Reaching Out [part three] ...

 “Who” is your savior?  We sometimes throw around that term very casually in our day.  We attribute the idea of being a savior to things far outside the realm of spiritual salvation.  The mayor of San Juan for instance could become known as “the savior of Puerto Rico” for her dogged persistence to bring the plight of our American brothers and sisters on that island to our attention.  She calls us to remember the destruction that continues to cause so many, so much misery, and motivates us to want to do something about it.  In that sense, perhaps it is fair, to call her the savior of her people.  Her actions are selfless.  And the work she does will lessen the suffering of many, most of whom she does not know.  Far less likely to be known as “the savior of Puerto Rico” will be our president Donald Trump, no matter what he does, or says.  He is simply not on the ground there.  Nor is he obsessed with the island’s recovery.  He is distracted, and perhaps his job requires it.  But our assessment of Donald, is not ever to be as favorable as our assessment of Carmen, because she is there, she is in the midst of it, and she sends us the messages of it every day, even when the rest of our country might have grown tired of hearing it.

But when power has been restored, when the water is clean, when gas is abundant, when medicines and food have been fully restocked … will the people of Puerto Rico truly be saved?  Or will they have simply returned to the point in which it is possible to have a lifestyle like the rest of America?  There are many homeless in Florida who do not sleep in comfortable beds, in air-conditioned rooms, benefiting from regular meals or good health care.  One could argue they could have all these things if they held down a job.  But lacking skills, and once having lost it all, it is hard to get back into a system that requires you have all these things first, in order to maintain them.  Are the homeless of Florida in need of a savior like the mayor of San Juan?  And even if she took up their cause, and restored them all to the lifestyle the rest of us take for granted, will the formerly homeless be considered saved?  I guess you must ask, saved from what?  Saved from a severe way of life, saved from the physical suffering natural destructions bring, or bad cyclical patterns that self-destruction brings.  But there is so much more we need to be saved from.

When we look inside of ourselves, at the elements or weaknesses of our character that cause us misery, we look for a different kind of savior.  In this sense, love can provide great motivation.  The love of a spouse, or the supporting love of family, might provide the strong willed of us, a reason to change a behavior that causes their circle of pain.  The alcoholic becomes the recovering alcoholic.  The drug addict becomes the recovering drug addict.  The criminal becomes the former criminal.  Love can prove to be a powerful means of motivation.  For the strong willed, a solid motivation to change, provides the catalyst to simply go cold-turkey and change errant behavior.  For the weak willed of us, the desire is there, but the ability is far from available.  In either case, what remains missing, is the change in desire that spawned and fostered the errant behavior in the first place.  Circumstances then only make regression easier, or harder.  But put into a circumstance where the previous bad behavior is easy to do again, and even the most ardent recovering criminal, or addict, is likely to fall back into the old patterns that give them a momentary spike in adrenaline, followed by a lifetime of regret.  In this case, love can motivate, but it cannot recreate who we are.  We need a bigger savior for that.

Our need demands a God-based salvation.  Our deformity of will, and perversion of thinking, demands a recreation that only our Creator will ever understand.  We will not find true salvation looking at our human counterparts.  Nor will we find it, even in the better angels of our family’s love.  Our need requires something greater, something divine, or regress we will until the core of who we are is cemented in the failures we are unable to detach from.  To rip the sin from the core of our hearts and minds and hands, we require the divine recreation that a divine redemptive love has to offer.  It is here, where all the false gods are segregated from the only real One.  For only Jesus offers to redeem us from the state in which we find ourselves.  No work on our part.  All the work on His part.  We do not need to accomplish some set of tasks first, or ever.  Our behavior changes only after He changes how we think, and how we love.  It is then we find the actions of our hands in harmony with the will of our God.  Not before, and never by our own strength.  Allah, Buddha, Ganesh, Odin, pick any other supposed deity and what you find are the demands of action first, followed only then by favor selectively pronounced.  With Jesus, favor is offered how we are, reformation conducted within us by Him from where we are, until what Jesus envisioned for us, is who we become.  There are no competing offers of this anywhere else, none that would work anyway, for our need demands true divinity to fix who we are.

