SteveHerl Faith and Sports

Have you ever thought about what it means to be in the will of God?  I have.  Then one evening, while I was preparing for either a Thursday night Bible study or an adult Sunday school teaching, a parable came to my mind.  It helped me and maybe it will help you.

There once was a man who had lost hope.  His marriage had failed (he was partially to blame but felt as much guilt as had it been totally his fault), his company was teetering on collapse, and his kitchen table was covered by unopened mail from bill collectors and vendors.  Every morning as he made his needed cup of coffee from his ten year old coffee maker he would glance at the mess in the kitchen and living room of his one bedroom apartment.  He would resolve that one day soon he would clean and start over.  But then his eyes would fall upon the pile of mail on the kitchen table and his heart would simultaneously race in anxiety and sink in despair.  He would turn his eyes away, slither out the door and drive to work in his twelve year old Honda Accord.

Each evening upon arriving home, he would pick up the day’s mail in the box on the street, throw it on the table, fix a microwave dinner and sit down to watch whatever he could find on television.  Day after day, night after night, every day the same, a hopeless, endless journey to the grave.

Then one day, upon arriving home, a notice of an attempt to deliver a certified letter was on the front door.  He knew it was just another threatening letter from either a business situation or a personal debt.  But he put the notice in his pocket.

As was his habit, the next day he wore the same pair of pants to work.  Living alone made it difficult to clean clothes often enough to wear something different every day and business was so bad that it really did not matter.  As “luck” would have it, as he was checking on an issue in a building located right next to the Post Office, he reached in his pocket to find a key and instead found the certified letter notice.  When he finished next door, he stopped in the Post Office and picked up the letter.

Arriving home at the end of the day, he began to drop the letter on the ever growing pile but something about it caught his eye.  The return address was that of a law firm that he had never seen or heard of before and which was located in the town in which he was born.  He could not think of any reason he would owe anyone any money from a place he had not visited for over thirty years and in which he had never worked.

As he made a space on the couch to sit, he opened the letter.  It was from a lawyer, was a single page and said the following:

Mr. Smith:

You are invited to the reading of the Last Will and Testament of Mr. Alexander Smith on September 29.  The reading will take place at 2:00 PM in our offices located at 100 Main Street, Bedford, Va.  Please do not be late for the reading will begin promptly at 2:00 PM.

If you have any questions please call me at 222-555-1234.

Robert Wiedam, Attorney at Law

He read the letter again and then read it again.  Who in the world was Alexander Smith?  He had no idea.  This must be a mistake.  No way was he related to anyone who had anything and even more certainly, no one was leaving him anything.  He dropped the letter on the living room table and went to bed.

He could not sleep.  What if the letter wasn’t a mistake?  Who was Alexander Smith?  His mind finally wore out from worrying, wishing and pondering and he fell asleep.

In the morning he nearly forgot about the letter but as he searched for his shoes in the living room he saw the letter on the table.  He read it again and decided to call the lawyer to verify the mistake.  After all, the 29th was only three days away and Bedford was a four hour drive.  One phone call is all he should need to put this to rest.

Upon arriving at his nearly empty office, he unfolded the letter and dialed the phone.  Surprisingly, a pleasant young lady answered his call on the second ring.  “Law offices, how may I direct you call?”  He stammered, “Mr. Wiedam please.”  “I’m sorry”, she said, “Mr. Wiedam is in court today.  May I help you?”  “Well, uh, my name is Mr. Smith, and I received a letter about the reading of a will for Mr. Alexander Smith on September 29.”  “I am sure there is some mistake because I do not know anyone named Alexander Smith and Smith is such a common name…..”  She interrupted, “No, no Mr. Smith, there is no mistake!”  “The reason you only just now received your certified letter is that it took us so long to find you.”  “We are sure there is no mistake.”  “You are definitely in his will!”  “Please be here at 2:00 PM the day after tomorrow.”  “OK, thank you”, he said.  And he hung up the phone.

Now he had a choice.  Was he going to believe and have hope or was he going to continue in unbelief and wallow in despair?  If he chose to believe, the hope would cause him to act in accordance with the level of his belief and hope.  The four hour drive to Bedford would be an adventure filled with peace and joy.  It would feel like perfect freedom and not like labor at all.  But if he allowed unbelief to rule the day, then either the trip would seem like endless work and trouble or unbelief would paralyze him and lead to total inaction and despair.

