Rivalry, envy, judgment, selfishness

Through the process of learning about and reflecting upon the areas in which we must die to our flesh, God has shown me that I am addicted to the spirit of comparison. This is a thorn in my flesh that incorporates rivalry, envy, judgment, and selfishness.

I was taught from an early age to be private and to respect others’ privacy, and this has resulted in deep-rooted habits that keep others out of all but the surface aspects of my life and make me hesitant to intrude into someone else’s life. Instead of really getting to know others, I only see their visible attributes – both positive and negative. I compare myself to others in many ways, most of which are based upon my assessment of their apparent qualities – looks, accomplishments, wealth, natural abilities, etc. These comparisons create a continuum in my mind, and I place people – including myself – on it at our ‘appropriate’ places (according to my comparative judgment). Placement on this “continuum of judgment” generates an enormous amount of discontent within my spirit.

This spirit of comparison keeps me focused on myself and swinging on a pendulum that on one end makes me feel superior to others and on the other end gives me an inferiority complex. This constantly swinging pendulum ensures that I maintain my self-focus, leaving little to no resources available for showing kindness and respect to others. By examining people at the surface level and keeping a “safe” distance from them, we are rarely given access to their vulnerabilities and deep needs, and therefore we are unable to show love to them in meaningful ways. As a result, evil wins on two fronts: (1) I am discontent with who God created me to be, focusing on myself and not trusting that God created me for His purposes, spinning into a perpetual spiral of discontent and distance from God; and, (2) My focus on self effectively blocks God from using me to pour out His love on others.

How do we die to rivalry, judgment, envy, and selfishness? We have to acknowledge God’s Lordship, recognizing that He made us the way we are for a specific purpose. When we compare ourselves to others and see ourselves from a fleshly perspective of relativity to others, we are denying God’s sovereignty and questioning the fact that He knew what He was doing when He created us! We must honor the Lord by dying to all of these aspects of our fleshly nature and focusing on our own relationship with Jesus. Our only envy should be divine envy; the only One we should desire to be like is Jesus!

Dear Lord, You made me for Your purposes. Who am I to think I should be like someone else? You also made others for Your purposes. Who am I to question Your creation? Help me to see myself through Your eyes. Help me to see others through Your eyes. Create within my heart a strong desire to be like Jesus, and may Jesus be the focus of my entire being.

A Change of Heart

The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. We are called by Jesus Christ to take up our crosses and follow Him, but we can do this only if our hearts are dedicated to this mission. It is not enough to commit ourselves to Him one time and then sit back and think, “Ah, I’ve done it! I belong to Jesus! Now I will be holy.” It does not work that way. Yes, we must be born again spiritually, in Christ. But when we are born again, we are spiritual babies who need to be nurtured so we can grow up to be spiritual masters, keeping our eyes upon Jesus and desiring more than anything to grow into His likeness. We must allow Christ to change our hearts.

How do we grow from spiritual infancy to the master level? First, we must realize that our very existence on the earth is for the glory of God. He made everything, and everything belongs to Him. We are His creation, and we live at His pleasure. He knows every detail of our lives! We fulfill our purpose in life when His purpose is fulfilled. There must be a reorientation in the very center of our hearts to the reality that we belong to God alone.

Second, we must nurture a personal and intimate relationship with the Lord. He created us to be in communion with Him, and we cannot claim to have given our hearts to God if we do not seek diligently to communicate with Him and be close to Him. Do we know God experientially? This takes dedication and focus. It requires discipline and the sacrifice of our time through the diligent practice of prayer and meditation on the Word. A further reorientation of the heart must take place so that we properly see that God is our center and that He desires to be in constant communication with us – as He is with the rest of His creation. When we experience the knowledge of God, we will be filled with joy and thankfulness!

Third, dying to our flesh must become second nature to us so the Holy Spirit can fill us and fully live through us. Are our thoughts – even our best ones - blocking God’s plans? None of our fleshly attributes should hinder the work of the Holy Spirit in us. The only way to avoid this is to completely die to our flesh. We must practice, practice, practice this so that there is less of us and more of Him – ultimately, we want to have none of us and all of Him! Our goal is to have no feelings, emotions, or thoughts that do not come from God. We must continually cleanse our hearts by repenting to God of every impure thought, word and deed. If our hearts truly desire for God to fulfill His purpose through us, then we must learn to block all evil thoughts the instant they intrude, never allowing them to gain a foothold, lest they take up residence within us and grow into full-blown sin. In order to accomplish this, we must be on the alert, for we know our enemy Satan is ready and waiting to strike when we let down our guard.