The message of the gospel, encompasses this one fact alone.  The message of the gospel, given in the commission by Jesus to His followers contained only one thing.  It is Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Messiah, “who” will be our savior.  None else.  Matthew dives back into this central theme in chapter ten of his gospel picking up again in verse 32 saying … “Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. [verse 33] But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.”  To confess, to submit your own thinking to Jesus, to submit your own will to His, to understand how little you do, and how great He does on your behalf.  To understand your place, next to the place of your savior.  That is confession of Jesus Christ in the world in which you live, in any age, across any culture.  It is eternally relevant, for it is the singular way in which your life will ever be any different, or any better, than it is today.  There is no other way.  You will do nothing to save you.  The mayor of San Juan will do nothing to save you.  The pope will not.  Your parents or preacher will not, nor will your spouse.  All of your human community may work to lift you up.  But only Jesus can truly save you.

And likewise, in physics, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  If you choose to cut yourself off from the source of your salvation, you will end the possibility of your salvation.  When we exalt self, even within the Christian religion, by making statements such as we are in partnership with our God to save us.  Or that we must do some things first.  Or that we must obey in order to be saved.  We deny the power of Jesus Christ to save us.  Instead we exalt the power of self and our own actions to accomplish our salvation.  We choose not to relinquish control to the Savior, instead holding on to some portion of it ourselves.  Our obedience can never truly come, until our minds are brought into harmony with the will of God.  True obedience is not found only in our hands, it must be found in our hearts, minds, and motives as well.  We cannot obey until we love differently than we do today.  Those changes are not something we can will for ourselves.  They can only be wrought by the hand of our Creator, as we submit ourselves to Him for re-creation.  When we cut ourselves off from that, we wither in the conditions of sin we have long embraced.

In principle this should be an easy thing to digest and do.  But it is not.  It is at war with our “common sense”.  It is at war with our natural instincts.  And it is at war with Satan and his entire philosophy of life which he has drilled into us over a long period of time.  Man does not need a god.  But when connected to true salvation, as if by magic, the fury of your opposition will be revealed.  It is the sword that was predicted.  Matthew continues in verse 34 saying … “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. [verse 35] For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. [verse 36] And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.”  The family whose love you may have counted on all this time, was based on who you used to be, not upon who you are becoming when connected to Jesus.  Your changed thinking is not what your wife or husband signed up for.  Your changed priorities, and desire to sacrifice what you own for the sake of another, is not what your kids are used to, or were counting on for their own financial security. 

The true changes in you that bring you into harmony with God, as wrought by the hand of Jesus alone without your interference, make you a different creation.  And not necessarily one, your family will appreciate.  They actually prefer the old you.  And where there was no strife before, now there may be much of it.  Like Adam of old, you are faced with a dilemma of love and trust.  Matthew continues in verse 37 saying … “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. [verse 38] And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. [verse 39] He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”  Much to unpack here.  As Adam faced a choice between his love of Eve, and his trust in God, so you will face the same dilemma with family members who do not share your love and submission to Jesus Christ.  But do not fall as Adam fell, not trusting in the power of Jesus to save those who do not yet believe. 

Then there is the notion of taking up your cross.  Your beliefs in the salvation Jesus provides will have real results in who you are.  Results the world around you will not be happy with.  It is not just family that may be unappreciative it may be the world, with the force of the nation’s laws, attempting to suppress your beliefs, your speech, and your actions.  Violating the laws of the nation, in order to remain in harmony with God becomes taking up your cross.  The Roman empire put the cross upon Jesus, because they falsely believed Him a threat to themselves.  The nation in which you live, may have similar thoughts about you.  Jesus did not resist that cross.  Nor should you.  The response is not to be war, believers on one side and non-believers on the other.  The response is to be willingness to bear that cross, even to the point of death in this world.  For certainly death in this world is life in the next one.  All the while that cross was on Jesus, His only thoughts were of love for those who placed it there.  That is what harmony with God looks like.  That is what true obedience looks like.  A change of heart, and how we love.  This is what submission to the will of the Father can do within you as well.