Ironically, no matter his reaction and response, the truth would still be the truth.  If he was in the will, he was in the will.  If Alexander Smith had truly included him in his will, whatever promises were ordained were at his disposal and belonged to him.  All he had to do was believe and they were his. Only his unbelief could keep him from benefiting from the blessings.  In fact the only thing required for the promises of a will to be enacted is the death of the creator of the will.  Alexander Smith had done his part.

When you open the Bible you are reading the will of God.  It says that all the promises of God are yes and amen in Jesus.  What that means is that the promises of God are actualized by the life and death of Jesus.  A will can only take effect upon the death of the maker.  When Jesus died on the cross, the will of God was perfected.  All the promises of God are in effect.  Our choice is to believe or not believe.  Everyone who is a child of God is in the will and the truth is the truth.  If we believe that we are in the will of God, we understand what it means that “He who began a good work in you will complete it” and “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.”  God says that “you will accomplish the good works that He has prepared in advance for you.”  He also says, “He will cause you to walk in His ways.”  And finally, He says “that all who receive Jesus, who believe in His name, He gave the right to become the children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but by the will of God.”  You are in the will of God.  Will you believe and hope or continue in unbelief and despair.  The truth is still the truth.

 

 

We tend to think that pride is as a matter of thinking more highly than we should about ourselves and that being humble is thinking less of ourselves.  Both perceptions are wrong and are in fact dangerous and damaging.  How can that be?

According to Tim Keller, the Bible says pride is “concentration on the self.  Pride is absorption in self.” According to C.S. Lewis, “Pride is ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on self.”

Pride, you see, makes you concentrate on self so deeply that you only do things that make you feel good about yourself because you need respect, adulation or acclaim.  Nothing is ever about the things that you are doing, because everything is about you.

Lust may cause you to desire to be with a beautiful woman but pride only focuses on how great you will feel when you have a woman no one else has.  Pride finds no pleasure in the woman because it’s all about you.  Relationships are about you.  Jobs are about you.  Everything is about you.  It’s all about respect and approval.

C.S. Lewis says, “Pride turns everything into a means to an end.  You never do anything for itself.  It’s always a means to an end of earning respect and approval.”  Lewis also says, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, but only out of having more of it than the next person.  People may think they are proud of being successful, or intelligent or good looking but they are not.  When proud people are around other people with equal or more success, intelligence or good looks they lose all pleasure in them.”

Keller says, “Pride is always an endless ego calculation, always asking, “Am I getting the respect and appreciation that I deserve?””   Pride is always keeping score to see if it is getting the respect, adulation and credit it deserves for everything it has or does.”  Pride is always asking, “How am I being regarded?, How does this make me look?, What are people saying about me?”  Pride always asks, “What about me?, What about me?, What about me?”

You see then that there are two faces of pride.  The one that we always recognize in everyone else is the arrogant, boastful, braggart who is always telling everyone how great he is.  He is totally self absorbed and in his calculations he has determined that he is doing better than others and of course  everyone needs to know because everything is about him.  This is the superiority form of pride.

The other side of pride is the inferiority form of pride.  This form of pride is also totally self absorbed but you are down on yourself, you don’t like how you look, you think you’re a failure, you don’t like yourself, you are very self conscious and you are always beating yourself up.  You are doing all the calculations just like the arrogant man but in your evaluation you aren’t doing so well.  No one is giving you the respect you deserve and ultimately you can think about nothing but yourself and just how pitiful you are.

The Bible says pride precedes a fall because both forms of pride are destructive.  How you say?  First pride makes you a fool by keeping you from ever learning from your mistakes.  A proud heart is always justifying itself.  No matter what happens, a relationship that breaks up, a job that is lost, a plan that fails is someone else’s fault or the circumstances, it’s never you.  You justify yourself so you can’t learn from your mistakes.

Proud people don’t learn from criticism in particular because the superiority form of pride dismisses it or attacks the one who dares to be critical.  To the inferiority form of pride criticism is devestating to the point that people are afraid to be honest with you.  So you never learn anything.

Because you do not learn from your mistakes and you don’t listen to criticism you are a fool.  You constantly make bad choices, you choose the wrong jobs, you choose the wrong friends, you continue to do things that are harmful, dangerous or just plain stupid.  Why?  Because the superiority form of pride makes you overestimate your gifts and intelligence while the inferiority form of pride makes you underestimate your gifts because you are always feeling down on yourself.  The people you perceive as above you, you fear and find threatening because you resent them and the people you perceive as below you, you disdain and dismiss.  You don’t learn from anyone.  You are constantly making mistakes and wrong moves.