Fourth, it is imperative that we obey God’s ways. Here again, our hearts come into play. Do we want to follow God with our whole heart? If we do, then we must be seekers of God, seekers of His Truth. Where do we find God’s Truth? We find it in His Word. We must hunger for the Word, asking God to increase our hunger and give us an insatiable appetite for the Bible – for through the Bible we can know God more and more, learn His ways, and transform our hearts to conform more and more to our Lord Jesus Christ. Our spirituality will be opened up by a thorough knowledge of the Bible. We must immerse ourselves in God’s Word, savoring every morsel, experiencing the Scriptures in our hearts and minds as they were lived by the real people in the actual places retold in the pages of our Bibles. We must explore the Bible as the treasure it is, examining it from all sides, holding it up to the light, looking at it from every angle. We must study it historically, linguistically, and spiritually, making it jump to life for us so we can see it as it really happened! We must ask the Holy Spirit to help us perceive the spiritual principles woven throughout the Scriptures so that we can meditate on God’s ways and put into practice God’s wisdom on how to live our lives. As we prayerfully do this, God will reveal more and more of Himself to us, and we will grow closer and closer to our Lord.

Finally, we must have a desperate heart and a deep desire for the power of the Holy Spirit. As our perception of the spiritual dimension of our world becomes clearer, we realize that the spiritual battle is fierce. How can we cope with our reality unless we are empowered by the Holy Spirit? We must put on the full armor of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit if we expect to engage in the battle and be victorious. The more we understand about our Creator, the more we realize our absolute weakness and desperate need for the Holy Spirit.

Growing up spiritually is not something that happens automatically. It is not as simple as following a formula or thinking through an academic exercise. It is a lifestyle that involves ongoing dedication to knowing God through continuous conversation with Him, immersion in His Word, dying to our flesh, vigilant protection of our hearts and minds through blocking evil thoughts, and a deep desire for the power of the Holy Spirit. Becoming a spiritual master requires a reorientation of our hearts toward God, recognizing and acknowledging who He is and humbly bowing down before Him. This is actualized when we wholeheartedly dedicate our lives to knowing, serving, worshipping and glorifying Him. Only then can we truly embody the gospel!

The core of Christian discipline is training our hearts. Our hearts are fragmented, and we must train them through prayer and meditation to focus on God. Only when all of the pieces of our hearts are focused upon Jesus will we find Him, for ultimately, the heart of the matter is a matter of the heart.

Experiencing God’s Presence

My spirit longs to experience God’s presence. After years of searching and seeking to fulfill the longing deep within my heart, I finally heard God’s voice saying, “I AM the One you are seeking.” I realize that only God can complete me. He created me. He “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” (Psalm 139:13) So how do I get to know Him? How can I experience His awesome presence?

Is it a matter of “squeezing” God into my schedule…penciling Him into “His” slot…and then expecting Him to permeate my being with His presence throughout the rest of my day? Do I think I can “give” God a few of my precious moments each day, calling it my “sacrifice”? Do I try to “fit” God into my perspective of life?

What I am learning about God is that He cannot be constrained to a timeslot in the schedule of my life. In fact, I cannot view God from my perspective at all. When life is about me, my senses and my spirit are numbed to experiencing the presence of God, and therefore I mistakenly assume He is not with me. In reality, God is with me – and always has been with me – every second of my life! So what changes need to take place in me to unclog my senses so that I can see God, hear God, and feel God’s presence in my life?

Experiencing God’s presence requires practice. If I know (with my mind) that God is with me, how can I become aware (with my senses) of this fact and acknowledge His presence? One key to practicing the presence of God is learning to convert all of my thoughts into dialogue with God. This is essential! If my God is with me always, and I truly believe that He is, then why do I ignore Him…or seek Him only when I want something? I must develop the habit of conversing with God continuously. It should not be a chore! It is the greatest privilege of my life that I am the child of the Most High God! I have the privilege of enjoying His presence.