Matthew concludes stating this is not all bad news, picking up in verse 40 … “He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me. [verse 41] He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward; and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's reward. [verse 42] And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.”  The love of God burns to demonstrate itself to us.  The rewards of salvation are not only self-evident, they are reflected in the lives of those we touch.  It is as if His love were a virus that spreads quickly, does no damage, but lifts all it touches upwards.  The savior of Puerto Rico may begin a good work, but the Savior of mankind takes it to a whole other level.  While Carmen tries to turn the air-conditioning back on, Jesus frees you from who you were while you are still in the heat, hungry, thirsty, or whatever shape you find yourself in from mansion to hovel.  Jesus is concerned with insuring your life is one worth living in the here and now.  Air-conditioning does not decide this.  It may help, but it is nothing next to the love of Jesus reflected through you.

The rewards granted even to those who do something nice to one who is connected to Jesus Christ, are a demonstration of the love of God.  Even for one who calls them self His enemy, love is shown in gratitude for something nice they do for a follower of His.  Imagine a love that deep, that is demonstrated to self-described enemies, that reaches out to them.  That offers itself in gratitude to those who do not believe, just because they have done something nice for someone who does.  Following this truism, the lives of Carmen, and of Donald, may experience the gratitude of God just because something they did helped a follower of Jesus, even if their own belief system does not include Jesus for themselves.  And based on the wide number of followers they may have helped, I am not certain if they will be able to withstand the shower of love from God that is headed their way.  For the follower of Jesus, the ability to help another is its own reward.

And so concluded the first gospel commission, the first community outreach, and you and I are equally commissioned by this same chapter in the gospel of Matthew.  The singular doctrine is still relevant, it is still good news, it still works, and it is completely wrapped up in “who” our Savior truly is, and what He longs to do within us …

 

Communion (part three) ...

An ultimate act of humility and service, as Christ washes the filthy feet of his disciples.  A last attempt to warn and reclaim a traitor that preserves his anonymity but tires desperately to let him know his plans and intentions are revealed before he can carry them out.  Now, communion must take a different turn, what will be needed now more than anything else is comfort.  With the weight of mankind’s sins beginning to bear down on Him, with His own torture and death imminent, His first thoughts are STILL for the objects of His love and not Himself.   Everything John would record in his gospel in chapter 13 starting in verse 31 and going forward would be designed to sooth the fears, boost the faith, and give comfort to those who would feel His loss so keenly.  Even here at the end of His ministry, when He is still to go through so much personal pain, so much personal trial, He is still steadfastly focused on those He loves and not Himself.  This is the incredible example of love and the nature of love that our God exemplifies.  Not only in word, but in action, in action despite all the personal trials and pain He must endure.  He will die soon.  But His larger concern is with those He will leave behind while He rests for the Sabbath in the grave.

His ultimate sacrifice for those He loves represents the pinnacle of the measurement of love in the kingdom of Heaven.  And so Jesus begins by stating this to His disciples, to teach them where true glory lies, not in the battlefield against other men, but in the battlefield against self.  In verse 31 John records … “Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. [verse 32] If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him.”  Judas had just left the communion into the darkness.  Jesus then tells his faithful few, that it will be His own death and sacrifice for those He loves that will glorify Him before the universe.  The glory of love will be seen within Him as He pays for our crimes, and provides for our restoration.  This glory is shared by the Father who sent Him in to this world and shares His mission in every act of love and sacrifice.  Both Father and Son will share in the glory, for the glory they measure is defined in the actions of love to their creations.