But pride doesn’t just make you a fool.  It makes you evil.  Pride is what made the devil the devil.  Since St. Augustine, Christians have known that pride is not one sin among many, but is truly the root of all sin.  “Pride is the hellish, putrid Petri dish from which all other sins grow.” Take bitterness and anger.  It is impossible to stay angry and bitter with someone unless you feel superior to them. There is no bitterness without pride.  “I would never do anything like that, or how could anyone treat me that way or say that about me?”

What about paralyzingly fear or worry?  Pride says you must know how things will go in the future and you need to be in control.  Pride says what if, what if and what must I do to prevent it?  You are sure you know what’s best in the future and things must go that way.  Arrogance says I know exactly how things must go.  You can’t be intensely afraid about the future without a certain level of pride.

Pride also makes you opinionated.  You are sure you are right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.  You want to destroy them because if they are right then you are wrong and you can’t  be wrong because you are so superior to them.  In the inferior form of pride to be wrong would be humiliating.  So you see in either form of pride you only listen to people who agree with you and affirm you.  It’s all about you.

The inferior form of pride can also make you indecisive because you are afraid to be criticized.  You are afraid of making a wrong move and worried about how you will look. Pride makes you either too shy or too abrasive.

Racism, injustice and imperialism are all rooted in pride.  Overreaching nationalism is caused by pride.  The leading cause of murder is pride either by arrogant superiority or debilitating inferiority.

Pride not only makes you a fool, is harmful and evil.  Pride is the one sin that hides itself.  Keller says pride is “the carbon monoxide of sin – killing you without you being aware it is happening.”  By definition, the more proud you are and the more trapped in its clutches, the less proud you think you are.

You know when you are breaking a commandment like adultery.  You know when you are stealing.  You don’t know when you are proud.  No one ever comes to counseling because of a problem with pride.  Joseph Epstein in his book on pride says “So many people hate snobs.  Do you realize that you cannot really hate snobs unless you feel superior to snobs?”  Which means that hating snobbery is a form of snobbery.

Sadly, being told to draw closer to God will not necessarily eliminate pride.  Religiousity, that is reading the Bible more, praying more, worshiping more, doing more good works, even fasting more may help with many sins but so long as your focus is on you and what you are doing it will only enhance your pride.  Satan’s greatest tool is keeping Christians focused on themselves and what they are accomplishing.  He wants them to continue keeping score!  Religiousity just makes pride worse.

As you read this post haven’t you been thinking about a couple of people that come to mind.  That’s proof of pride in your heart.  This post is about me.  This post is about you.  I am convicted to the core by everything I have written.

A truly humble person doesn’t think less of himself, he thinks of himself less.  A truly humble person doesn’t feel superior to anyone because he is not keeping score.  A truly humble person focuses on God and others and could build the greatest cathedral just because it was the right thing to do.  He wouldn’t care who got the credit and would be just as thrilled with the finished product even if he hadn’t built it.    Again I will repeat Keller’s comment – To be truly humble doesn’t mean to think less of yourself, it means to think of yourself less.

When you meet a truly humble person you will not think, “Wow, what a truly humble person.”  You will probably think, “Wow, I just spent time with a person who really cared about me and what I had to say.”   A truly humble person is settled in who He is in God because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross and God’s sovereign choice.  A truly humble person doesn’t have to keep score because as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished!”

Truly humble people listen well because they are not a set of beliefs or the smartest, strongest, or richest person in the room. They are a child of God by God’s mercy alone.  A truly humble person knows that he is no better or worse than anyone else but he rests in the fact that he is complete in Christ.

A truly humble person knows the secret to living a life of contentment and joy.  He knows that he is a child of God, holy (set apart) and pleasing (God delights in Him because he is God’s son) to God!  He doesn’t have to earn appreciation or respect because he is loved unconditionally by the creator of the universe.

Php 2:1-11 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

 

“I plead with you friends, since you are immersed with the knowledge and amazed at the reality of God’s mercy, to offer your total being (thought life, self doubt, fears, guilt, shame, pride, arrogance, bitterness, etc.) as a living sacrifice (dying to your selfishness and old ways) knowing that you are holy and pleasing to God because of His finished work on the Cross. Quite frankly this is the only logical response to the message of the Gospel.  Stop being shaped (conformed) by the world and its rules, lusts, desires, passions and mindsets, but instead be transformed (metamorphosed) by allowing your mind to be renewed by the truth of who God is and who you are in Him.”   (Ro. 12:1-2)

Paul tells us that there are only two ways you can live – Conformed or Transformed.  Those of us who choose to live conformed to this world determine either consciously or unconsciously to abide by the patterns of human existence that have grown out of the seeds from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Conformed people are at their core driven by the desire to define, distinguish and do good.  The problem is that each of these endeavors is fatally flawed by the one thing we all have in common.  All of us, conformed or transformed, share an underlying foundational trait.  We are self focused.