If I believe in the depths of my heart that God is who He is, then my only response must be to worship Him, to praise Him, to thank Him for choosing me to be His child. Why should I depend upon myself for anything? God has given me everything, including the opportunity to be in His presence and under His direction. Shall I cast this aside in pursuit of worldly trinkets? Shall I throw this gift that God has so graciously given me into the wind? Shall I depend upon my own mind and capabilities when the God of the Universe has so graciously offered to direct my every thought, word and deed?

I must practice my faith so that God’s Word will be actualized in me. I must beg Him to give me His perspective, to see the world through His eyes, to feel what He feels, to love like He loves. I must practice His presence until it is the most natural thing in the world for me to do. I believe He made me to do this. I want to do this. But undoing decades of not doing this is extremely difficult. I forget. I slip back into my old comfortable habit of conversing with myself. I so desperately need His power in my life.

Please Lord - Set my heart on You. Help me to change the habits of my heart so that I may acknowledge and experience Your presence always. I do not want to give You lip service. I really believe that You know everything about me. I believe that You are in control. I believe that You created me to fulfill a special purpose for You and that I am part of Your plan. I believe that you love me. I long to experience Your presence! I want to be intimate with You. Help me to know You, Lord. Help me to keep my thoughts on You. Amen.

Vulnerability to the Dark Side

When thoughts occur to us, they are either coming from the Holy Spirit or from the evil one. How often am I entertaining a thought from the wrong side? Can I discern the source of my thoughts? When I practice conversing with God, converting every thought into a dialogue with Him, He becomes real in my life – close, relevant, Immanuel, the Lord my God! I can walk with Him, laugh with Him, cry with Him, share all of the details of my life with Him…He is my Daddy, my Protector, my Everything. Throughout the course of these conversations, the Lord fills my heart with His Spirit, He protects me from the enemy. Only through constant conversation with God can I be assured that my thoughts come from the Holy Spirit.

Am I constantly conversing with God? No. My spirit is in constant battle with my flesh for control. My flesh is tangible – it is here, I can touch it, I cannot cast it aside. The thoughts of my flesh weave in and out of my existence at a rapid-fire pace, and I am so used to the cacophony that I rarely pay attention to the origin of my thoughts. My flesh dominates my thoughts, and even when I attempt to focus solely on God, the barriers I have erected to keep out the flesh are so weak that many fleshly thoughts break through and enter into the place I want to give to God. I am “fluent” in fleshly thoughts and worries, and I want so much to forget this language and become fluent in the Kingdom language. This can happen only when I choose to become Christ’s slave and learn His language, truly dying to my flesh and all of its thoughts. The barriers that protect my thought life from the evil one will be strong and impenetrable only when I am fully enslaved to Jesus Christ.

Dear Abba, Daddy - I am a baby. I am weak. In the midst of everything I thought I understood about You and living the Christian life, I knew nothing. All I want is to know You. I want to be like Christ. I want to die to my flesh and live through Christ! I want my life to glorify You. I want to walk with You and enjoy a lifelong conversation with You. Thank You for Your mercy and compassion toward me, Your wayward daughter. Teach me to be in constant conversation with You! Teach me to block all thoughts that do not come from You! Give me the privilege of remembering my past so that I may repent of all of my sins and be truly cleansed. Be with me, Lord, and give me discipline and perseverance in this life so that I may grow closer to You each minute and be a constant reflection of Jesus. I love You and am honored to be Your adopted child. Thank You for Your blessing. May Your Name be glorified forever and ever!! Amen.

Live as a slave???

“We live as slaves – whether we admit it or not.”

- Dr. Moonjang Lee

I never thought of myself as a slave. Born and raised in the “land of the free,” I always disdained the idea of slavery. I was taught to be free and independent, beholden to no one. So the blunt statement that we live as slaves hits my worldview like a rock hits the windshield of a car traveling down the highway at a high speed. That rock has cracked my perspective, and the crack is spreading to such an extent that my entire view of my relationship to God is shifting radically. I have considered the idea of choosing to be a “bondservant” to Christ and always thought, “wouldn’t it be great to be able to surrender myself that completely!” But I looked at this choice as being between acting as a “free agent” or serving as “Christ’s bondservant.” I saw this surrender as giving up my freedom for Christ. However, if I am already a slave, then do I really have any freedom to sacrifice?

