ApprehendingGrace.com

I went to a political rally today. My second in about 20 years. Well, actually my second in 52 years I guess!

I am thankful that I live in a country where freedom abounds. I was able to attend the political rally without fear of repercussions. There were protestors from the other party outside the rally area and they were free to be there without fear of repercussions.

Thank You, Lord, for allowing me to live in a free land.

Thank You, Lord, for the even greater freedom you provide through Jesus. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1). Knowing Christ sets us free from the law of sin and death (Romans 8:1-2). It sets us free from being held captive as a slave to sin. It sets us free from having to pleasing anyone but the Lord. While simultaneously enabling us to freely choose to be a servant of all. What an amazing God!

 Romans 8:1-4
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the spirit.

Romans 6:17-18
But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

⁵    Trust in the LORD with all your heart
     and lean not on your own understanding;
⁶    in all your ways acknowledge him,
     and he will direct your paths.
               Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust, Lean, Acknowledge, Direct

When we trust God, leaning not on our own wisdom, but instead acknowledging him - seeking His wisdom, we can be confident that He will direct us into paths that are a perfect for us. What a great thing! I can rest in knowing this. I can quit my striving and my worrying when I am confident of this…Can’t I? Then why is it still so hard sometimes? Why am I still tempted to worry and/or take things into my own hands?

How Do I Really Trust God?

First let me tell you that it’s possible. I come from a long line of worriers. Within my family, worrying is something like a badge of honor. Somehow, worrying about someone seems to be a primary way that we show someone we care about them. When I first met my husband he affectionately called me his wart - which was short for worry wart. It didn’t take long before I decided I wanted a better nickname! So I began to intentionally work on trusting God instead of worrying. It has worked. Many years later, I am no longer Phil’s wart. Every now and then he’ll catch me slipping into patterns of worry and he’ll use the nickname, but it doesn’t happen very often any more. And trust me. Life is so much better when we forgo the worrying.

I saw a sign once that said “Worry is an incredible waste of the imagination.” I thought that was wonderful - because it’s so true. Worry uses the imagination to conjure up all the negative things that could possible happen in a given situation. Wouldn’t you rather use that imagination to think about all the positive things that could come out of a given situation? I would! So I’m going to give you a couple of steps I’ve followed, and continue to follow, that enables me to put feet on the verse we’ve been studying.

1. The first step in trusting God is to decide to trust God. This isn’t rocket science! At some point, we have to decide that God is trustworthy, based on His Word and His character and His past history with us. We have to come to the point where we don’t just say we believe Him, but we actually act like we believe Him. He says He’ll direct us. Let’s trust Him to do so. That means every time there is doubt creeping into our thoughts, we decide again that we will trust God and we stop letting our imagination go to all the negative possibilities.I remember leading a missions trip a few years ago. My dear aunt was a part of the trip. We were out of the country for ten days, and finally were back on US soil. We had just gotten on the plane that would take us home. I was sitting next to my aunt and she was looking out the window. Sometimes ignorance is bliss! My aunt saw that they did not load our luggage on the plane. The brought the luggage cart to the plane, loaded some of it, then took it away. Our luggage was still on the cart they drove away. She became anxious and told me about it. My response was born more out of tiredness than wisdom, but it proved to have wisdom in it. I simply said “Well, you can worry about that if you want to. I’m going to enjoy the flight home.” The wisdom is that we can choose to worry about things if we want to. Most of those things will work themselves out on their. We made it home. Some of us didn’t get our luggage until the next day. Not a big deal. And the truth is that most of what we worry about really isn’t a big deal. You’ve heard the phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff…and it’s all small stuff to God.” So at some point, you just have to decide that you will trust God and not worry.
2. Get to know God better. I’ve found that we trust most those we know the best. So get to know Him better than you know anybody else. You’ll learn how He has been faithful to others in the situation you’re facing. Your eyes will be opened to how He has been faithful to you in the past. You’ll even see how He has met your needs when things spun out of control in the past. God is the One who holds your future in His hands. Period. Not you, not your spouse, not your children, not your parents, not your boss, not your friends, not your pastor, not your counselor, not your job, not your hobby, not the money in your bank account, not your connections in the community, not anything that you might be tempted to depend on. God holds you and He holds your future in His hands. So get to know Him. Join a Bible study, attend church regularly, read your Bible and pray for longer periods of time one or two days a week, read other Christian books. I find that reading Christian biographies really teach me a lot about how God works and how faithful He has been throughout time.What he’s done before He’ll do again. What He’s done for anyone He can do for you. You’ve made a decision to trust God. The ability to trust Him comes through faith. Faith is increased by pursuing God consistently.

