Richard Sibbes
- “The winter prepares the earth for the spring, so do afflictions sanctified prepare the soul for glory.” Richard Sibbes
Looking Beyond Our Own Interests
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Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:3-4
I love our church body, our pastors and staff. There is a genuine desire to faithfully teach the word of God and to encourage godly living. That said, I do find holiday services to be a bit frustrating. As a Christian, I come to church to meet God through worship and instruction and feel short changed when a significant portion of the service is spent on special numbers by the choir, solos, and dramatic performances. I prefer to interact with God rather be entertained. This past Sunday I was really struggling with this as we celebrated Easter. Thankfully, God did not allow me to wallow long before He started to convict me to look at the broader picture.
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Savior And Lord
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Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. Colossians 3:23-24
Ever since I was a child, I have hated conflict of any kind. Even though I know that it is not real, conflict in a movie or TV drama can cause me to pace or stress eat. Even a useful debate causes stress. That does not mean that I do not engage when I perceive the need, but even when I am firm in my conviction, I do not enjoy the process. However, there are two conflicts in which I engage on a daily basis. The first battlefield is my health. While I do my best to appease my health issues and mitigate my symptoms, there are times when they interfere with my life on some level or severely hamper my ability to function for a period of time. When I find I can’t win the battle, I am forced to retreat and let the symptoms run their course allowing Christ’s grace to be sufficient. As godly as that may sound it’s not easily achieved because the other war that I’m fighting is my nature to sin.
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The Art of Sacrifice
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“But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.” 1 Peter 2:20-25
This past weekend I served at a Christian event. I knew that I would need to give up some of the normal comforts of life, that I would need to push my body beyond what I would consider a wise pace for my health concerns and that my diet would also be compromised. However, I was not prepared for what I would consider unnecessary risks for myself and others due to disregard and lack of effort. I’m not talking about malicious acts by evil people, but rather inadvertent decisions and actions by genuine godly people whom I have come to appreciate over the last few days. The perceived lack of safety put me in a mode of questioning my decision to serve, counting down the hours until I could leave and started a running discussion in my head regarding what is “reasonable sacrifice”. Thankfully, God quickly took me to the example of Christ which caused my issues to pale in comparison and allowed me to serve to the best of my ability and develop new friendships.
With respect to sacrifice, consider the following elements: preparation, opportunity, people, sacrifice, and reward.
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Praying With Hope
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“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!” Matthew 7:7-11
Several years ago, a friend brought balloons to a study that we were co-leading. As an object lesson, she had each of us write our prayer request on a balloon then we took them outside and released them together. It was an excellent way to visualize how to present our needs to God then let go and trust Him to do what is necessary. As a result, I’ve started to look at my prayer life differently. More recently, I was praying about a fairly substantial concern. As I began to pray, I was convicted of the need to pray with confidence. I don’t know that I’ve ever done that quite this way before. Rather than telling God what I needed, I started thanking Him in advance for His provision in response to my request. As a result, I was filled with hope and praise. It’s not that I wasn’t confident of God’s provision beforehand, but praying in this way took away the desire to “micromanage” God…that kind of prayer that is more like drafting a legal document rather than a making a request of my Lord. Since then, my mind keeps returning to the topic of prayer and the attitude we should take when praying.
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Where is Your Focus?
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“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:1-3
In high school, I was a member of the Speech Club. After a few competitions, one realized that it was much easier to evoke fear, anger and sorrow than happiness. Consequently, with a bit of skill and practice it was fairly easy to do well with darker prose and drama. However, anyone choosing comedy had to really work to get the judges attention quickly and employ good timing to score well. This is true in life also. Because of our sinful nature, our tendency is toward fear, anger and sorrow rather than joy. As a result, we tend to focus on our problems and losses rather than what God is accomplishing through them and looking to Him for sustaining grace. Further, we often get so caught up in daily life that we neglect our relationship with God. That’s why Paul encourages the Colossians, the Romans and the Philippians to focus on “the things above” rather than our earthly circumstances.