Jesus continues in verse 33 … “Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; …”  How appropriate that despite all the time they had spent with Him, they were barely toddlers in the faith.  How appropriate the reference to little children who do nothing for themselves and gladly rely upon their parents for everything they need.  So it is with us.  Our salvation is not a work we perform upon ourselves.  It is a work our Father performs for us, within us, and sometimes in spite of us.  We need only look to Him, like a loving toddler looks to His parents.  Our Father longs to provide for us, carry our worries, give us rest and peace and comfort and provide for our needs.  But so many of us struggle to take those burdens upon ourselves, and then fail so miserably at them.  How much better to be free not to worry, to be free to love, to be free to play with our Father who longs to just play and be with us.  That close communion and fellowship with His disciples was about to come to a close.  He was going to miss them.  They were going to miss Him.  Jesus tenderly tells them it is now time for their physical companionship and communion to come to its close.  But this is not all bad news.

Jesus continues in verse 33 “…so now I say to you. [verse 34] A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. [verse 35] By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”  The MOST important thing in all of existence is love.  Here is Jesus about to die on a cross and the ONE thing He commands of His disciples is that they LOVE one another as HE has loved them.  Christ loved in actions.  He healed the sick, thus meeting every physical need He could, without demanding payment, or service, or even faith.  He was careful never to condemn the guilty but instead to focus on their redemption.  Only moments before He could have out-ed Judas as the traitor in their midst but He would not.  Mary Magdeline had been guilty.  But He refused to condemn her.  His constant focus on all He encountered was only to show them love, and effectively love them back to redemption, without judgment or condemnation.  Christ served those He loved in absolute humility.  Christ took ownership of nothing, but gave everything.  To love each other as Christ loved us is to abandon caution and restraint and apprehension and love with the fullness of our lives.  He would die for us.  We should be willing to go that far for each other.  But Christ did more than die for us; He had the courage to live for us.  He lived a life of exemplary love and it is to this kind of life we should aspire.

Next Christ tells us, that by this kind of love for each other – to be a family by choice and not by blood – the world will know we are His.  This is HOW Christians were supposed to be known, for our unabashed love and acceptance.  Those men in that room were NOT perfect yet.  They were ALL still sinners, not just Judas who left into the night.  Their understanding of doctrines related to the mission of the Messiah Himself was STILL incorrect at that moment.  They were STILL greedy and seeking position in the anti-Roman kingdom they hoped He would rule.  They STILL valued their own safety above the loyalty they felt for their Lord.  In short, nothing about them was in the condition to deserve love, and avoid judgment or condemnation that would be well earned.  This should a model for us.  We do not need to expect perfection from the pathetic sinners we encounter before we decide we are “able” to love them.  For in truth, we are just like them.  One does not need to be doctrinally perfect to be loved.  One does not need to be completely transformed to be loved.  The character of these men would STILL lead them to do wrong.  BUT that did NOTHING to deter Christ from loving them in spite of their condition.  For only through the power of His transformational love would they ever be free from the pain of sin they embraced.  The same is true of us.  The same is true of those whose behavior and beliefs we do not agree with.  Only love can bring us, and them, to a reformation.  Condemnation does nothing to reform anyone, it only deepens the sadness.  But love can lift a person from the depths of depravity to the heights of selfless service, and give them a motive to never want to live another way. 

This was His last commandment to us.  He did not say … be sure to teach the world the proper doctrines in order that they might be saved.  For in truth, none of them were even aware what those doctrines might be; whereas the doctrine of love is the ONLY one that leads to the freedom from ALL sins, and the road to His perfection, in His time, in His methods for each of us, suited to each of us.  He did not offer this idea that we should love each other with conditions or as an optional idea.  This was a commandment, of the same variety written on tables of stone by the finger of God.  It is a reflection of how like Him we have become.  When we love without reservation, we reflect the character of Christ.  When we love like this, we do not even consider taking what is not ours, lieing, cheating, lusting, and putting our own desires ahead of others.  To love like Christ loved is to do exactly the opposite.  Instead of taking, we think of nothing but giving, for in giving we find our own joy.  It is in the making of another’s happiness that we finally find our own.  This was the model with which He was establishing the Christian church.  It was after all a “new” commandment, as we had not properly discerned it from the last ten He had written.  How different our world will be, when we finally submit ourselves to Him, and begin to see this commandment fulfilled in our characters from the inside out.

