The Sword Room

Recently I was talking to some individuals at the funeral of a man who spent his entire adult life resisting the Gospel. He was a very friendly and caring fellow, always willing to help a friend out in any way he could. He would talk your leg off about anything and everything. Except the things of God–that subject was off limits to him. He used to say he could not understand how people could believe the fairy tales of the Bible. He had a surplus of friends, many of whom attended his funeral and beautifully eulogized him.

Some of them were talking afterward about how they hoped that during his dying moments he might have prayed a last gasp sinner’s prayer and made it into heaven by the skin of his teeth. He was such a nice guy, they reasoned; it would be a terrible shame to think he will now spend eternity separated from God. Who can disagree with that?

Apparently God. Think about it: there are many sinners we would allow into heaven that God will not let in. We see the human love people have on the horizontal level and we forget that all the love in the world for other people does not add up to one ounce of love for God. By nature people do not love God. Make no mistake about it, the unregenerate man hates the God of the Bible, lip service to the contrary notwithstanding. In the case of the deceased man mentioned above even the lip service was not present. And for this reason all of his so-called acts of philanthropic love are so much filthy rags in terms of righteous merit.

A person does not love God until God gives him a new heart in regeneration. Salvation is not a matter of repeating some sinner’s prayer or “asking Jesus into your heart.” It is not so much about what we do but what God does–He makes us alive and willing to love Him, to know Him, to want to follow and obey Him. Until God changes our hearts and writes his Law upon them they are cold and lifeless. Read Hebrews Eight and you will see how the writer quotes the prophecy of the New Covenant from the book of Jeremiah. Salvation is God making us willing to believe in him. We cannot teach ourselves to know him. (See John 1:12-13; 6:44; Acts 16:14; Eph. 2:8-9.)

This man’s wife was a believer, and she spent her life trying to preach him and pray him and persuade him into the Kingdom of God. From the looks of it all her effort fell upon rocky soil, although she is now in Glory. I hope against hope that this man did repent and believe. If he did it was only because God graciously opened his heart to receive the truth. If I were a betting man, which I’m not, I would go with Las Vegas odds that this man is in hell right now. A sobering thought.

Dear reader, if you have been resisting the Holy Spirit, if you have persistently rejected the message of the person and work of Christ, please ask God to change your heart before it is too late. “It is appointed for men to die once, and after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Do not play the fool; the pride of your heart has deceived you. Beg God to give you a new heart, a heart that loves, trusts, and desires to obey Him.

Let me add one last thing in closing. After all these years as a believer–and I am in my 42nd year–my natural inclination is away from the things of God and to my flesh. Regularly I need to read my little book Fight or Die and look up all the scripture verses cited to get myself on track. The fact that I hate this ingrained bent toward sin shows that the Spirit has regenerated my heart and lives in me. But there is nothing quick, easy, or automatic about sowing to the Spirit. Sanctification takes daily consistent effort. Don’t ever let anyone tell you different because they are deceiving themselves and lying to you.

Have you ever sat down to write but had no idea where to start, so you just let it flow off the top of your head? That is what I am doing on this lazy sunny Sunday afternoon. It is not the way I usually write, but I have heard serious writers say it is a good exercise. Maybe so, but I doubt many great works of literature were ever spun out of whole cloth like this. Whether it be a blog, essay, speech, magazine article, or novel, most good written work is the product of definite planning.

Same with many other disciplines. Some songs are written very quickly and spontaneously, but most are carefully crafted around a theme, melody, hook line, or chord progression that produces a certain feel or mood. When a house is built a blueprint is required before you can get the necessary permit. Although you might deviate from the plan in certain details, generally the blueprint guides the work of construction. Athletes set long range goals, short term goals, and then formulate action steps for meeting the goals.

Our youngest son was able to fall back on natural athleticism as a wrestler for years, but his full-out brawling style got him into trouble once he reached high school and faced top level opponents. His coach worked with him to develop a style that suited his strengths and body type. The main problem his coach saw was no definite game plan in matches. Jeremy was going out right off the whistle and playing himself out early and then trying to get through the late going with no fuel in the tank. Once he refined his style and learned how to plan and manage his matches he was successful.

Fail to plan and you plan to fail. Why would we expect it to be any different in our daily spiritual experience? And yet you hear folks all the time using pious higher-life jargon like, letting the Spirit lead, letting go and letting God, waiting on God for the power, conviction, burden, etc., as a pretense for not taking care of spiritual business. This is just an excuse for spiritual sloth. Spirituality takes effort, and this effort is not to be dismissed as striving in the flesh or doing it in our own strength. The fact is no one does anything in his own strength. Let’s not kid ourselves–sitting back and “letting the Spirit lead” is often a case of letting the flesh lead.

You get out of it what you put into it. Read Paul’s description of his planning and effort in 1 Cor. 9:24-27 and tell me it ain’t so. Sure sometimes we have those spontaneous seat-of the pants moments in the Lord. But they are the exception, not the rule.