If you struggle with trusting God, choose just one situation today and decide to trust Him in that situation. Don’t try to trust Him for every need you have right now - it will be too much for you and you will undoubtedly fail to trust Him in one of those areas. Then you’ll forget all the situations you trusted Him in and you’ll feel like you’ve failed. I don’t want to set you up for failure. I want you to experience what trusting God feels like. How it is different from the way you’ve been living. So start small. Find that one situation, commit to taking that matter to God in prayer and trusting Him to reveal what, if any, action you should take. Then rest. Be confident in Him. Know He’ll answer, so you don’t have to figure out what to do in the meantime. When you’re tempted to worry remind yourself of His faithfulness and thank Him for the answer that is on the way. When you’re still tempted to worry, spend some time getting to know Him better. God is up to something in your life! He wants you to trust Him for that thing you’re most worried about.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.
      Proverbs 3:5-6

As I am doing devotions today, I am aware that I need to call a customer imminently. He called yesterday afternoon when I was out and I feel pressured to call him back immediately this morning.

Wanting to focus on devotions and NOT on the work that must begin soon, I prayed “Lord, free me from the expectations of others.” My immediate thought was…I need to be freed from the expectations I put on myself first. In reality, it’s unlikely that the customer I need to call in a few minutes is really sitting by his phone waiting for the business day to start and watching to see if I call him at the stroke of 8am. (Well, 8:15 really, because I consider it a little rude to call before someone has time to get their work-head together, which I figure takes the first 15 minutes of the day!)

In the strive for excellence…notice I said excellence, not perfection – perfection is not attainable, only God is perfect; excellence is attainable – it doesn’t mean without error, rather with minimal error and a plan for correcting and making recompense for those errors. In the strive for excellence, I can often put more pressure on myself than others do. Perhaps you are like me. How do you deal with it?

 I find that I must continually do several things:

1) Evaluate the source of my striving for excellence. If it comes from a desire to impress or please other people, my focus is probably wrong. My job (both at my place of employment and in my personal life) is to please the Lord. Sometimes that means NOT pleasing other people. If I find that I have been operating from wrong motivations, I must turn to God in repentance, asking Him to forgive me for caring more about what people think than what He thinks.

2) Remind myself that God is in control of my business, not me. Sometimes I fall into the trap of believing that I’m responsible for the success of my business. The truth is that I do lots of the work, but God is the source of my ability to get work, my ability to accomplish it, and the favor shown to me by my customers. Again, repentance is often required here when I realize that I have again fallen for the enemy’s trap.

3) Consider my life and whether it is in balance (or at least some semblence of balance). I know that when my life is in balance, there will always be work that doesn’t get done. There will always be one more request that a customer makes or one more accounting task to complete before it’s time to say “I’ve worked enough today. Now it’s time for family.” If that customer call came in because I was pursuing other things the Lord has called me to, sometimes the most appropriate thing to do is thank God for the life He’s given me, ask for grace with the customer and call him back at the earliest opportunity.

That’s my remedy for dealing with the pressure I put on myself. If you have other suggestions, let me know. We can all learn from each other. As for me, I gotta go call my customer!

Mark 9:49 “[Jesus said] For everyone will be purified with fire.” (spoken by Jesus)

“EVERYONE will be purified with fire.” That means me. That means you. No one will escape.

“Everyone will be PURIFIED with fire.” Purify means (according to the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary) “to clear from material defilement or imperfection,” “to free from guilt or moral or ceremonial blemish,” and “to free from undesirable elements.”

“Everyone will be purified with FIRE.” Burning and painful, consuming, destroying. Even a small burn from touching a hot pan is painful. Even a light burn from spending too much time in the sun is painful. And then the burned area dies away. The word “fire” is often used to mean trials or ordeals.

What is Jesus teaching? That none of us will escape the process of being freed from material defilement, guilt and other undesirable elements. Wow! That sounds like a great promise, doesn’t it? I want to be freed from the gunk in my life! I want to be free from my attachment to material things. Yes, Lord!

“OK,” Jesus says. “The process for this is by burning it away with fire.” I shrink back and say, “But Lord, isn’t there another (easier) way?”

I want to escape the fire. I want to escape the trial. I want to avoid the unpleasantness and just live on Pleasant Lane in Friendly Town in the state of Prosperity. It’s the “life I want.” I bet you do too.

But God says that those undesirable elements in my life are not removed by life on Pleasant Lane. They are removed by fire. I can choose to live on Pleasant Lane, but I won’t be purified. And somehow I think that true joy doesn’t live on Pleasant Lane. It might visit occasionally to give me a taste of what I could have if I allowed Jesus to purify me.

You see, “burning” can also mean something else – it can mean passionate, as in “burning desire.” When we choose to follow Jesus and making Him our one true, burning desire, He will purify us. He will set us free from the bondage we cling to (life, the way we want it). He knows that the bondage we cling to is the very thing that keeps us from experiencing true joy. Life, the way I want it, is too self-centered and self-focused. Life the way Christ wants me to have it is freedom and courage to lay down my life and serve others. Jesus is speaking again in Mark 17:33 and says, “Whoever clings to this life will lose it, and whoever loses this life will save it.”

So what trial are you in the middle of? Rejoice, because you know it is the process Christ is using to bring freedom!