Who do you live for?

How are our lives different because of Christ?  We believe in His sacrifice, in His goodness and grace.  What does it require of us, anything short of our very lives?  Do the deeds of our heart outwardly show this level of devotion and thankfulness?  If we are no longer slaves to sin, but were purchased at such a high price to be slaves to righteousness then shouldn’t it move us to give up ourselves.

Jesus said that to gain our lives, our freedom in Christ, we must loose it.  Freely give up our “rights” of serving our own emotions and fleshly desire.  Give it away, give it all away!!!  If we try to hold on to our lives, we WILL loose it.  Let go of justice, let go of hate, let go of anger, let go of hurt, let go of the idea that we can not overcome or forgive certain sin, let go of the belief that matters are in our own hands.  They are not, believe...have faith and believe.  Believe that He parts seas, that He calms storms, that He heals the sick, He raises the dead to life, makes the blind to see and the unclean clean.  He heals the broken heart, returns the prodigal, brings the proud to their knees, brings hope to the hopeless.  Believe, truly believe.

We say we believe, but the truth is not in our words but in our deeds.  For out of the heart comes the actions of men.  If we are full of the Spirit, then it will bear fruit in the form of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control.  If our actions are full of anger, bitterness, jealousy, hate, judgment, etc.  Then our actions testify against us as to what is in our hearts.

In our self assessment, what is our spiritual food?  Are we getting any?  How much time do we devote to God, getting to know Him better, serving Him....living with heavenly purpose.  Is He our Sunday activity or is He truly our “all in all.”  Our actions speak the truth.  The hours of the day are for Him or they are not.  

Don’t tell me you’ve done your time.  Really?  Is that what you’re going to tell Jesus when you give an account for your life to the one who gave His very life for you?  Is this the view you have of the sacrifice He made, that it only deserves a portion of your life?  How lukewarm will we be before He spits us out of his mouth, before we stand before the throne and He says, “depart from me, for I never knew you.”

“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter.  On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’  But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’ Matthew 7:21-23

Are we doing His will?  Is our life bearing the fruit of the Spirit?  What comes out of our hearts and is manifested through our actions and emotions?  Only those who do the will of the father...will enter. Is it enough to claim Jesus as savior with our words, but deny Him with our hearts?  You decide and live accordingly. 

Get out of that Pit - Chapter 1

Get Out of that Pit - Our online study...Cliffs notes style.

(Feel free to add on)

Chapter 1: Life in the Pit

Book Excerpt

Life can be excruciating.  Crushing, in fact. The sheer magnitude of our worries can press down on our heads until we unknowingly descend into a pit of despair one inch at a time.  Something so horrible can happen that we conclude we’ll never be okay again.  We can blow it so badly we think God would just as soon we stayed under that dirt and out of His sight.  But, if we’re willing to let truth speak louder than our feelings, and long enough that our feelings finally agree, we can be far more than okay.  We can be delivered to a place where the air is crisp, the enemy is whipped, and the view is magnificent.

The Bible teaches that there are no lost causes.  (did you hear that, NONE) No permanent pit-dwellers except those who refuse to leave.  Every person can know the complete redemption of Jesus Christ, purpose for life, and fullness of joy.  No, life won’t ever be easy but the trade-off is a spin around Planet Earth that actually means something.

I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,

 and he turned to me and heard my cry.

 He lifted me out of the pit of despair...

  ...Many will see what he has done and be amazed.

  They will put their trust in the Lord. Psalm 40:1,3

Too often we don’t recognize a pit when we’re in one or we only think of it in terms of sin, so it doesn’t apply, but that’s not the case.

You’re in a pit when...

You feel stuck, trapped.  The only option is to misbehave, act out (i.e., have a kicking and screaming fit, hoping your flailing can help you escape) or submit (i.e., consider you made your own bed and decide to die in it.)

The first option is coping through life. It feels like a rut or going nowhere, stuck.  So we DO stuff to try to change our environment, be someone other than who we are or sink ourselves in activity or mindlessness to escape... all in the hopes of having excitement and fun, but more importantly to NOT feel the pit we are in.  You name it, it’s been tried by the multitudes.  Drinking, partying, being a workaholic, live an alternative life, turning a hobby into an obsession, watching loads of tv or movies...we could go on.

The second option, choose to accept the feeling of being trapped and stuck, become hopeless and resigned to the lie that this is as good as life gets because of some past choices or things that have happened to you.  You grow numb and cold.

Either way, they are the lies we buy into and we feel stuck in the pit.