But like all great truths, we sometimes miss them entirely because we focus on the things that are important to us, instead of things that are important to God.  Christ was keenly interested in focusing His disciples on continuing to love each other.  That was what was most important in His words.  But Simon Peter was still hung up on the words that preceded them.  He was still pondering the ominous ideas of Christ leaving and him being unable to follow.  To this idea Peter responds in verse 36 … “Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards. [verse 37] Peter said unto him, Lord, why cannot I follow thee now? I will lay down my life for thy sake.”  For Peter, even the grave was not something he would allow to separate him from Christ.  But unfortunately, this boast was based in the strength of his humanity, not in the humility of his submission.  Therefore it was subject to error, and a revelation of pride, even if the pride was of a spiritual nature.

Christ responded in verse 38 … “Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me thrice.”  Christ reveals the future to Peter here and predicts where his human strength will lead him.  We can do nothing without Christ.  We can do nothing, even of a spiritual nature.  We will achieve no conversions in our missions, nor transformations in the mirror, without Christ.  Peter made his boast believing it to be true.  But it was not true, for it was founded in his own ideas, thinking, and will.  None of these would prove adequate when the testing time began.  Only through the power of Christ can we withstand the testing that will surely find us all.  In those times we must throw ourselves upon Christ and seek for Him to fight our battles.  Or we will find ourselves like Peter and Judas, defeated by our own ideas, and faith in ourselves, our own wisdom, our own strength.

But the focus of the communion was not intended to depress Peter or the others with the reality of their human weaknesses.  It was to focus them on the beauty of what He would accomplish on their behalf.  While chapter 13 ends with these prophetic words to Peter, chapter 14 immediately refocuses their minds back to the truth of the rewards of His mission.  Jesus continues in verse 1 of chapter 14 … “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.”  Perhaps one of the most quoted scriptures in all the Bible.  Do not be worried or dismayed at your own human weakness.  You believe in God.  You can believe that Christ can overcome the weakness inherent in you.  This is the most precious text in scripture and perhaps so often quoted not for what follows but for what has already been said.  It is not the mansions we need.  It is the redemption we need.  It is the recreation from the sin-sick-slaves to the freedom to love without restraint or limit.  We do not need a license to continue in our depravity, but instead a surety that He will free us from it.  We believe in God.  We can also believe in the salvation Christ offers us, in His promises to change us, to redeem us, to forgive us, and to re-create us so that even forgiveness will become a thing of the past.

Jesus continues in verse 2 … “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. [verse 3] And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. [verse 4] And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.”  Heaven is NOT about the beauty of architecture and precious gems.  It is about COMMUNION.  It is about fellowship.  It is about being WITH God full time forever and ever, never to be parted again.  The mission of Christ was not to be accomplished only to keep us distant from Himself on some remote planet at the far end of the universe.  We are going home.  To our real home.  To the place where we belong.  To the side of our God.  We will know where He goes, because we will be able to see it with our own eyes.  We will live with Him where He lives.  To accomplish this, He leaves this world to prepare homes for us in His.  He is making His city ready for humans to live in.  We need things like water, air, food, gravity.  But our greater need is to be loved, and to love.  We get that from Him.  And He intends to share that with us for all eternity by building us a home right where He lives.  Heaven, where gold is nothing more than concrete, and companionship is worth more than all of it combined.   This is the beauty of the reward of His mission.  It is not about making us wealthy in His eternal city.  It is about bringing us home to be with Him forever.  We could live in mud huts if we were close to Him.  But love is not satisfied with providing us with such meager accommodations; instead He finds His joy in making our homes special for each of us.

And communion was not over yet …

Recovery in a Petri Dish ...