Good and Evil

In the conformed world good and evil are relative terms.  We treat others in ways we would never accept in return.  But when we do it we justify it so that we can call it good.  We vote for bills that we haven’t read in order to get re-elected; we believe good stories about people whom we like and bad stories about people whom we dislike.  We pass on gossip and slander without any regard for whether we know anything about the veracity of the information.  We cheat on our friends and spouses and excuse it in ourselves because we’re not to blame.  We push people out of our way because that’s how we show everyone just how important we are.  We use people for our pleasure and our gain.  We lie because our reputation is more important than the truth.

You see, good is what I need it to be because I have to be in control of my universe.  I focus on doing good only because it either protects me from punishment or earns me a reward.  Good is anything that makes me look good, feel good, or gets me compliments and acclaim from others.  Evil is anything that doesn’t.  It is good when I love others as long as when I love others I get the credit for it and my reputation is enhanced.  And finally I can unequivocally tell everyone else in my universe what they must do to be good.

Consumer Relationships

In a conformed world all relationships including family are consumer relationships.  A consumer relationship is a relationship in which we stay as long as the other person meets my expectations at an acceptable price.  If the other person falls short of my expectations or raises the price I am no longer bound and I move on.  Even if the other party meets my expectations and doesn’t raise the price I may move on if someone else does the same at a lower price or does more for the same price.

Of course, in a conformed world everything is about me.  I must look good, feel good and be praised.  Everyone has to get a trophy because it’s all about each of us individually.  The good we do, we do to in order to look good, feel good or to get praised.  No one has the right to tell me what good is for me because no one knows what I have been through.  But I can tell you what good is because good is an absolute in your life because good is anything that makes me look or feel good or gets me praise or acclaim.  If I make sure that you follow God’s rules than I will be commended by God which makes it good.  It’s really all about me.

Two Problems

Those of us who are being transformed (metamorphosed) still have at least two problems.  One, prior to the process of metamorphosis beginning in our lives we  lived conformed to this world and were very comfortable being the master of our universe.  Two, after the process of metamorphosis has begun in our lives, we retain vivid memories of the the pleasures and habits of conformity.  Because of these two problems, even as we are being transformed, we easily fall back into the habits of conformity.

The Caterpillar and the Butterfly

What is metamorphosis?  What does it mean to be transformed?  Nature gives us a wonderful example.  Caterpillars are born as veracious eaters, totally self focused, destroying everything around them if necessary.  They will even consume the very leaf that is sustaining them.  Then at a predetermined time in their life cycle they attach themselves to a leaf and hang upside down and die to their “caterpillarness” and become a cocoon and then a butterfly.

Once the former caterpillar falls from the leaf he has been totally transformed (he has taken on a new nature).  Now he must live in his new state, using his wings to fly from plant to plant receiving and delivering new life at each stop.  If a butterfly were to try to live like a caterpillar his new nature would get in the way.  His wings would bump into everything as he tried to crawl along the ground and his digestive system, which is now designed to drink in liquid life, would explode from the selfish gluttony of his former eating style.  And the butterfly acting like a caterpillar would never spread the nectar of new life to the plants in his world.

Something in Between

Yet many Christians live like a butterfly trying to still be a caterpillar.  A transformed believer has taken on a new nature and stands on the truth of the Gospel.  Paul tells us that the mystery hidden for ages but now revealed is “Christ in you, the Hope of glory.”  A transformed believer has been qualified by God, delivered out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of light in Jesus and been made holy and pleasing to God.  Still, many Christians live as though God is angry with them, standing over them with a stick, trying to catch them in what they consider sin.  (Doing something evil)  Because they live in fear of God, they never flap their wings and they believe they are God’s policemen, always gossiping about people’s behavior and telling everyone how to live.

When a transformed person continues to focus on their own actions or the actions of others, they are living as a conformed person and they are grieving the Holy Spirit.  They look as foolish as a butterfly trying to live like a caterpillar.  There is no fruit in their life because you need to spread your wings in order to fly from flower to flower.  There is no aroma of God in their life because they are miserable and they make everyone around them miserable.  They continue to judge themselves and everyone else by their relative scale of good and evil, while trying to earn God’s favor in their own strength and to their own glory.  Christians who live conformed lives spit in God’s face because they refuse to truly accept His free and completed work of reconciliation and justification.