Today’s entry is a spin off of responses to the posts of the past week, particularly the one titled Pulling Weeds. We begin with a definition of the word entropy, one of several listed in your standard dictionary. Here we are using the term to denote the inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society. We live in a fallen world that is subject to decay and is moving toward a state of disorganization and disintegration, despite the illusion to the contrary of modern technological advance.

The universe is wearing out. The planets are getting colder and the Sun is burning itself out. The moon moves a few inches farther away from the earth every year. Our bodies get old, cease to function at optimal levels, and eventually die and disintegrate into the dust whence they came. Put a ripe apple in the window and it will shrivel and turn brown and mushy. Build a fence around your yard: if it is wooden it will rot and crumble over time, and if it is metal it will rust and corrode.

After I wrote the Pulling Weeds post I ran into a friend who after reading it wondered why it is that it is so easy for our spiritual lives to become overgrown and entangled with the flesh. After some thought I was reminded of the story of the fall in the third chapter of Genesis. We live in a fallen world where entropy exists in the material, mental, and spiritual realms. All of life this side of the resurrection is touched by the contagion of sin. We are always working hard against and feeling the weight of sin pulling at us and trying to drag us down to defeat. Childbirth involves pain and labor. The marriage relationship involves a warped version of original male headship, to where husband and wife must work to safeguard against power struggles and verbal and physical abuse born of anger. In our daily occupations thorns and thistles mean eating one’s daily bread by the sweat of the brow.

In this fallen world of entropy staying on top of our spiritual condition involves daily effort. No amount of letting go and letting God will suffice–magical thinking will not cut it. Imagine a man who planted a garden and then, instead of weeding, thinning, watering, fertilizing and pest-proofing it, sat in the house praying daily and trusting God to cause it to grow. God in fact does cause the increase, but the means He has sovereignly chosen to bring it to fruition is human effort.

Imagine again an unemployed man is hired by a wealthy business owner to perform an important task. The new hire is  to be paid a handsome wage and receive excellent benefits. He spends his work week telling everyone how much he loves his boss, and he even sits at his door one day a week singing songs of appreciation to him. But no work is being done all week and things start falling apart. Sound idiotic? Well, this is how some so-called believers approach the Christian life. Just say you love Jesus but do not do what He says. Say you highly regard the Bible but refuse to believe, affirm, or practice its clear teachings. Then, one day a week go to church and swoon to ditties that savor more of Gnosticism than biblical Christianity.  Yes–spiritual entropy has taken a huge toll on the Church. On the surface the form is similar to what it was in bygone years, but this likeness is really cosmetic. We are talking apples and oranges.

So here is the bottom line. God expects YOU to do something about the tendency toward spiritual entropy in your life. He has not promised to do for you what He has given you the ability to do for yourself. In the physical world the bad stuff will flourish without your attention. Leave the weeds alone and they will grow. Stop working out and watching your diet and you will become a fat, lazy, out-of-shape slob. Anyone can sleep in every day. Anyone can be a bum. The good stuff in life–spiritually as well as physically–comes as a result of consistent daily attention and effort. It isn’t always easy or pleasant, but it is what it is. You reap what you sow.

The only realm in which entropy can be sufficiently defeated is in the area of personal sanctification. As we labor daily in the power of the Christ we can defeat the flesh and be dominated more and more by His Spirit. It is a gradual process, and there will be setbacks. But at the end of the day there will be real progress. Not perfection this side of the resurrection, but true transformation toward the image of our Lord and Savior.

Man, did I ever feel like an idiot yesterday! It was dry and warm enough to get that first cut on the overgrown lawn. Connie told me, “Just pay someone to do it,” but I was feeling good enough to fire up the mower and wade into it. As the job neared completion I was tempted to take a break, sweating profusely, huffing and puffing, my heart racing and back aching. I glanced down and noticed the self-propel lever, and the rest of the job was so much easier. Can you believe it? My forgetfulness made the job so much more difficult than it needed to be.

When I was a kid my dad used to say, “If you give a lazy man a job he will find an easier way to do it.” He was not using the word lazy in the usual pejorative sense. He could have used the word clever or shrewd instead. One winter day when I was around ten years old my dad sent me and my three brothers out to shovel snow from the sidewalk and driveway. No one thinks to buy a snow shovel in Seattle, so we were out there with garden shovels and a steel rake. I spotted my dad watching from the window, and within minutes he was striding toward us exclaiming: If you give a lazy man a job he will find an easier way to do it. Sensing a teachable moment we were all ears and eyes, as he disappeared to the back yard and momentarily reappeared with a 4×8 sheet of plywood. In one pass he cleared the walkway from the front porch to the sidewalk. And in no time he finished the sidewalk as well. My older brother Tom, shrewd guy that he was, said, “Yeah, Dad, it might work on the sidewalk, but I doubt it would work over on the driveway.” You must understand the wisdom of Tom’s words. My dad is one of those guys who thinks he can parallel park in a space smaller than the length of the car. Countless times I remember my mom telling my dad he would never be able to get into this space or that, and my dad would spend up to ten minutes inching his way into the space just to prove her wrong. So when Tom issued the challenge Dad took the bait and quickly bulldozed all the snow from the driveway with the sheet of plywood.

