Being Made Right!

11/05/2005

One of the things I always pray for is the opportunity, God willing,
to come at last to see you. For I long to visit you so I can share a
spiritual blessing with you that will help you grow strong in the Lord.
I’m eager to encourage you in your faith, but I also want to be
encouraged by yours. In this way, each of us will be a blessing to the other.
Romans 1:10-12 (NLT)

As I read this passage, I think of our return to the Bay Area. I think of all the things God has been doing in our lives and the lives of those we know here and elsewhere. I love to visit with family and friends when we’re back in this area, and also as we travel through the states. There are always wonderful sites to see and interesting places to visit, but first and foremost, we are all called to encourage one another in our faith wherever we go, and to build warm and lasting relationships.

Paul must have had a good many friends along the way that he was longing to see. He must have built new relationships everywhere he went, and in that he set an example for all of us as witnesses to the Good News of Jesus Christ. In Romans 16, Paul lists just a few of those he spent time with…Phoebe who helped him, Priscilla and Aquila who were co-workers, a dear friend Epenetus, a hard worker named Mary, Andronicus and Junia who were in prison with Paul, Ampliatus whom Paul loved, Urbanus, Stachys, Apelles, Aristobulus, Herodion…the list goes on and on…obviously, relationships meant a lot to him as he journeyed through life.

As I enjoyed an evening at our church recently, I was reminded of just how important relationships are to spreading the Good News. As I listened to story after story of missionaries here and abroad, building those relationships, touching one heart at a time, it became even clearer to me how God uses each one of us in just that way. Our service for God is very simple…it’s about relationship. The enemy knows that and he will more often than not strike first at the relationships in our lives to try and destroy the spread of the Good News. If he can destroy our relationships with one another, he can stop the spreading of the Good News through us!

Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.
(Matthew 12: 25 NIV)

Why is divorce running rampant?
Why are there very few long-lasting friendships?
Why is there distention in a church?
Why are there wars?

Because the enemy knows that if he can keep us divided--taking our focus off our Lord and placing it instead on the hurts, the misunderstandings, the different ideas and even the amazing varieties of personalities and ways of approaching this life that God has placed in each one of us, we will start to bicker and fight and separate and turn away, and the very core of God’s great plan…our relationships with Him and with one another, will start to crack and disintegrate into a pile of ashes. We will start to point the finger at others instead of looking inside of our own heart, and what God might be trying to show us! Remember, one finger pointed outward leaves three fingers pointed inward…we should combine the three with our thumb, and notice where it is pointing!

You may be saying, “What terrible people you have been talking about!”
But you are just as bad, and you have no excuse! When you say they are
wicked and should be punished, you are condemning yourself, for you do
these very same things.
Romans 2:1 (NLT)

Can we all accept that in our relationships? That we do the “very same things”? We don’t want to, we don’t want to think that we are as bad as the next guy, that we make as many mistakes as anyone else, that we are just as stubborn, hard-headed and set in our ways…because we know that our ways are right!! Of course they are! How come everyone just can’t agree with us and see it the right way, i.e. Our Way!

Even Paul and Barnabas had trouble in their relationship with each other. It says in Acts 15, “Their disagreement over this was so sharp that they separated.” It didn’t seem to be a huge thing, Barnabas wanted John Mark to travel with them, Paul didn’t want him to come along. But, it was enough to send them off in different directions.

There is no “right way” but God’s way, and we will never know God’s way until we know our Lord as we should, and that will take us our whole lifetime! We must study and pray and pray and study…then we must allow what God is teaching us to penetrate our hearts, taking what He is teaching us and applying it to our lives and to all those we come in contact with…and that’s the hardest part ever—applying it!

Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God
or even give him thanks…So God let them go ahead and do
whatever shameful things their hearts desired.
Romans 1:21&24 (NLT)

After all the prayer and study in the world, if we refuse to be obedient to the Holy Spirit in us, we can still make the decision to do things our way, and God will let us! He will not force us to follow Him or to agree with Him--but if we don’t, we are really out of our minds!! He is our Creator, He is our Master, He is the Beginning and the End, the Omnipresent, the All-Knowing, and yet in our puniness we say, “I want to do it my way, with my ideas, with the knowledge I have…” Craziness!! Pure lunacy! And yet, we all do it time after time in our lives! We begin “to think up foolish ideas” and our minds become “dark and confused.” We are “claiming to be wise” but become “utter fools instead.” (Romans 1:21&22)

The hardest thing mentally that we must do is to give our thoughts over to our Lord. To let Him have them, to re-adjust them to His ways, to re-align them to His plans, to relinquish our right to our own thoughts and allow His thoughts to become ours. We don’t like it one little bit. We really don’t want Him to change our mind because our mind is made up…but we must bow to Him!

“But no, you won’t listen. So you are storing up terrible
punishment for yourself because of your stubbornness in
refusing to turn from your sin.”
Romans 2:5 (NLT)

Youch! Our barns could be so full already with all the stubborn decisions we have made and held onto! But we thought we were so right! Can we really let them go and let God be God?

What have our choices been and what have those decisions brought us? Who have we left in our wake? What relationships have we destroyed, what hurt have we caused, what joy have we lost in our own heart just trying to be right? Is it really worth it?

I know this isn’t a lot of fun to take a look at all of this. It reminds me of what Pastor John talked about on Sunday when Michelangelo was sculpting the statue of David. He was asked how he did it, and his answer was that he just kept chipping away everything that wasn’t David. In the same respect, that is what God is dong in each of our lives, chipping away everything that is not Him. “…true circumcision is not a cutting of the body but a change of heart produced by God’s Spirit.” (Romans 2:29 NLT)

We all get ourselves into situations where we come head to head with another person, we see things our way, they see things their way, and God sees it all in His perfect way. Which way should we choose? From here, that seems pretty obvious--if God’s way is perfect, then we should agree with Him, but that word “if” is what trips us up.

“No one is good—not even one.
No one has real understanding; no one is seeking God.
All have turned away from God; all have gone wrong.
No one does good, not even one.”
Romans 3:10-12 (NLT)

The ONLY way to get to the bottom of any situation is to seek God, full on, face first, and deny any right to ourselves, and this is nearly impossible because we live in these fleshly bodies. “…all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” (Romans 3:23)

Many will choose to go to their grave, holding on to the right to be right, ruining relationships and missing the truth that God has placed before us… “God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were.” (Romans 5:20 NLT)

Isn’t that crazy? God gave us His law so that “the more we know God’s law, the clearer it becomes that we aren’t obeying it.” (Romans 3:20 NLT) No one is! Those we know aren’t in perfect obedience, and neither are we! And so, where does that leave any of us? Down-trodden, miserable, feeling like a failure, condemned…” Let’s say, “NO,” and understand that it leaves us right where God wants us to be--dependent on His Saving Grace in all situations, allowing for there to always be healing and restoration in our relationships, not only with our Father in heaven, but with each other! When we can see our own faults and our own weaknesses, then we can understand and have empathy for each other’s faults and weaknesses. When we understand the need for forgiveness in our own lives through Jesus Christ, then and only then can we even start to understand the forgiveness we must offer to those around us.

We are all rotten through and through so far as our old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way we turn, we can’t make ourselves do right. We want to, but we can’t. When we want to do good, we don’t, and when we try not to do wrong, we do it anyway. We love God’s law with all our heart, but there is another law that is at work within us that is at war with our minds. (taken from Romans 7:18,22)

Isn’t it awesome that our “acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law?” (Romans 3:27,28 NLT)

We are forgiven, and in that God also asks us to forgive others. Our relationship with God was torn apart--we hurt God, we turned our back on Him, we acted like we didn’t need Him in our lives and yet He continued to pursue us. He continued to love us and call to us, even sending His Son to die for us while we were still His enemies. “So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God—all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends with God.” (Romans 5:11 NLT)

Why do you think the Bible emphasizes our relationship with God, our friendship with Him? Because that is at the core of who we are. Without quality relationships, life is empty and meaningless. If the enemy can destroy any and all relationships in our lives, he will. It is first on his agenda for the day, and he works on it diligently all day long and on through the night. He never gives up. He started with our relationship with our Father in the garden, and from there he started in on tearing apart the first family, Cain turning on Abel…and so it goes.

