February 26, 2002
Our friend, a doctor, says he loves working with people who have addictions because “treating them is a game.” He explains that an addict will eventually agree to treatment, but only because he secretly thinks he can get out of it. This doctor likes to “out-manipulate” addicts and “put them in a position of giving up their will.”
Does this treatment succeed? Perhaps some people are freed from addictions, but I’m not sure anyone actually gives up their will. God gave us freedom to make choices and unless physically forced or chemically induced, our will is too strong to easily take from us. Perhaps some would say this doctor is doing a bit of “god-playing” with his treatment. He backs the addict into a corner leaving only one clear option. The patient sees he must choose cooperation and abandon his addiction. Or is “god-playing” an appropriate term? Does God work like that?
In the New Testament book of Romans, the Apostle Paul talks about some who commit gross kinds of sin. He explains in chapter one how “God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts” and “to a depraved mind.” He explains how consequences are a “due penalty for their perversion.”
In other words, if a person wants to persist in doing wrong, God will not necessarily interfere. In fact, He might pull back all help and let that person become totally addicted to their sin. This is one opportunity He gives us to change our minds about doing things His way. He lets us find out that our way does not work.
Why would God do let anyone become addicted? The passage gives some answers. First, letting people go into deep sin is a revelation of His wrath. If people reject God and the dangers of sin and “suppresses the truth by their wickedness,” God reveals the results of their rejection: they become slaves to the very thing they wanted the freedom to do.
A second reason is that God makes Himself known to everyone through creation. The passage says, “ . . . what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”
It goes on to explain that some, “although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Rejection of God’s revelation brings blindness to spiritual truth. In that darkness, people succumb to habits and substances that become their gods. These sins bind them like slaves.
How does God release people from that bondage? In this case, those who are enslaved by an addiction can start loosening their chains by acknowledging God as Creator. As they do, they must also admit that He has a claim on their lives.
Another thing an addict can do is be thankful, not only for life and its good things but also for their problems. Even though they used an addiction to escape from them, these problems can be a driving force in a better direction — to God instead of to their habit.
God does not play mind-games. We cannot accuse Him of manipulation. He knows how to pull desperate people out of the clutches of an addiction. The human side is to recognize and admit helplessness, even admit being out of control and not wanting to stop. Then can call to God for help. God’s part is not backing people into a corner — we get there ourselves. Instead, He hears our cry for help and gladly works in us — making us to not only want His will but also setting us free so we can do it.
Showing posts with label unwilling to change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unwilling to change. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 23, 2018
Friday, May 5, 2017
Power to change ................ Parables 584
(Tear sheet has no date)
My brother the skeptic says scandal in the American White House is not a new thing. He named incidents in the past and asserts, correctly or not, that the current president will never reform or change. He implies a bad apple is always a bad apple.
In a different context, a church is looking for a suitable pastor. Someone cautioned them that “Past actions determine future behavior.” In other words, watch out for the flaws in the previous ministry of any potential candidate. They will continue the same pattern in your church.
Howard Hendricks, a well-known Christian speaker, writer and professor at a large seminary says, “Change is the one thing people resist the most, yet for Christians, change is our destiny.” He firmly believes there is hope, both for fallen presidents and others who seem to be stuck in a rut.
The Bible is filled with stories of change. David was a shepherd who became king of Israel. He had his faults. When he was a teenager, his brothers thought he was impertinent and self-seeking. As king, he fell into sin because he could not resist beautiful Bathsheba. Yet God changed him and eventually called him “a man after My own heart.”
Saul, in the New Testament, also changed. His story starts with him on a vendetta to kill all the Christians he could find. In hateful rage, he was on his way to Damascus when the Lord stopped him. Within moments, Saul was on his knees in submission. God changed his motives, his character, and even his name. He became Paul, a great man of God who loved God’s people with all his heart and spent his life serving them.
What accounts for the transformation of a person’s life. Is it turning over a new leaf? Certainly the Bible tells us to change, to think differently, to behave in a manner that pleases God and does good toward others.