Later that night he overheard us bragging about how we had beaten him at his own game. Were were expecting a tongue lashing, but instead he laughed and lavished high praise on us for our shrewdness. We had used our minds to make a difficult job simpler. We could have spent hours in the cold, slaving away and making the job harder than it needed to be. Instead we implemented a principle that has stuck with me over the years. Well, mowing the lawn yesterday was an exception.

I wonder if spiritually we sometimes work hard rather than smart. Jesus told us to be as shrewd as serpents and as harmless as doves (Matt. 10:16), and in a parable whose address I cannot recall off the top of my head, He praises shrewdness. Books like Galatians make it clear that the flesh wants to make justification harder than it really is; and the presence of legalism in so many Christian circles is evidence that we often approach sanctification like the moron who tries to plow along without using the self-propel mechanism on the mower.

Let me close with this: For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3). Mowing the lawn without the self-propel engaged was burdensome; mowing with the self-propel engaged was not burdensome. When we say something is not burdensome, this is not the same as saying it is easy. Living the Christian life is not easy: it takes work and discipline. But if we ever feel like it is too much, or that we are on a treadmill wearing ourselves out and making no progress, it is time to re-evaluate what we are doing. The key will be to use the Word of God as our instruction manual and weed out those activities that issue from the flesh. Sanctification is not a complicated issue. It can be difficult at times, but it is never burdensome to a point beyond our ability (1 Cor. 10:13).

It is a truism that success in almost any area of life comes as a result of consistent diligent effort over a long period of time. There are exceptions, but exceptions do not invalidate the general rule. The prospering entrepreneur did not wake up successful one day after years of sleeping in and neglecting the affairs of his business. Winning athletes are not born with gold medals around their necks and championship rings on their fingers. The musical virtuoso might have natural talent, but he would never have become a world-class musician without thousands of hours of practice under the best teachers. I remember hearing one famous guitarist say the secret to his success was that he used to practice until his fingers bled, and then he practiced some more. Sure, one person in ten-million wins the lottery, but he is the exception. For the rest of us it is no pain no gain.

I am amazed that so many Christians, laboring under a false conception of the grace of God, think that when it comes to spirituality, the key to growth is ceasing to expend any human effort. The secret is to get out of God’s way and let it be Jesus living in and through us. “Let go and let God.” Ironically, these same folks work very hard at their jobs and businesses, raising their children, maintaining their households, yards, gardens, and so on. 

So many times over the years I have heard these kinds of statements: “Oh, I’ll need to pray and see if I feel led to volunteer for church cleaning.” “When I teach I don’t spend time studying; instead I pray for the spirit to lead me and give me the words. That way the people will not even see me–they will see only Jesus.” Once I ran into a pastor friend and invited him out to breakfast. He said, “I need to pray about that and see how the Lord orders my day.” I even knew a guy who used to pray at the grocery store for the Lord to show him which gallon of milk to buy. Space does not permit me to elaborate on all the Christians I have known who have sunk themselves into debt on plastic and then asked some fly-by-night quack to pray for their deliverance from the “demons of poverty.”

All this higher-life let-go-and-let-God jargon sounds very pious and spiritual, but in fact it is unscriptural gobbledygook–utter and complete nonsense. An affront to the God who gave us the ability to think, work, and make wise decisions. A pretense for laziness. Beware of spiritual sounding quick and easy three-step paths to godliness. These schemes are like the spate of exercise gadgets that come and go on the marketing channel. Don’t blow $19.95 on a piece of junk that will not work and will go for two bucks at the next yard sale along with one of those little mini-trampolines.

Philippians 2:12-13 tell it like it is: Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

We are not to work for our salvation. We are already born again and pronounced forever righteous through faith alone in Christ alone. We are to work out that which God has already worked in our hearts. We are to do this with deep respect and awe for the God who created and saved us–and gave us the ability to obey Him! When we labor and strain and agonize in the good fight we must remember that we are not “striving in the flesh,” for it is God working in and through us, empowering and energizing us for service. At the end of the day when we have prevailed over the world, flesh,and devil, it will be no credit to us; but all the praise and glory will be to Him who alone made us sufficient for the challenge.

Growth takes work. If you want to succeed in the realm of sanctification you do it just like you do in any other area of the Christian life. You diligently apply yourself and submit to the sovereignty of God. You stop listening to the half-baked schemes of men and take God at His Word. Now get off your derriere and start growing!