If I am not a slave to Christ, then who is my master? My flesh. Is it possible that what I have always viewed as “freedom” is in reality slavery to my flesh? This shift in perspective is significant because it allows me to understand more fully what Jesus asks of me when He tells me to deny myself and take up my cross daily and follow Him. (Luke 9:23) I can choose to live for my flesh and go after the things of the world, or I can choose to deny my flesh and bow down and acknowledge Christ as my Master, pledging my loyalty and service to Him. I can continue to view Christ as the Lord who asks me to sacrifice my freedom for His Kingdom, or I can choose to see Christ as the One who rescues me from the dark life of being a slave to this world and offers me the opportunity to be transformed into His likeness and the honor of doing His work during the short time I am here on the earth. I can choose to give myself fully to Christ and allow His Spirit to see through my eyes, hear through my ears, smell through my nose, and sing praises to God through my mouth!

So the questions I must ask myself are these: Do I love my flesh more than I love Jesus? Am I willing to trust Christ so completely that I will truly surrender myself to Him and gain all He has promised? If I believe Christ with my whole heart, I will trust Him with my whole heart…and I will gladly be His slave.

Dear Jesus, rescue me from the bondage of my flesh.

What is my expectation??

What is my expectation in life? To be great? To be wise? To be loved by others? To be like Christ? Why am I here? Why did God create me and put me here in this time and at this place? These are questions I have considered in my life but not from a holistic perspective. If you ask me, “What is your expectation?” then I will reply, “About what? My education? My career? My social life? My spiritual life?” I grew up thinking about my life as divided into separate segments that added up to make the whole. When I was young, there was school, play, activities, church and family. As I grew up, I added some new segments and deleted some old ones, but they remained separate and distinct. At any one moment in time I could focus on one segment while ignoring the others, at times casting those so far into the depths of my consciousness that they almost ceased to exist. My perspective concerning my “flesh” and “spirit” was similar, and many times throughout my life I have focused on one without any regard for the other. I am quite practiced in the art of compartmentalization; consequently, the prospect of sacrificing this self-preserving worldview at the foot of the cross is more than a little daunting. Can I trust Jesus to make a whole person out of the fragmented pieces of my heart?

My worldview has taught me to love God but not to put God first in my life. I have “compartmentalized” God into a neat little box that I can take out on Sundays when I go to church or dust off when tragedy strikes and I feel a desperate need to feel that He is near. My little “God box” is nice and neat and intellectual. I give Him his “due” at church on Sundays and trust Him to be there for me when life gets out of control. Growing up, I prayed in church, before meals and at bedtime but was never taught how to dialogue with God. Prayer was something formal and somewhat intimidating, and I sought the “right words” and conjured up what I believed to be the proper level of piousness and sobriety in order to send up my dutiful petitions to the Lord. If all else failed, I whispered the Lord’s Prayer and felt relieved that I was “covered”.

I have “believed in God” and “believed Jesus died for my sins” since I was a young child. But what has that “belief” translated into? I have a comfort that I am not going to hell. I have a faith that there is indeed a God who created the world and everything in it, including me. But I have lived the majority of my life primarily in the flesh, with only a tiny sliver of myself concerned with spiritual matters. Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.” (John 14:1, RSV) I “believed” in Jesus, yet I carried a heart full of troubles. Perhaps I believed in my mind but not in my heart. My mind acknowledged that Jesus is Lord while my heart chased after all kinds of fleshly adventures in its quest to fulfill the deep yearnings created by God for Himself.

I have come to realize that God created within us a longing that can only be fulfilled by Him. After years of searching met only by frustration, I am starting to hear the voice of my Lord calling out to me, inviting me into a deep and intimate relationship with Him. My heart rejoices with dancing and tears of joy as I anticipate the warm embrace of my Father, who has been waiting patiently for me to return home from my prodigal journey.

But how does one become intimate with the One who created us? I have wanted a deep, intimate relationship with Jesus for a long time, but the mechanisms of daily devotions and routine prayers have worked only to increase my desire while leaving me wondering if I am ever going to experience the closeness of Jesus that others seem to have found. Ah, perhaps I must take God out of the “God box” I created for Him and allow Him to permeate and fill my entire being with His Holy Spirit! My mind and heart must agree that my expectation in life is to become like Christ! God’s perspective of my life must become my perspective so that I can see His purpose for me as He reveals it to me. I must drop the rope in the tug-of-war I initiated with God long ago and run over to His side, embracing the freedom and ease of allowing Him to direct my steps.