In general, surgeries are performed in a sterile environment and recovery is done under close examination and in as clean and germ-free an environment as is possible.  This is done to protect the patient from a further infection and give them every opportunity to heal properly.  But in our world, our spiritual Doctor must perform His work in us under the worst of conditions, and our recovery is too often confined to a petri dish where every risk of infection is ever present and ready to retake the lost ground our Lord gives us.  The same sins we are made free from surround us on all sides.  The same friends and family that may have inadvertently inspired us to stray remain ever present in our lives, and often do the same things and say the same words that in times past helped lead to our downfalls.  So how are we to recover without relapse?  And if relapse occurs, does it negate the idea of re-creation and reformation in the first place?

For too long many Christians have espoused the idea that only isolation away from sin will help to keep them clean from it.  The idea being that a recovering alcoholic is less likely to drink in church, than in a bar.  If one avoids going to a bar, or near a liquor store, then one may avoid drinking again, or at least stand a better chance at it.  This seems to make sense.  But what happens when overindulgence of a chemical is not the sin we discuss, what happens when lust itself is the culprit?  Under this kind of logic, one would have to avoid contact with members of the opposite sex entirely.  But even if a man prone to lust avoids contact with women who attract him, he will still encounter a barrage of images in advertising, media, and the internet that could re-stoke his former passions.  Even in the church a heart prone to lust has many objects to find itself in error with.  The only way then to deny oneself the opportunity to relapse might be to move to a cabin in the woods, drop off “the grid”, and become a self-reliant hermit.  But therein lies the problem with the isolationist approach, it is an attempt to remove the idea of relapse from the work of Christ, and place it once again in human hands.  So what then is the alternative?

Surely it makes no sense for a Christian who has been given the gift of removing a certain evil from their lives to maintain a routine that in times past was a pathway to self-destruction.  Surely we must “do” something to maintain the gift God has given us?  So what might that be?  The answer for maintaining our cure, or remaining in recovery if you will, is no different than what it was to obtain the cure in the first place.  We must remain willing to be changed, and daily ask to have our Lord continue His work within us to remove every evil from our hearts and minds.  A daily commitment to release control to God is our “part” in getting the surgery from our God, and is also our part in maintaining the cure.  No other actions on our part would ever be sufficient to keep us away from temptations.  The devil has made a career out of defeating mere mortals in the arts of temptation.  Adam and Eve were likely much more difficult prey, than you or I who suffer from 6000 years of genetic influences, and a finely tuned marketing machine from which we are unable to escape.  It is therefore no more our job to attempt to avoid relapse, than it was to attempt to avoid falling in the first place.  Our role remains one of surrender to Christ, nothing more.  We must continue to trust in His work of salvation within us.

Keep in mind that part of the cure God offers is not just the cessation of sinful actions; it is the removal of sinful desires.  When once an alcoholic, the place where they craved to drink mattered little.  In fact most chemically dependent people hide bottles or drugs in all manner of places so that it is available to them “as needed”.  Under that level of disease, avoiding a bar or liquor store was no more a cure than was going to church.  A person determined to drink, who “needs” to drink, will find a way and a time to do so no matter what other level of distractions exist.  But a person who has no desire to drink, one who finds alcohol distasteful, one whose body may even react very poorly if they do drink, is not likely to find themselves drinking in any conditions.  In short, if you don’t want it, you probably will not do it.  Where before the cure, an entire regimen of time was spent in the pursuit of a drink, after the cure this time is spent in other ways.  It is made free by the cure itself.  This is the miracle our God performs, not just the ideas of a power of self-control to restrain one’s desires, but a re-creation in the core level of what one wants.  In time, the sins we once craved lose their hold over us.  We lose the desire for them, and begin to find what we once craved now something that is entirely distasteful to us.  This is not just applied to alcoholics but to those who lust, those who perpetually lie, those who gossip, those who over-eat and are unable to change, no matter what our former weakness, the cure remains the same.

We must also remember that not all change is instant and all encompassing.  The work the Lord performs within us begins to remove evil and sins one at a time, but does not make us instantly and completely sin-free.  The work will one day reach fulfillment in us, but not by tomorrow morning.  So it is unwise to believe we have been made completely “perfect” at this moment in time.  This kind of thinking places the emphasis all too often right back on self, and inevitably leads right back to failure.  The gift of a victory over a sin, is the beginning of a pattern the Lord will develop on your behalf.  One after another after another, you will find your former interests and actions giving way to new ones, and to new ways of thinking.  Under these conditions the work of perfection is actually being accomplished within you.  But as it is, we are slowly made aware of just how diseased we were, and we remain.  The more the evil is removed from us, the more we see how deep it ran, and how all-encompassing it was as a part of who we were and still are.  It is why scripture calls for us to be willing to die to self.  As we receive victory after victory our gratitude to God grows, our worship and praise to Him for what He has done in us becomes far more genuine.  It begins to find expression not only at times of worship, but in daily opportunities to love someone else.  Those acts of loving another begin to look suspiciously like the acts of Christ in His ministry here on earth; for it is Christ who inspires them, who motivates them, and who allows us to share in them.

The sin we once engaged in, and so desired, is not removed from the world around us.  It is removed from heart within us.  When gone is our desire to sin, and in its place is a deep seated love for those who remain in sin, it is not relapse we fear anymore, it is failure to share what we have experienced in receiving the victories of God over pain.  We begin to lose our fear of temptation, and instead fear only that we are too timid to reach out to those who still suffer from what we once suffered with as well.  It is not a condemnation they will require, or threats of a punishment in hell – that is the condition they exist in today.  No, our message of effect will be an altered life, a different life, a life that is so filled with love it can now no longer be ignored or denied.  The kind of change that Christ brings to the life is indeed a light in darkness that cannot be disputed.  The former alcoholic who has no desire to drink any longer has a powerful testimony to those who think themselves in recovery.  It is not merely how many days one has been clean, but it is a fundamental re-creation of how one thinks about alcohol itself.  The man or woman who in times past knew nothing but promiscuity now finds themselves unequivocally in love and sole fidelity and devotion to their God as well as their spouse has a powerful testimony to all around them.  None need ever know the heights of their former indiscretions, but it is the renewed strength of their marriage that will inspire interest in the eyes of others.  The former pathological liar, who now finds themselves only speaking the truth couched in love, will have such a voice as the world has yet to hear.  The person who formerly was unable to control their dietary habits and now is dropping weight and becoming healthier has a diet plan of divine origin that no other fad or book could ever supplant. 

Talking about these kinds of victories in the abstract, or in the lives of those you know, is different than speaking from a passion that comes because they happened to you.  When they happen to you, your testimony becomes one of what Christ has done for YOU.  It will never be your victory.  It will always be His, done on your behalf.  Your testimony can never be about what you have conquered for you have conquered nothing, but Christ has conquered everything you needed done.  That is the message of hope you can give to others still trapped in weakness you have been freed from.  Not how you did it, for you will have no idea “how” you did it – but instead “who” did it for you.  In this case isolationism is not required for recovery.  All that is required is the genuine daily work of surrender and submission to the will of Christ.  As we allow Him greater and greater control within us we begin to lose the ideas of self, and self-reliance.  We begin to give Him the credit for the work He is doing.  We begin to develop a testimony that actually has meaning and will carry weight.  Without the cure, we have nothing much to say.  A witness of the changes in others is simply not a compelling enough reason for someone else to seek change.  But a personal testimony combined with a life that is evident of change is a hard combination to ignore.  Our witness must be lived to be effective.

The work of saving others is not something that requires a push; instead it requires a reason to find it.  Do you seek marital advice from a couple who fights more than you do, and is now seeking a divorce?  The only thing they may have to offer is what not to do.  We do not seek counsel from those we perceive to be worse off than ourselves on the topic we need help with, simply because we believe them to wise people.  If they were indeed wise, why do they not simply practice what they preach?  But when our marriage is hurting and we see a couple who has been married for many years and has a passion that can hardly be contained, a disposition of charity and giving that hardly has a rival, and a unity that only the Holy Spirit could bring between two people – those are the folks we are going to reach out to.  It does not matter if the couple who surrender to God every day thinks of themselves as formal “counselors”.  Indeed they are probably not.  For it is not the wisdom of men that enables the marriage of pure unity and love, it is Christ alone.  But it is that very message, that is just the thing our aching marriage needs to hear.  We seek it because we see the difference in their lives more so than what we find in our own.  It is how they live that inspires us to seek them out.  It is not what they say, but what we see, that makes the difference in who we seek counsel from.  This is the nature of the gospel and re-creation, and the reason the world will one day hear it so Christ can return.