However, there is a part of us that we are unable to change. It is that deep-rooted resistance, not only to change, but also to God and to the things of God. Romans 3 says God looks at us and declares, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
Because this is true, God offers to change us. He does it by giving us new life. Jesus called it a new birth. Paul described it this way: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
The Bible clearly teaches that we are saved from our sinful rebellion and the judgment that is on sin by God’s grace, not by anything we do: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Paul said, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” He added that nothing he could do “means anything; what counts is a new creation.”
For some, abandoning the “fun” of sin sounds impossible but it can be done. The Bible says Moses “chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” For him, short-term sensual pleasures were no match against freedom from sin’s bondage or against the hope of eternal life.
Change does mean doing things a different way, abandoning old habits and getting in step with the plan of God but whatever else change brings, we do not have to try and do it ourselves. Our most earnest efforts cannot be compared with the transforming power of God’s grace.
My brother the skeptic says scandal in the American White House is not a new thing. He named incidents in the past and asserts, correctly or not, that the current president will never reform or change. He implies a bad apple is always a bad apple.
In a different context, a church is looking for a suitable pastor. Someone cautioned them that “Past actions determine future behavior.” In other words, watch out for the flaws in the previous ministry of any potential candidate. They will continue the same pattern in your church.
Howard Hendricks, a well-known Christian speaker, writer and professor at a large seminary says, “Change is the one thing people resist the most, yet for Christians, change is our destiny.” He firmly believes there is hope, both for fallen presidents and others who seem to be stuck in a rut.
The Bible is filled with stories of change. David was a shepherd who became king of Israel. He had his faults. When he was a teenager, his brothers thought he was impertinent and self-seeking. As king, he fell into sin because he could not resist beautiful Bathsheba. Yet God changed him and eventually called him “a man after My own heart.”
Saul, in the New Testament, also changed. His story starts with him on a vendetta to kill all the Christians he could find. In hateful rage, he was on his way to Damascus when the Lord stopped him. Within moments, Saul was on his knees in submission. God changed his motives, his character, and even his name. He became Paul, a great man of God who loved God’s people with all his heart and spent his life serving them.
What accounts for the transformation of a person’s life. Is it turning over a new leaf? Certainly the Bible tells us to change, to think differently, to behave in a manner that pleases God and does good toward others.
However, there is a part of us that we are unable to change. It is that deep-rooted resistance, not only to change, but also to God and to the things of God. Romans 3 says God looks at us and declares, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
Because this is true, God offers to change us. He does it by giving us new life. Jesus called it a new birth. Paul described it this way: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
The Bible clearly teaches that we are saved from our sinful rebellion and the judgment that is on sin by God’s grace, not by anything we do: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast.”
Paul said, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” He added that nothing he could do “means anything; what counts is a new creation.”
For some, abandoning the “fun” of sin sounds impossible but it can be done. The Bible says Moses “chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.” For him, short-term sensual pleasures were no match against freedom from sin’s bondage or against the hope of eternal life.
Change does mean doing things a different way, abandoning old habits and getting in step with the plan of God but whatever else change brings, we do not have to try and do it ourselves. Our most earnest efforts cannot be compared with the transforming power of God’s grace.
Friday, October 7, 2016
Electing Leaders .......... Parables 494
December 5, 1995
Every election, disgruntled Canadians (and Americans) look for a special leader. They want improvements in every area from employment to Medicare — without increased personal cost.
The Israelites living in Egypt had the same wants. Joseph, their previous special leader, saved them from famine in their own land. He moved them to the fertile Nile delta where they enjoyed a lush lifestyle.
A few generations later, a new leader decided to make slaves of them. Although God blessed them with increased numbers, they continued to pray, sacrifice their lambs and look to Him for deliverance, both from forced labor and from this new Pharaoh who was ordering all their male babies tossed into the Nile.
One baby escaped. The Pharaoh’s daughter found little Moses, took pity and without knowing it, hired his own mother to nurse him. He was trained to be the next Pharaoh but God had other plans; Moses became the next special leader of Israel.
God’s people were excited. This man was going to take them out of bondage and back to the land God had promised them. Their excitement quickly faded when they faced the cost of freedom: a terrifying escape from Pharaoh and his armies, a dry trip across a barren desert with only manna to eat, and finally a need to battle “giants” before repossessing their land.
They provoked God’s anger by looking for another leader. They complained, “We sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you (Moses) have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” Out of that entire generation, only two made it to the land of promise.
