Sunday’s message (April 11) raised thoughtful questions from a couple of church members. They indicated that the three circles diagram, as it relates to the family, was helpful but wondered how they could go about moving from one circle to the other or how they could encourage a spouse to move from one circle to the other.

             First make sure you are interested in your own level of involvement before you become interested in your spouse’s.  The parable of the mote and the beam (Matt. 7:3) is instructive here.  All of us need to be committed spouses and none of us are as committed as we need to be.  So pay attention to the person you see in the mirror before you pay attention to the person sitting across the table from you.  The beam in our own eyes always needs some work.

             As to how you go about moving yourself in the direction you should go, let’s look at I Corinthians 2:14 – 3:3.  These verses describe three spiritual positions.  The first is the position of the natural man. He is lost, separated from Christ, and does not have the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14).  The second position is the man of flesh or the carnal Christian (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).  This man is born again and will go to heaven when he dies but is centered in himself rather than in the Lord.  The third position is the spiritual man (I Corinthians 2:15-16) who is centered in the Spirit of God and has the mind of Christ.  In order to move from being the natural man to being a Christian, you must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.  In order to move from being a carnal Christian to being a spiritual Christian, you must surrender to the Lordship of Christ.  The natural man does not have Christ.  The carnal man does not have Lordship.  The spiritual man has Jesus Christ as Lord because he is willing to do anything the Lord wants.

             The same principles apply to the family and your level of involvement. The person who is an interested spouse and has been one for a while may be a person who has gotten comfortable in being a carnal Christian (focused primarily on flesh/self) or he may be a person who is lost and separated from Christ.  Only you can know which condition you are in.  If you are lost, in order to move beyond being a merely interested spouse to involved, make sure you are born again.  Can you be specific about the time you repented of your sins and received Christ through faith?  Are you trusting good religious feelings (which EVERYBODY has) or are you trusting the Lord?  If you are born again, sincerely ask the Lord to help you focus on your wife and children more than on yourself.

             The involved spouse is frequently a high level carnal Christian.  He is interested in what he can do for the family in his own power.  His motives are excellent, but his methods and means are lacking.  His methods are not generated by the Holy Spirit.  It isn’t that he doesn’t have a good heart, it is that he doesn’t have the power of God in order to carry out the desires of his heart.  That’s why oftentimes he finds his efforts to be less than joyful.  So the person who is the involved spouse, who I am assuming has been born again, needs to surrender to the Lordship of Christ by telling God you surrender to Him and are willing to do whatever He wants you to do.  Ask God to give you the power of His Spirit and to show you how to live the Christian life in your family in the power of Christ.  The surrendered spouse is the “committed” spouse.  He (she) is the person who has received Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord and is walking in the Lordship and in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. 

             Whatever change needs to occur in your life begins with prayer and proceeds by continuous prayer.  To ask the Lord to do this work in your life is very important, and this goes both for which stage of church life you are in or which stage of family life you are in.  I hope this helps. 

             I’m going to speak to that this coming Sunday and perhaps that will make it even clearer.  I’m grateful for the interest shown by the two people who asked me this question.  I love hearing from you.  I pray God’s blessings on you getting to the committed core in both the church and family, the two most important teams in your life.

1 John 1:5-10  

          The first sermon from 1 John covered the reality of the Christian life as an experience with God.  The second half of this chapter deals with the Christian life as a different experience with sin.  It’s important that you read this part of the chapter also and understand how it applies to your life.  Let me help.

             I’m well aware that when the subject of sin is raised, gloom and doom is anticipated.  It is actually no gloomier than raising the subject of smallpox when a 100 percent effective cure is available.  Sin is a gloomy subject only for the prideful who don’t want to admit they have a problem they cannot solve on their own.  The doctrine of sin is really the most practical and helpful doctrine in Scripture.  Nothing sets you up for miserable heartbreak in life like denial of the reality of sin.  When we believe life is rosy or everybody is good and just occasionally messes up a little, we are sure to be not just disappointed but to be gut punched.  When we understand what 1 John 1:5-10 teaches about sin, we understand it is the most fixable problem any of us will ever face.  However, it is also a problem that we MUST deal with honestly and successfully.  This cannot be done apart from the grace of Jesus Christ.

