What rules?

For so many years, I was very bitter towards God because I felt He had failed to keep up His end of the bargain. I thought that if I went to church, read my Bible, tithed and didn't cuss, then I was entitled to success. I felt God owed it to me for being such a good Christian and nothing made my blood boil faster than seeing someone else get a promotion or blessing or recognition. Of course I tried to mask this bitterness with a fake smile and some insincere congratulations but I never once fooled God. The success that I coveted always seemed to elude me.

The reason for constant failure is pretty obvious. Despite my best efforts to look like I was following Christ, my flesh was still calling all the shots. I was performing all the duties of a good Christian without actually being a good Christian. My flesh was never dethroned. My flesh would decide to read the Bible and tithe and be a good boy just so I could put enough gold stars together to ask God for stuff that my flesh wanted. My flesh has no real interest in being a good Christian. Being a good Christian is completely opposite from what our flesh wants. My flesh still wants to be catered to even after my spirit was reborn. Our spirit is the one that wants to actually BE like Christ. But until we develop enough spiritual strength and maturity to deny our flesh, we execute the plans of our flesh. Somewhere in my early Christian development, I was told that the urge to sin would abate. Someone told me that I would eventually lose the desire to sin and my only goal in life would be to please God. Perhaps, the problem is me, but I never achieved that level of Christian character. My flesh has never stopped trying to put an end to all this churchy stuff so we can get back to having all that fun. My flesh did not get reborn. My spirit did and my flesh has not stopped complaining about it. Even Paul struggled with what he calls the sin nature that lives within us. Romans 7:14-19 describes the tormenting cycle that we all face. We don't do what we want to do but we do what we hate doing. Then we torture ourselves with guilt and condemnation for doing those things that we know displease God. Then, instead of dealing with that sin properly with repentance and confession, we try outweigh it with more "good behavior." When our good behavior fails to tip the scales in our favor, we fall into bitterness and resentment. And if you're anything like me, you've repeated this pattern so many times you've lost count.

It occurred to me one day that what I thought I knew about success may have been incorrect. And where did I get these rules in the first place? Who told me that ACTING like a good Christian would lead to success? Maybe there was something else I should be doing to achieve my goals. Instead of doing my best to convince God and everyone else that I was a good Christian, maybe I should sincerely devote myself to actually BEING a good Christian. Instead of letting my flesh get out of control with envy and spite, maybe I should start taking thoughts captive and casting downs those thoughts that displease my Lord. Maybe I should start acting like Jesus is my Lord and not my employee. Maybe I should to take my flesh off the throne.

At first, this is a daunting task. It's especially daunting if you've never asked anything difficult of yourself. If you've never held yourself to a standard of excellence and demanded maturity from yourself, it seems impossible to control your flesh. Until we actually try it. When we actually take that first thought captive and cast it down, we feel a whole new sensation. Our spirit gets a small taste of victory. With that taste of victory, comes a whole new set of possibilities. Suddenly, we see that we don't have to live as subjects to our own emotions. We realize that we can deny our flesh and live to tell about it. We realize that we don't have to be bitter and angry when something disappoints us. We can CHOOSE to ignore the complaints of our flesh.

Now this is where the Word of the Lord becomes a double-edged sword and starts separating bone from marrow. Under the regime of our flesh, we did all the outward Christian things to curry favor. Under the regime of our spirit, we find ourselves doing a lot of the same things outwardly but for different reasons. When our flesh is in control, we read the Bible. We read at least 1 chapter a day and we put a little mark on the reading plan calendar. Then we hit the time clock and put in our 15 minutes of prayer time which is actually just us telling God what we want His blessings on. Okay maybe we only make it to 11 minutes but that should be good enough. And then, after sufficiently performing our Christian duties for the morning, we go about pursuing our own goals with a clear conscience. Similarly, when our spirit is in control, we read our Bibles. We start with one chapter but that reminds us of another scripture which leads us on a journey to discover the connections between the two and the next thing you know, we've spent an hour paging back and forth through our Bible. Without realizing it, we find ourselves talking to God quite conversationally about what we've just learned and we've easily spent at least fifteen minutes in prayer before we start in with our list of specific requests. From the outside, it looks like we are doing the same thing. But He wouldn't be much of a God if He couldn't see past our superficial gestures. God clearly sees the different set of motivations driving the behaviors. The token gestures our flesh makes are an appalling insult to God. The sincere excursions into His word and heartfelt conversations we have as a result are exactly what every parent desires from their children.

Your flesh is stupid enough to believe a ridiculous set of rules about how to gain God's endorsement of its plans. Your flesh is stupid enough to think God can be manipulated by our behavior. James puts it well when he says, you have not because you ask not and when you do ask you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives (James 4:3.) Don't get me wrong; there are rules to be followed that will lead to success. They are laid out very plainly in Deuteronomy 28 verses 1 through 15 and Jesus reaffirms them very succinctly in Matthew 6:33. But these are not the rules that our flesh follows. Our flesh tries to do a good job of convincing everyone including God that it is following those rules without ACTUALLY following those rules. Our flesh is still governed by the rules of serving its own purposes above all else. Real success comes when we devote ourselves to following the rules spelled out in scripture out of a pure desire to please Our Lord. God knows why you are doing what you are doing and He knows when we do things from pure motivations.

Here now is the tricky part. Here is where the real climb begins. Now that we know we need to do all the right things, for all the right reasons, how do we go about getting our flesh excited about it? The answer is simple; we don't. Here is the other lie that I have fallen victim to. Somewhere along the line, I got fooled into thinking that it gets easy the longer we do it. This is a despicable lie. At no point in our Christian pilgrimage will our flesh EVER get excited about following God's rules for pure reasons. This is our constant struggle. Our flesh will NEVER cease to want its own appetites. It never becomes easy and the sooner we make peace with this truth, the sooner we can begin making real progress.

This is where our goal in life has to change from "winning the lottery" to "winning the fight." The reason life becomes so bitter and disappointing to our flesh is because our flesh keeps expecting the work to be over. Our flesh's main goal in life is to get back to the couch to make sure the TV still works. And nothing aggravates our flesh more than work. Our flesh is not interested in putting in more effort. Our flesh is looking for a way to avoid more work but we are not called to a life of ease and comfort. We are called to take part in the BUILDING of a Kingdom. Building a kingdom is hard work and there is no end to it. As long as souls are still being born into this world, someone is going to have to share the gospel with them. Take up your cross and follow me. Seek first the Kingdom of God. Set your thoughts on things above. Cast down every thought that exalts itself against Christ. These are the rules we are called to obey. These are the rules we must follow with sincere devotion and pure motives. Following these rules will lead us into the greatest victory in human history and unimaginable success that exceeds our wildest dreams. Let us not be fooled into following a bogus set of rules that will lead us into disappointment and ultimately to our destruction.