The Power of the Old Nature

Some butterflies continue to live like caterpillars because they haven’t yet tasted the nectar of the truth and are still chasing the counterfeit sweetness of their former lusts.  They refuse to flap their wings because they are afraid of losing control and are so conformed in their thinking that they are only comfortable crawling in the grass and hiding in the darkness.

Truly Transformed

A truly transformed person has been given a new mind, and has surrendered his heart to the truth and hope of the Gospel.  They understand that God is God and they are not. They know that God is holy and in and of themselves they are not and will never be.  But they also know that because of God’s free gift of reconciliation and justification through His Son Jesus Christ, they have been made holy and pleasing in God’s sight.  They also know that they have been made children of God who have the family connection required to call God, “Daddy.”  And finally they know that they are joint heirs with Jesus of all that is God’s.

Do you see how different a transformed believer is when compared to a conformed person?  Do you see how love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control (the fruit of the Spirit) naturally grow in a transformed heart and are spread abroad by transformed hearts?  Living a transformed life is living with a new mind – a mind focused on God and who we are in Him.  We have hope in every situation because we are children of God.  We are at peace because we have peace with God and if God is for us who can be against us.  And we love because we are loved – unconditionally because God sees us in Him.  We can love others because we can choose to see them as God sees them.  Everyone is created in the image of God and we can forgive them because they know not what they do.  Some of them are living conformed lives and are in bondage to selfishness.  Others are living transformed lives and they are spreading life everywhere they go.  Being in the  presence of a transformed life is to be in the presence of God.

The Return to the Garden

The whole creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed.  By offering ourselves to God as living sacrifices, knowing that we are holy and pleasing to God, we set in place the altar for the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.  As we focus on God and who we are in Him, we return to the mindset of the garden before the knowledge of good and evil.  And in our renewed mind we are transformed into and revealed as the children of God.

The Bible is clear in saying we should judge not lest we be judged. The Lord’s Prayer requests that we receive forgiveness in equal measure to our forgiveness of others.  

But even though we are not to pass judgment on others we are to be discerning.  In our discernment we are to evaluate everyone especially anyone who claims to be a believer.  Wolves in sheeps clothing are the greatest danger to the flock.

But how do we evaluate ourselves and others.  It can’t be by the law because according to Paul in Rom 7:6 “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” He then gives a hint of how we are to evaluate.  In Rom 8:9 Paul writes, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”

So we see that a proper evaluation of ourselves and of others is to see if the Spirit of God dwells in you.  But how can we discern the Spirit? Well in Rom 8:11 Paul says, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

Signs of Life

How do we know if a living thing is alive?  In nature we ask if it reproduces or bears fruit.  Living things may act very differently but they all bear fruit.  If only we had a list of the fruit of the Spirit so we could tell if the Spirit is in us!  Thanks be to God we do.  In Gal 5:22-23 Paul tells us “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

In this list Paul shows us the signs of life.  He also proclaims that is has nothing to do with the law.  Anyone who has the Spirit of God in them will show signs of life by growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  We should evaluate our lives and the lives of others that we admire, submit to, listen to, or minister to by the fruit.

If we don’t see evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in people’s lives we should act accordingly.  If it is our own life we should to run to God, spend time in His presence and truly offer ourselves as living sacrifices to Him as we receive His mercy and love.  If we fail to see love, joy and peace in a leader we should be very careful before we declare our allegiance.  Does he or she show patience, kindness and goodness?  If not we should not fall under their spell.  Where is the faithfulness, gentleness and self control?  Living things bear fruit.  Anyone who is in Christ has received the Spirit.

What it’s not

You’ll notice at least two things if you study the fruit.  Intelligence, good looks, knowledge, leadership skills, charisma, cleverness, and charm are not on the list.  Also, self control is the last evidence because a life filled with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness has died to its own self interests.

What is the fruit

Love means to consider others ahead of yourself, joy means to be settled in your heart because you know a secret about who you are in Christ, peace fills your mind because God has reconciled you to Himself so you have peace with God, patience means that you can withstand suffering without struggling because God is with you, kindness means you treat others according to the mercy of God, goodness means to be good for others like eating a healthy fruit is good for someone, faithfulness means your life is based on who God is and who you are in Him, and gentleness means to do nothing to harm another but only what lifts up and restores.

We are not to pass judgment on others but we are to be fruit inspectors because life begets life.  Discern the lives you are listening to and following blindly and see if they are bearing fruit.  If they are not you should turn and run.  Jesus said, “My sheep know my voice.”  “Let Him who has the Spirit hear what the Spirit is saying!”