             But we have the grace of Christ.  In it we are able to establish a new relationship that is not casual (I’m only human) but secure (in my sinful humanity I am confident enough in God’s love to be able to quickly and easily recognize and confess my sins).  What has God done to make this possible?

             Verses 5 – 6 teach that the new relationship is a RELATIONSHIP OF LIGHT.  We want God to shine the light of His truth and holiness into every corner of our lives and point out our dirt, failures, and sins.  Verse 1:7 tells us that as believers God’s truth is light for us that enables us to look honestly at our sins, and the inability to be honest about sin means we are still in the dark.  So the first difference is we grow in our preference for honesty and clarity and our rejection of denial, dishonesty, and rationalization regarding sin.

             In your personal devotional life try saying, “Dear God, You are welcome in my life.  Please point out anything to me that displeases You. I am ready to hear anything You may have to say to me about my sin.”  Receptivity to the light of God is the first difference, and verses 8 and 10 reemphasize this idea because of open honesty with God and His Word. 

             How do we say we have no sin apart from outright denial?  We do so when we say things like my sin doesn’t matter because it’s no worse than anybody else’s or it doesn’t matter because I don’t see it doing any direct harm to anyone else. Verse 8 says the unwillingness to acknowledge and deal with sin is self-deception.  It indicates a lack of truth in us. That is, the light described in verses 5 – 7 is absent from our lives.  In verse 10 when we say we have no sin, we make God and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, a liar and indicate His Word – the Word of God – is not active and working in our lives because when it is, we will freely admit, “I am a sinner.  I have sinned.  I need God’s redeeming grace.” 

 (Continued in my next blog)

In the Scripture passage from Sunday, January 31, (Romans 6:12-14) Paul said, “Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”  Presentation has to do with who you offer yourself to. In fact, if you think about it, that’s what worship is – loving God and offering yourself to Him.  When we pass the offering plate, it’s just one way you have of offering yourself and the substance of your life to God.

  Paul is saying to us that if we present ourselves to God, we will become more like God.  On the other hand, if we present ourselves to sin, we will become more sinful. We have a tendency to think that what really matters is what we do.  But doing is always caused by something else.  It is that something else that presentation addresses. 

 This passage of Scripture teaches that we will all be determined by what we present ourselves to.  In other words, if you think all the time about money or work all the time to get money, it’s going to be very difficult for you to be generous or people-centered.  If you think all the time about drinking, it’s going to be very difficult for you to stay sober.  If you think all the time about being sophisticated, it’s going to be very difficult for you to be down to earth and available to the people around you.  So what you present yourself to, who you hang out with, what you spend time thinking about, and what you value in life are going to be the great determining factors of your life.  It’s no wonder that people who set these ungodly values are surprised by their ungodly actions when they really meant to do something else.  Good news.  If you present yourself to Jesus Christ repeatedly, guess what will happen then?  That’s right.  You’ll become more like Him, and you will do His will more readily.

             When we are born again we are given the power of the Holy Spirit so that we will be naturally drawn to God and have the ability to relate to Him.  Yet, many of us who have that natural ability don’t use it.  We’re like a person who has the capacity to be a great pitcher but never picks up a baseball or picks one up only to toss it around the yard from time to time.  If you are born again, you have the Holy Spirit.  You have the ability to present yourself to God over and over again and to find increasing joy in it.  Do you take advantage of the opportunities we offer here at the church to present yourself to God or are you just coming to Sunday school and church?  Is it a duty or is it an opportunity for you to draw near to Him and present yourself to Him? 

             The Scripture says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8).  This is the same as saying, “Present your bodies to God as an instrument of righteousness” (Romans 6:13).  That is, present yourself with the desire that God would use you for a righteous purpose.

If you were in the service this past Sunday, I made reference to a plan we have been using for several years to help us read through the Bible.  The great thing about this plan is that it includes 25 monthly reading assignment which allow a little grace if you slip up and miss a day here and there. 

The important thing is to BEGIN.  Today is the perfect time to start reading through the Bible. 

Here is a link to the guide:

http://www.shandon.org/get-involved/connecting-to-god/