Hundreds of years later, their descendants were again looking for a special leader. They had experienced another exile and another bondage, this time in Babylon for seventy years. Their captors restricted their sacrifices and made rules against their praying, yet God heard their cries. With leadership of men like Ezra, they were able to rebuild their homeland.
By 400 B.C., the nation entered yet another bondage. God was silent. No prophets were on the scene repeating His promise of a great Deliverer. The Greeks arrived and changed their nation. Then Rome ruled with an iron hand. The people longed for deliverance from political oppression, prayed and sacrificed their lambs, but saw no sign of a special leader.
Finally, another baby was born. The shepherds found Him first. The magi (Persian king makers) gave Him gifts, but the Roman leader tried to kill Him. The child escaped and grew to manhood. One day, John the Baptist declared Him the promised One, the great Deliverer, “the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.”
This was their special leader, sent by God to save them from their greatest bondage — not the rule of Rome but the tyranny of personal sin.
This freedom comes at a price too. Jesus called for repentance. People must turn from sin and from ruling their own lives, and embrace Him as their Lord and Messiah. Most of them said, “We will not have this man rule over us.”
Israelites or not, people are still looking for a special leader — who can produce paved roads, free medical care, and all the benefits of high living without the cost of tightened belts and self-discipline. Many still reject Jesus because they would rather have free indulgence in their sin (and be in bondage to it) than serve Him.
Perhaps today’s leaders can find comfort in the fact that even the Son of God could not please disgruntled people — who want heaven on earth without cost or without change to their lifestyle.
Every election, disgruntled Canadians (and Americans) look for a special leader. They want improvements in every area from employment to Medicare — without increased personal cost.
The Israelites living in Egypt had the same wants. Joseph, their previous special leader, saved them from famine in their own land. He moved them to the fertile Nile delta where they enjoyed a lush lifestyle.
A few generations later, a new leader decided to make slaves of them. Although God blessed them with increased numbers, they continued to pray, sacrifice their lambs and look to Him for deliverance, both from forced labor and from this new Pharaoh who was ordering all their male babies tossed into the Nile.
One baby escaped. The Pharaoh’s daughter found little Moses, took pity and without knowing it, hired his own mother to nurse him. He was trained to be the next Pharaoh but God had other plans; Moses became the next special leader of Israel.
God’s people were excited. This man was going to take them out of bondage and back to the land God had promised them. Their excitement quickly faded when they faced the cost of freedom: a terrifying escape from Pharaoh and his armies, a dry trip across a barren desert with only manna to eat, and finally a need to battle “giants” before repossessing their land.
They provoked God’s anger by looking for another leader. They complained, “We sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you (Moses) have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” Out of that entire generation, only two made it to the land of promise.
Hundreds of years later, their descendants were again looking for a special leader. They had experienced another exile and another bondage, this time in Babylon for seventy years. Their captors restricted their sacrifices and made rules against their praying, yet God heard their cries. With leadership of men like Ezra, they were able to rebuild their homeland.
By 400 B.C., the nation entered yet another bondage. God was silent. No prophets were on the scene repeating His promise of a great Deliverer. The Greeks arrived and changed their nation. Then Rome ruled with an iron hand. The people longed for deliverance from political oppression, prayed and sacrificed their lambs, but saw no sign of a special leader.
Finally, another baby was born. The shepherds found Him first. The magi (Persian king makers) gave Him gifts, but the Roman leader tried to kill Him. The child escaped and grew to manhood. One day, John the Baptist declared Him the promised One, the great Deliverer, “the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.”
This was their special leader, sent by God to save them from their greatest bondage — not the rule of Rome but the tyranny of personal sin.
This freedom comes at a price too. Jesus called for repentance. People must turn from sin and from ruling their own lives, and embrace Him as their Lord and Messiah. Most of them said, “We will not have this man rule over us.”
Israelites or not, people are still looking for a special leader — who can produce paved roads, free medical care, and all the benefits of high living without the cost of tightened belts and self-discipline. Many still reject Jesus because they would rather have free indulgence in their sin (and be in bondage to it) than serve Him.
Perhaps today’s leaders can find comfort in the fact that even the Son of God could not please disgruntled people — who want heaven on earth without cost or without change to their lifestyle.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)