The application
of this message came down to three things we can do that will keep us in the
Spirit-led life, rather than falling into the trap of the sark-led life. The
first is to “witness” to God about what people have done or said. The second is
to “leave” the whole situation to God to work out according to his perfect
will. And, the third is to “join” God in whatever he is doing with “us”,
without giving any further time imagining what he should do with “them”.
As there seems
to be no end of problems enticing our sarks to take over, here are some
thoughts of encouragement to show how working through these three steps as
often as needed will, at the very least, encourage us in the direction of the
Spirit-led life.
1. Witnessing to
God
In both the
Old and the New Testaments, God requires that his people deal with conflicts,
accusations and sin by establishing everything with two or three witnesses.[2]
Under both covenants, no one can be declared guilty just on the say-so of one
person.[3]
Every matter must be established by multiple witnesses.[4]
The emphasis
on witnessing to God is that we stay within the bounds of a witness. We do not
talk to God as an accuser who knows all that another person is guilty of doing (because
we don’t). The red dragon does enough accusing of God’s children that we don’t
need to join his work. We do not talk to God as a judge, as though we know
exactly what a person has done and how they should be sentenced (only God can
do that). We do not present our opinions of what people have done, our
suspicions, our concerns, our worries, or, what our home church affectionately
calls our “column 3” perceptions.
The only thing
we can present to God as a witness is the facts of what happened, and the
effect it is having on us. We witness to God about what we saw the person do,
with no reference to why we think he or she did it. We present the objective
facts to God as real things that have happened, and we tell God all that it has
done to us.
A favorite
expression from the Scriptures in this regard is, “With my voice I cry out to the Lord; with my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him.”[5] This is the description of witnessing to God, to present the
specific complaint we have about what someone has done to us, and put the
trouble the person has caused “before
him”.
2. Leaving
it With God
The
second step is to “leave” it with God. I often hear people say that they tried
to leave something with God but, before they knew it, they had picked it right
back up again. One reason for this pattern is that we have not finished witnessing
to God about what people did to us. In other words, we try leaving a problem
with God before we have even talked to him about the problem. It isn’t really
that we want to carry the problem, it’s that we don’t know God well enough to fully
lay our complaints before him until we have that feeling of, “it was sure good
to get that off my chest.” If we do the first step first, and to completion, we
will find it easier to persevere in the second step as well.
Leaving
things with God is based on the reality of who God is and what he is like. He
is good, he is loving, he is all-wise, he has all-knowledge, he has all-power,
he is perfect in justice as well as in mercy. In other words, we leave things
with God because he is the only one who can possibly know how to figure out how
to do the right thing with so many people, problems, hidden sins, levels of
maturity, and all the surrounding plans and purposes of God that are always
working towards their fulfillment in Christ.
Paul
explains this for us in reference to a common longing to inflict vengeance on
people who have wronged us. He wrote, “Beloved,
never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written,
‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”[6] We can “leave” all wrong-doing against us to “the wrath of God” because he alone can
express wrath against sin without it being contaminated by sarkiness. At the
same time, we must understand the difference between ourselves and God when he
says, “Vengeance is mine”. That means it is not mine, or yours, or anyone
else’s. Only God has the right and authority to distribute vengeance as his
perfect wisdom has so decided.
Within
this picture there is also a promise that tells us, “I will repay, says the Lord”. Our ability to leave things with God
rests on our faith in his justice. If we tell God our troubles, and lay our
complaint before him for what people have done to us, we can only leave it with
him if we believe that he will repay.
God’s
promise to repay is just that, a promise. However, part of leaving things to
God is trusting that he will either “repay” the person for their sins if they
never turn to Jesus Christ for forgiveness; or he has already exacted payment
for that sin from Christ because that person has received Christ by repentance
and faith. Since we do not have the knowledge, wisdom, love, justice, or mercy
to know which of these to apply, we leave it to God.
3. Joining
God’s work in us
One
of the best cures to constantly advising God on what he should be doing to
others is to focus on what he is doing with us. For example, if we were injured
in a car accident, the doctor would be interested in the history of what
happened only so far as it would tell him what condition we were in. Once he
had heard enough, he would expect us to let him do his work of helping us get
better.
In
the same way, when we have told God all about what people did to us, and we
have chosen to trust him with whatever he deems best to do to them (or for
them), we can then put all our focus on what God is doing with us. He may have
things to heal, he may have insights to give, he may have maturity-work to do
to help us grow up, he may have sins to forgive. Whatever our condition because
of what people have done to us, God has plans for making us better.
One
way to join God in his work in our lives is to spend time in the word every
day, listening to whatever the Holy Spirit is working to teach us. As we
recognize the things God is teaching us in his word, and if we seek to put
those things into practice in all that we do, we will find all kinds of
applications of his word to things we are going through, as well as to the
relationships he brings together among his people.
God’s
word shows us both the individual and corporate aspects of his work, and so we
must consider how God is working in us individually, but also how this fits in
with what he is doing with his church. Many times I have witnessed a group of
people receive great encouragement as each person simply shared what they were
learning in the word of God that week, and realized that God was tying it all
together in a theme that showed he was working to get us all focused on the
same thing, heading in the same direction.
Since the
three activities of witnessing, leaving, and joining have come together in my
mind, I have found it easier to remember what it is I am witnessing to God
about, what it is I am leaving with him, and what it is I am to focus on as I
move forward from any bad experiences. The more I take my thoughts captive in
this way,[7]the
more peace I feel.[8]
I trust that you will find the same for yourself.
From my heart,
Monte
© 2013 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
No comments:
Post a Comment