There’s only one way to restore our relationship with our Father, and that is through His Son. “Because one person disobeyed God, many people became sinners. But because one other person obeyed God, many people will be made right in God’s sight.” (Romans 5:19 NLT) The enemy really doesn’t want this for us, he wants to continually remind us how terrible we are, all the ways we are failing our God, what a loser we are to God and to everyone around us. He also wants us to see everyone else in a bad light, as a loser, as terrible, as a failure…but these are lies! They are the type of lies that can destroy us and destroy any relationship we have, but they don’t have to!

“For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.” (Romans 6:4 NLT) New lives!! New relationships! New everything, when we believe and are made right with God by faith!

We all have relationships that need to be restored! And they can be, but not on our own, not in our own strength, not with our own ideas…we’re too set in our ways, too stubborn, too misguided, too sinful…we need a good and Holy God to heal what has been broken. We can’t do it on our own because we can’t even obey the law--in fact, “the law brings punishment on those who try to obey it. (The only way to avoid breaking the law is to have no law to break!) (Romans 4:15 NLT) The harder we try to keep the law the more miserably it will seem we are failing and the more we will see the failings of others.

Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is evil?
Of course not! The law is not sinful, but it was the law
that showed me my sin. I would never have known that
coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “Do not covet.”
Romans 7:7 NLT)

The more I see the laws of God, the more I know I am not able to keep them. The more I draw close to God, the more ways I see that I fail to even come close to how He would want me to live my life, direct my thoughts and follow His will in my life…it all seems to be so out of my reach, beyond my capabilities as a believer, and it is, and that is okay. That is the way God designed it so that we would understand our need for His Grace, His Mercy, His Forgiveness and His way of reconciling our relationship with Him. Our disobedience cost Him so very much, it cost Him his Son, and He forgives us for that and still wants us back…that’s amazing love!

What can we say about such wonderful things as these?
If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since God
did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all,
won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?
Romans 8:31-32 (NLT)

Christ paid the ultimate price for our mistakes; can we not trust Him with everything else in our life? Are we not able to be wronged, and to forgive? Are we not willing to ask others to forgive us when we have wronged them? If we are not, then perhaps we don’t fully understand the forgiveness that we have been given. Perhaps we are not willing to accept the forgiveness in full that has been offered to us, and that is why we are stuck in a perpetual maze of dead-end relationships, one disaster after another, starting with our Father God.

We must first be willing to receive what has been offered to us, our Father’s forgiveness, before we can offer it to another. “For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God…” (Romans 10:20a NLT). In doing so, we will allow our Father to embrace us with a warm and loving relationship so we can then reach out to others in the same way. If what Jesus died to give us isn’t Good News to us, how can we spread that Good News to others? If we don’t know He truly loves us, how can we love another with His love?

In the book, “Healing Is A Choice” by Stephen Arterburn, he quotes Dr. Dean Ornish as saying, “In a way, the most selfish thing you can do for yourself is to forgive other people.” I would like to look at that yet another way and say that the most wonderful thing we can do for others is to allow God’s forgiveness in our own lives. In doing so, His love will be free to flow through us to others because of the healing we have experienced in our own hearts. The result will be encouraging and uplifting relationships with those around us that are modeled after God’s unconditional personal relationship with us. I have heard it said that the hurting, hurt others. I have to also believe that those who feel loved, love others!

“In this way, each of us will be a blessing to the other.”
Romans 1:12b (NTL)

We all yearn for long-lasting, warm and loving relationships. It is how we were designed. The last thing we want is to be alone in this world, with no one to love and care about us. When we find that ultimate love and care through our Father God, He will be all we need. We will be fully satisfied in our relationship with Him, and in turn we will then experience wonderful relationships with those around us because we will start to love others, as we should. We will begin to see glimpses of the unconditional love shown to us by our Father in heaven developing in our own personal relationships here on earth.

We will never get it to the level of perfection that we have been shown through the sacrifice of God’s only Son for us, while we were still His enemies, but we can at least begin to see His amazing design for our relationships with one another when they start to resemble His relationship with us.

And, in mending our relationships here, the enemy will be defeated once again by the power of the Holy Spirit who lives inside of all who believe!

That’s Good News!

Diane