March 21, 2010

To Live is Christ — zealous for holiness

If anyone wants a quick and visible answer to prayer, I would tell them, “Ask God to show you what is wrong with your life and attitudes — and then duck.”

I don’t pray like that very often. In fact, I’m as guilty as the next person of going to God with my shopping list asking for all sorts of things that would make life easier and make me feel better. But when those prayers seem like they are bouncing off the ceiling, I know that I have somehow lost touch. It might be just the selfishness of my prayers, but usually it goes deeper than that. I need His to show me where I have stepped out of His will.

God is happy to answer a prayer for correction, not because He is a meanie just waiting to jump all over me, but because He loves me. He wants me to be free from the bondage of sin and selfishness. He says,

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. (Revelation 3:19)
In this verse, zealous means to be as eager about getting rid of my sin as He is, having the same holy indignation whenever I do something that violates His will as He does. To have that zeal, I also need another kind of zeal — a zeal to know His will in the first place.

Peter wrote this, “Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious” (1 Peter 2:1–3).

One look at a hungry baby and I know how intense a zeal he is talking about. A baby will die without milk. If I don’t read the milk of the Word, my spiritual life will shrivel. If I don’t know what God says about sin, I’m apt not to recognize it, or if I do, will find it easy to rationalize away or make excuses for; either way, I keep sinning.

Reading the Word of God produces growth as Peter says, but it also rebukes and chastens me because it shows me the high standard of God and where I fall short. I need that kind of food too.

When I see it, I’m supposed to repent. Repentance is turning from sin to God, changing direction. If I didn’t read the Bible, I might be afraid of doing that. What will God want from me? Will He ask me to do things that I don’t want to do? The Word of God helps me know what God is really like. As I read about Him, I know I am safe to make this choice. I don’t need to be fearful about correction and change. He loves me and does what He does for my good.

Way back when the first sin was committed, Satan disguised as a serpent hinted to Eve that God really didn’t want the best for her, that eating the forbidden fruit would be a good thing, a better thing than God’s will. Satan’s tactics have not changed. He still tries to get me to think that God’s dealings with me are not as good for me as what He forbids, and that sin is a better choice. Of course, he doesn’t call it sin.

My only weapon of defense against such nonsense is the truth from Scripture. Jesus used Scripture this way also. When Satan threw things at Him to get Him to sin, Jesus used Scripture in response. Each lie was doused with the Word of God.

To live is Christ means to use His tactics against the enemy, but it also means to have a zeal for holiness in the first place, a zeal that makes me want to defeat sin as much as He does. To do that, I need the Holy Spirit and the Word of God to produce in me that deep desire to be like Jesus.

No comments: