, “Did you bring anybody else to heaven with you?” you realize this is a major part of your life. 

When you say “God, I’m available to share the Good News with anybody, anywhere, anytime in a natural way,” life becomes a great adventure.

THE HUMBLED, THE HONORED

“If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world.  You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God … The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain” (Deut. 28:1-2, 8 NLT).

When Moses told the people of Israel to honor and obey the Lord God, he told them that the Lord would bless them.  The principle of honoring and obeying the Lord and being blessed by Him is expressed in James 4:10 (NLT), Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.   If we’ll dig out the “how to” principles from Deuteronomy 28, we find some practical application for how humbleness brings honor.

What does it take to obey and be honored?  It takes:

Heart and soul

If you listen obediently to the voice of God, your God, and heartily obey … Deut. 28:1a (NLT)

Put your energy into it.

Care

… carefully follow … Deut. 28:1b

Get clear on God’s instructions so that you can follow them.

Attention

pay attention to the commands of the Lord your God … Deut. 28:13

Sometimes we listen but don’t pay attention and therefore it doesn’t make a difference in our lives.  We must pay attention to what God says in His Word with the objective of understanding what to do with what He says.

Alignment

Don’t swerve an inch to the right or left from the words that I command you today by going off following and worshiping other gods. Deut. 28:14 (Mes)

Avoid detours and ditches.

Enthusiasm

… serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, Deut. 28:47 (NLT)

Count your blessings to prompt your enthusiasm to serve the Lord.

THE ADVANTAGE OF LIMITATIONS

Paul said in 2 Cor. 12:7-10, “In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong”.

Impediments and limits to our abilities and opportunities come in a thousand different forms.  Sometimes we complain about what limits us and impedes us from doing more for the Lord in serving people and serving Him.  Some of those hurdles and hindrances we cause ourselves from our sin and dumb choices.  Others are allowed by the Lord.  The goal is not to try to overcome them all.  The goal is to learn to trust God’s strength in the middle of them. 

Three things we can do:

1) Change what you can change.  For example Timothy had a stomach condition, and Paul told him to take some medicine (wine) for it in order to do what he could to make it better (1 Tim. 5:23). 

2) Pray that God would change the situation.

He may but then He may not, as in Paul’s case.

The point is that after doing your part to try to change the situation and having prayed about it and it doesn’t change, then realize God has entrusted to you whatever doesn’t change to cause you to trust in His strength and wisdom.  When we realize this, we can learn to accept it.  But there is more to be done with that limitation, that imperfection, whatever it is that causes you periodic frustration. 

3) Choose to be glad you’ve been entrusted with it.  Why?  Because it’s then that you surrender to the power of Christ.  It’s then that you truly place yourself under His provision and infinite wisdom and power.  It’s then that His power works through you and accomplishes His purpose in you and through you for His glory and your good (Rom. 8:28).  And there’s one other benefit:  Those limits and impediments let you know God is with you and is at work in you.  He’s not distant.  He is involved with you.  Let it be reassuring to you of His love and power and wisdom and presence. 

Every one of us has a tendency to exalt ourselves.  You can be the least known Christian in the world, and God will still entrust to you limits and impediments to keep you from exalting yourself so that you will learn to rely on God’s grace and exalt Him.  But it’s there that we learn how to live life to the fullest with God’s strength flowing through us.

YOUR ONE AND ONLY GOD

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 strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Moses told the people what God wants.  He wants them to love Him completely.  Jesus reiterated this commandment for all of His followers.  God is one, not many, and He is to be the only God in our lives. 

How do we express that God is our only God?  We love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength.  We keep what He says on our hearts.  We teach His truths to our families.  Make God’s words visible around your home.  Place verses of Scripture on the refrigerator, on your desk, on the nightstand, on the mirror, wherever.  By doing this, God’s words stay on our minds and hearts so that we’ll be influenced by them to obey Him.  Our disposition will have a better chance at being guided towards the Lord’s ways. 

Do not let kindness and truth leave you … Write them on the tablet of your heart (Proverbs 3:3 NAS).   Make God’s Words noticeable to yourself and your family.  That’s how we can keep God’s Words in our hearts and in our everyday living, and love Him as our God.

YOUR WORK – YOUR CALLING

Whatever you do, put your whole heart and soul into it, as into work done for God, and not merely for men—knowing that your real reward, a heavenly one, will come from God, since you are actually employed by Christ (Colossians 3:23-24 Ph).

You will not find anywhere in the Bible where it says that all Christians are to withdraw from participation in everyday life and work.  On the contrary, your work is essential to your spiritual life.  Jesus called a few fishermen to leave their trade, but it was a special call for a specific few, limited to Jesus’ ministry on earth.  Many others became followers of Jesus while continuing their work as soldiers, tent makers, tradesmen, salesmen, retailers, etc… 

Christ coming on the scene as a human being, with all the physical needs, skills, and temptations we all share tells us that the church is not about calling the material world evil and then assuming God is not engaged in our interaction with the material world.  Money is not evil in itself.  However, the “love of money” is the source of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10). 

The danger for us is that we may separate our material temporal living on earth from our spiritual living.  We may place our material part of life in the category of nonspiritual.  Consequently you may value the work you do in the world, but you don’t see a spiritual dimension in that work.  A Christian may go to church on Sunday to be spiritual, but the rest of the week he goes to work in the world and mostly shelves his spirituality. 

Yet when God came to earth as Christ Jesus, He joined divinity and humanity, and He worked in time and space.  He continues to work in our times and spaces.  Therefore to be a follower of Jesus you cannot ignore any part of your time-bound, material existence – certainly not your work – as being nonspiritual.  Theologian Abraham Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, Who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” 

Your work, your job, your occupation belongs to God and is valued by Him, and He is with you in it.  Your work is no less spiritual because it deals with the material world.  It’s good and of the Lord not just because it’s a way to be provided for, but also because it’s a place of service to others, it’s a place where we encounter the sinfulness of humanity such that it points us to God’s salvation and strength, it’s a mission field to lead others to Christ, and it motivates us to learn to trust God and to follow His ways. 

God doesn’t work in a vacuum.  He works through you.  He works through your work.  He serves others through your work.  He influences others toward Christ through your work.  He shows His grace to others through your work.  He brings glory to Himself through your work.  You are appointed and planted in your work in the world to connect people with God.  Your work is an honorable calling.

GUTSY CHRISTIANS

And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Romans 8:17 (NLT)

In our society we may wonder if we share in the suffering of Christ.  After all in our community I don’t know of anyone who is imprisoned for the cause of Christ and being tortured for Him.  So what does it mean that we Christ-followers share in the suffering of Christ?  The truth is that all followers of Christ share in His suffering.  What it means is that we accept the disgrace and the humility of the crucified life for Christ’s sake.  He said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

What the Lord produces in our lives and what we are taught in the Scripture runs headlong into the ways of the world around us, and the world pushes back.  This is Christ-like suffering.   Sharing in the suffering of Christ hurts but it also makes us more like Him, and it affirms that we are heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ, and we will share His glory one day.