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The Winding Road of Faith
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“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval.” Hebrews 11:1-2
In my late twenties and early thirties, I had two friends with whom I went camping and hiking twice each year. As we were trying to avoid insects and snakes, we would go late in the fall and early in the spring. Sometimes we would experience wonderfully warm weather; sometimes it was cold and rainy; the rest were somewhere in between. Together we enjoyed great vistas, got lost on poorly marked trails, endured wet sleeping bags and very cold showers (as it was off season in the parks), joking about each other’s quirks, met some nice folks and feared a few; but mostly we grew closer through the shared experiences and evenings by the campfire. Two of the three of us are probably too infirmed to tolerate those trips now, but they will ever live in our memories and be a bond that draws us together.
The walk of faith is a lot like that. Sometimes we feel great about our faith and our relationship with God. Other times we have more questions than answers and feel a distance between ourselves and our Lord. There are the seasons when the battles are raging around us or temptation seems to be impossible to withstand. Some stretches of our journey seem so clearly marked and well defined while others just don’t make sense and we find ourselves doubting and lost. In short the path of sanctification is usually a winding road. While we may understand that God is moving us closer to Him and leading us to our Heavenly home, it’s often difficult for us to see or feel any sense of progress from our limited vantage point with incomplete information. To that end, there are some situations and their related promises that we would do well to ponder carefully in order to maintain clarity.
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Avoiding the Darker Side of Kindness
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“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Colossians 3:12
Some of the definitions or synonyms of kindness are: benevolence, humanity, generosity, charity, sympathy, compassion, and tenderness. As indicated above, scripture calls us to be kind and engage in charitable acts. However, there are times when our best intentions may not be charitable at all. For example, the Sunday after I was released from my last major hospitalization, very well intentioned people, who truly cared about my well-being, greeted me with a hug…many of which were quite firm. The problem was that I had just had a PICC line inserted and every hug involving my left arm was painful…so much so that I had to start doing body checks to protect myself. Another example was while I was caring for my father. In the last months of his life, visits from people became difficult for him and anything more than about five minutes would cause stress to the extent that he would beg me to send them away. Some people graciously accepted the request, but others insisted on staying which created an awkward situation leaving me no choice but to demand that they leave. My point is that there is a darker side to charitable acts that can, in fact, harm rather than help or encourage. As in all things concerning godliness, we must be intentional about in our compassion to avoid having a negative impact.
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Pressing On
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“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 1 Peter 1:3-5
Do you ever have days when you just can’t function? Today is one of those for me. It’s cold and I feel it to the bone. My body rebels against any movement and my mind is just as sluggish. I know from experience that it will pass and that there will be better days, but today I don’t feel like I’m much use to anyone and wonder if there’s really and value in trying to do anything. After all, doesn’t Ecclesiastes tell us that all is vanity? At times like this, I have to keep plodding until the fog lifts and, in the meantime, remind myself that the truth of the situation is much different. Today’s necessity is to focus on the fact that it’s worth the effort to endure and that’s what the passage above does for me. It reminds me…us… that we are valued, have purpose and that there is a reward for our efforts.
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Loving Well
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“Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart.” I Peter 1:22
We have two daughters and two grandsons. I paced a good bit at each of their births and was rewarded by having a newborn placed into my arms. At that moment, there was nothing but love, joy and thankfulness. It was easy…all reward and very little, if any, sacrifice. After all, they didn’t complain, didn’t exert their will, and didn’t ask for much except to be clean and fed. However, as they grew older, that love would require a fair amount of patience and sacrifice. It is in the choosing to have sacrificial love, that relationships and bonds are formed. As Christians, we are called to love well. Not just within our families, but both in and out of the church body. Further the call to love is not just when it is convenient. We’re called to love during our trials as well as our times of ease. We’re called to love not only the lovable, but the difficult, including our enemies. Let me be clear, I struggle with this as much as anyone and, as with many of these posts, I’m writing to myself and using this as an opportunity to start refining my own behavior. However, the fact that loving well may be difficult or inconvenient is not justification to ignore or take likely this direction. When we’re tempted to take love for granted, put little effort into it because it seems too demanding or we just refuse to love someone that we find despicable, we would do well to consider the following.
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