If “the heart of the matter is a matter of heart”, then I must lift up my heart and surrender the whole of it to Jesus. But what is the state of my heart? Is it pure, like the heart of Jesus Christ? Definitely not. Is it even close, or have years and years of fleshly living and half-hearted repentance resulted in thick layers of caked-on mud that have surrounded my heart and hardened into a fortified wall standing between me and God? The wall exists, I’m ashamed to admit. And it’s thick. And dirty. The job of removing those layers of caked on mud is difficult, and often painful. It hurts when God reminds me of past deeds of which I have not repented, and the memories can trigger weeping and anguish. The process of historical repentance is long and exhausting. But, oh, the joy of repentance! What freedom and peace result when God’s forgiveness gushes over my soul! What mercy…what grace. The removal of a layer. And then another. How I anticipate the moment when my heart is cleansed of the caked-on walls and is available to receive the full measure of Jesus’ love and all that He has in store for me! How I long for this intimacy with my Savior! I await the time when I can reach out to Jesus for His daily rinsing of my heart…the memory of the thick mud wall somewhere in the distant past. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Mt 5:8) How I long for the day that I shall see God!

I believe prayer is the key to intimacy with God. Oh, how I want to have an ongoing conversation with my Lord! But changing years of poor habits is going to require discipline…and time. Meditation is a new practice for me. I have certainly heard of meditation throughout my life, but I’ve never been still enough to practice it. Nor have I known how! The mere practice of being still and focusing on the Lord is a discipline that I will strive to master. I am finding, however, that this is easier said than done. My mind is so busy! “Be still!” I tell it. But it is unwieldy and scattered. “I love you, Lord,” I say repeatedly. But I find that to practice this even for ten minutes is difficult for me. I have to “swat” away the intruding thoughts…why can’t they leave me alone? Competing, fleeting thoughts have had their way with me for a lifetime – so perseverance is going to be key. I will have to change my priorities and my habits, and I will have to learn how to exercise to increase my concentration and endurance. The practice of my faith must become foundational in my life. “I want to be like Christ.” Oh, God, how I long to be like Christ!

Dear Lord – Thank you for revealing Your expectation of me. Thank you for showing me Your perspective. I pray that You will transform my perspective into Your perspective so that I will see things as You see them. I pray that you will continue to reveal to me things from my past of which I need to repent. Please continue to cleanse my heart so that I can grow closer to You. Please teach me the daily practice of self-mortification so that I may live according to Your divine nature. My expectation is to become like Christ! I surrender myself to You, Jesus. Help me. I love you! Amen.

the Lord is working...

God is bombarding me lately.

Everything I am studying and hearing is dovetailing into a big MESSAGE FROM THE LORD (as Jonah would say), and it's overwhelming and awesome at the same time.

I am taking a class in spiritual formation that is purposed to teach us practical ways to grow closer to God, and the lectures have been rich with wisdom and vivid word pictures that are helping me to grasp in a more concrete way what it means to "die to my flesh".

I'm also working through two Bible studies - Henry Blackaby's "Experiencing God" and Beth Moore's "Jesus the One and Only" - and they are undergirding what God is showing me through the class, chapel sermons and my quiet times.

I'm still working through "The Purpose-Driven Life" with my Korean wives group, and our latest reading (Day 13) is about "Worship that Pleases God"...real, authentic worship.

Last week in chapel Dr. Robinson preached about "love" and what it means and what it involves. He talked about agape love being a "purposeful" love that is not a love of "feelings" but of "mindful, determined" love for one another.

This spoke to me in a way that broadened my understanding of what Jesus means when He commands us to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:30) Many times I feel frustrated and excluded when I read/see/hear people talk about their relationship with God and how much they are "in love with Christ" because I don't often experience deep "in love" feelings toward God. I think I have been trying to impose "romanticized" emotions into my relationship with Christ in an effort to show Him (and convince myself) that I "love" Him. But I've been leaving my mind out of the equation! And I think it's a huge part of how we are to love God.

Anyway, lots of "God work" going on in this mortal!