Words alone will never rule the day.  Words must echo action and be substantiated within them.  When they are in harmony with each other, when the will is fully surrendered to Christ, the actions that follow are as automatic as breathing.  Our marriage does not magically improve because we wish it would, instead it improves because “how” we love our spouse is directed and altered and increased by the indwelling of Christ in us.  Even if our spouse does not share our commitment yet, they will surely notice the changes in how we love them.  Love is hard to ignore, harder still to resist.  The way we live begins to reflect the way He loves.  And it is these acts of loving others that begins to redefine us as His true servants.  No other explanation can account for the total transformation of the human heart from weakness to self-less-ness.   Instead of having our minds consumed with thoughts of fleeing our former sins, they become engaged in reaching out to those we love.  Where we have to go becomes irrelevant.  For we do not wander into bars to drink, but only as we are directed by the will of Christ to find that one lost soul who is in need.  It is not that we idly hang out in places of former weakness, nor are we there to participate in what we now find entirely abhorrent, but there is nothing and no place we would not dare to go, if a lost soul can be reached.  The lost souls will not have reason to seek counsel from those who participate with them in their weakness.  But they will have little resolve against a life they knew to be as bad as their own, that is now full of evidence of the freedom that only Christ can offer.

Christ was not found in only the palaces of the rich.  In fact He was rarely if ever found there.  Instead He was found on “the wrong side of the tracks”, in the bad neighborhoods, where the harlots, the sluts, the cheaters, the thieves, the murderers, in short where the lost were found.  Christ was not there to partake in their weakness.  He was there to offer them freedom from it.  The lost and aching souls of today will rarely be found in the pews next to you.  They do not attend church regularly.  Instead you will find them at work, at play, at places of disrepute, engaged in things you may have once thought of as “fun” and now you find only as painful.  It is there where you will encounter them, in areas of life probably not conducive to church.  It is there where they will “see” you.  They will take note of who you are and of “how” you love.  Will you genuinely care for them, or merely utter inane greetings with no care of the response?  Will you be inclined to participate in their weakness or seem to show no interest in pain, and a great relief from being freed from it?  Who you are will be evident not only in a church pew, but at work, and at play, and perhaps even in an environment that is not the best.  Why you are where you are matters to those in darkness.  To sit in a pew once a week to simply try to demonstrate your holiness offers no compelling reason for anyone else to change.  But to be there because your joy is unbridled, your testimony must find voice, to serve the needs of those who sit beside you – these are the hallmarks of an altered life, an altered heart, and a change that cannot be denied.

Where we recover will never be a perfect place, until Christ returns and remakes the world anew.  But the work of perfection in us can begin here and now, continue if the darkest of times, and find its fulfillment even before He returns, so that on that great day we are able to say … “this is He, the Lamb, who we have waited for”.  The work of perfection does not begin on that day, it reaches completion.  For those who enter the grave before they are able to see His return, they are resurrected in a state of perfection.  But for those who are still alive at His coming, the work of perfecting the character will have already reached its conclusion.  Therefore if persecution, and darkness, a world at war, and plagues that encompass the globe could not deter the Lord from finishing His work in us, why should we think our meager temptations could deter Him from starting it right now?  The freedom Christ came to offer us, was not from oppression and hardship the world is steeped in, it was from the slavery to self each of us is controlled by.  We do not require a sterile environment in which to recover, just a willingness to allow our Lord to make pure the heart within us.  We have only to become what He intends for us to become, for He will surely re-create us completely.