You see and recognize what is right
      but refuse to act on it.
   You hear with your ears,
      but you don’t really listen.

  Because he is righteous,
  the Lord has exalted his glorious law.
 But his own people have been robbed and plundered,
  enslaved, imprisoned, and trapped.
  They are fair game for anyone
  and have no one to protect them,
  no one to take them back home.

 Who will hear these lessons from the past
  and see the ruin that awaits you in the future? Isaiah 42:20-23

You can’t stand up because you feel ineffective and utterly powerless against attack. Can’t stand up to assaults, trials, or temptations because your feet are in the mud and more.  You make an effort, but constantly feel like your losing ground, losing the fight.  It’s overwhelming and you feel flatly defeated at times. 

To the ancient Hebrew, a pit was a literal or figurative reference to the grave...so it’s like being the living dead.  Satan digs the pit in hopes he can bury you alive and keep you there. You become a rather ineffective person in life and relationships. Satan can’t make you stay nor will God make you leave.

 Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire;
 I can’t find a foothold. Psalm 69:2

Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Ephesians 6:13

You’ve lost vision and you’re impaired by the darkness.  Can’t see the obvious,  become stiff necked, to focused on our sinking feet. We can’t see out, so we turn our sights in.  Nearsightedness breeds hopelessness.  Dim vision ages us rapidly and we lose our childlikeness.  We can be young and yet feel old. Heavy laden. Burdened. In a pit where vision is lost and dreams are foolishness.  We don’t have a sense or understanding of meaning and purpose for our life.

Beth refers to the final book in the Narnia story, The Last Battle, where Susan , who in the first book witnessed the death and resurrection of the godlike lion Aslan, looked back on her times in Narnia as “funny games we used to play as children.”  Susan ultimately came to the conclusion that the heavenly land of her childhood experience was nothing more than a childish fantasy because she was a “jolly sight to keep on being grownup.”

Excerpt 2

Through the pages to come, some of you will recognize your pits.  For most of you awareness won’t come because you suddenly see how bad you are, but rather because you will wake up to how bored you are.  The lack of light and fresh air has lulled some of us to sleep.  Getting out begins with waking up.  And (this may be the hardest part) with being willing to feel again. In Psalm 40:2 David exclaimed,

He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
 out of the mud and the mire.
 He set my feet on solid ground
  and steadied me as I walked along. 

According to Psalm 27:6, high upon that very rock “my head will be exalted above the enemies who surround me.”  See what Satan has to lose when you get out of your pit?  Not only are wonder, hope and vision natural when our feet are set upon a rock, but so is our vantage point from which we can see the enemy’s activity around us.  (Incidentally, there’s no one on earth Satan would rather see in a pit than someone with godly vision.  Just ask Joseph.)

Are you bored with life?  Is life exhausting for you?  Does it seem like your just doing stuff to avoid the pit feeling?  Are you in a pit presently?

We’re going to talk more about the ways we get into pits and the ways we can get out in the coming weeks.

As we think... we are

Proverbs 23:7 “So as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

Ephesians 4:22-24 “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by it’s deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”  

So as we think... is what we become.  Where do we spend our time thinking and what do we want to become?  Break down a day. 

How much time is given to...

• worry
• selfish desire (Getting new stuff, making ourselves happy, etc.)
• making more money (to serve God or serve self)
• watching tv (of good moral character or lustful, self serving characters glamorized)
• reading (of good moral character or lustful, self serving characters glamorized)
• relationships (building one another up and holding accountable or in gossip and promoting self interest)
• listening to music (full of hope and encouragement or sad, depressive and angry)
• anger, bitterness, jealously, resentment, hate, hopelessness, etc.

What do we want to become...

• lustful
• self serving
• discontent with life as it is
• a worry wort
• sad, depressive, hopeless
• angry, bitter, jealous, etc.

or 

• loving
• full of joy
• content
• fulfilled, full of purpose & hope

Should we be surprised when we struggle with these issues?  We could probably pin a lot of it down to how and where we spend our time. When I'm struggling,  a lot of the time it is my own choices that put me there.  Have you ever sat around and listened to sad depressing music all day and thought, " I am just so happy today!"  Nope, we become sad and depressive.   As we choose to spend our time and attention on different activities that fill our mind with thought and persuasion; what is it leading us towards becoming?

Simple, yet profound thoughts to chew on,

Brian

P.S. We'll start the Beth Moore study in a couple weeks.  I will be teaching with it as a Sunday school class so I thought it would be best to do them at the same time!