“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
- Galatians 5:22-23
We end the list of the fruit of the Spirit with a word that touches nearly every area of daily life: self-control. In many ways, self-control feels like the most practical and the most challenging of the list. It meets us in our habits, our reactions, our appetites, our words, our screens, our spending, our tempers, our time, and our choices when no one else is watching.
We live in a culture of excess – excess noise, options, consumption, distractions, and indulgence – and yet Scripture invites us into a different way of life. Scripture invites us not to a life of restriction for its own sake, but one of freedom through surrender. Self-control is not about suppressing life; it is about ordering life under the lordship of Christ.
Biblical self-control is the idea of mastery over oneself, restraint, disciplined living, and strength over desires and impulses. We are to say no when temptation calls, yes when obedience feels costly, wait when impatience increases, and enough when we’re tempted by excess. Self-control is not self-reliance; it is dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is the power of God working within us to align our desires with His will.
Scripture consistently ties self-control to wisdom, maturity, and godliness. Proverbs 25:28 says, “Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.” Titus 2:11-12 says, “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘no’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.” Second Timothy 1:7 says, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power, love, and self-discipline.” Self-control protects us. It guards our hearts, strengthens our witness, and leads us toward freedom, not bondage. Without self-control, even good gifts can become destructive idols.
Jesus lived a life of perfect obedience and holy restraint, never once failing in His self-control. He resisted temptation in the wilderness. He chose obedience over comfort. He restrained His power instead of using it for selfish gain. He controlled His tongue before His accusers. He submitted to the Father’s will, even unto death. At any moment, Jesus could have called down angels to rescue Him, yet He chose the cross. That is self-control at its highest expression: choosing God’s will over personal desire, even when it costs everything.
However, self-control is challenging because it pushes against instant gratification. It goes against acting out our initial emotional reactions. It defies cultural pressure and our fleshly desires to “do what feels good.” It fights against entitlement and spiritual laziness. We often see self-control as denying our desires, but in reality, it’s all about redirecting our desires toward the things of God.
The practice of self-control should touch our lives in many ways. It should shape how we speak – resisting gossip, choosing gentleness over sarcasm, pausing before responding in anger, and speaking truth with love. It should shape our emotions, helping us respond with grace rather than react immediately. It does not deny emotions but submits them to Christ. Self-control should honor God with our bodies and our physical lives: what we consume, how we rest, and caring for our health. Self-control helps us take control of our screens, schedules, commitments, and distractions, guiding us to choose what matters most.
The world sees discipline as limiting, but in God’s eyes, discipline brings freedom and liberation. A life without self-control is chaotic and enslaved to impulses that come and go, while a life controlled by the Holy Spirit is steady, purposeful, and free. It frees us to live the life for which God designed us, not the life that our impulses and desires of the flesh demand.
Because self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, it grows as we walk closely with God. We need to focus on transforming and renewing our minds to focus on the desires of the Holy Spirit. Practice small acts of obedience, as self-control grows through daily decisions, not dramatic moments. Seek accountability in all of this, as God often uses others to strengthen our self-discipline. Recognize that we will fail at self-control, but failure is not the end. God’s grace restores and strengthens us, allowing us to always try one more time.
Ask yourself, where do you struggle most with self-control? What habits shape your daily life for good or for harm? How might greater self-control lead to deeper freedom? What small step of discipline is God inviting you to take this week?
As I close this series on the fruit of the Spirit, remember this truth: Fruit is not produced by striving; it is produced by abiding in the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is not a checklist to complete but a life to cultivate. As we walk daily with Christ, surrender to the Spirit, and trust God’s transforming work, these qualities grow in us slowly, steadily, and beautifully: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
May your life bear much fruit, for your good, for the good of others, and for the glory of God.
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I call God as my witness —and I stake my life on it—that it was in order to spare you that I did not return to Corinth. Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, because it is by faith you stand firm. So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you. For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved? I wrote as I did, so that when I came I would not be distressed by those who should have made me rejoice. I had confidence in all of you, that you would all share my joy. For I wrote you out of great distress and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to grieve you but to let you know the depth of my love for you.
- 2 Corinthians 1:23-2:4
In the previous passage, we saw that Paul had changed his travel plans, which affected his visiting Corinth. He defended his actions by appealing to God’s faithfulness. In this passage, he shares how it is in the Corinthians’ best interest that he did not make that extra visit to them as he had originally planned.
He starts out here by saying that it was to “spare” them that he did not return to Corinth (verse 23). This implies that he would have been harsh to them during his visit, most likely for everything he called out and rebuked them for in his previous letter to them. He is very emphatic on this point, saying that God is his witness and he stakes his life on it. He really wants the Corinthian church to understand that his lack of a visit was in their best interest and that things went as God intended.
Some believe that verse 24 is to counteract the Corinthians’ claims that Paul was trying to act like a tyrant or a dictator over them in his instructions. But that is not the case with Paul; he desires to serve them and work with them to help them grow in their faith and fulfill their mission of living out and spreading the gospel message. Everything that he does is for their joy and so that they will stand firm in their faith, which will honor and glorify God while spreading the gospel. Paul wrote similar words to the Philippians: “Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith” (Philippians 1:25). This is Paul’s mission, not to tyrannically guide every aspect of their lives.
This is one of those passages where the chapter break doesn’t really make sense because it is at this point where chapter 2 begins. Paul is in the middle of his thought here, so since he continued on, we will too.
We see in verse 1 that Paul made up his mind not to make “another painful visit” to the Corinthians. This implies that it was Paul’s decision, not something that was out of his control based on various circumstances. It is believed that Paul made this decision while in Ephesus after hearing about how the Corinthian people were insulting him. We’ll learn a bit more about this in next week’s passage of 2 Corinthians 2:5-11. Paul wanted his time with the Corinthians to be joyful, not painful, so he changed his plans and did not make that extra visit to them.
Paul admits in verse 2 that his decision not to make the visit was also due to his own emotions. The Corinthians were a congregation that brought him joy, so if he had a negative visit with them, then he would lose that source of joy. If he caused them pain, then he would feel that pain also.
Verses 3-4 reference a letter by Paul to the Corinthians, which is often known as the “sorrowful letter” or the “severe letter.” We do not have manuscripts of this letter today, but we can make inferences about its contents based on Paul’s other writings to this congregation. If Paul needs to express condemnation toward the Corinthians, perhaps it would be better received via letter rather than in person so as not to affect their relationship as much. We can often convey our thoughts and feelings better in writing as it gives us the opportunity to choose our words more carefully than when we’re having a discussion in the heat of the moment.
Paul’s “severe letter” to the Corinthians took the place of a harsh in-person visit from him, which is why a few verses prior in 1:23 he said that his lack of a visit was to spare them. That way, they could get all the negativity out of the way and have a good visit in person when he was able to come back to Corinth. He was confident that the Corinthians would receive his letter well, and while it may take them some time to process it, they would once again become joyful with Paul and see that he is doing all of this for their benefit.
Whatever Paul wrote in this “severe letter” greatly distressed him. He emphasizes in verse 4 that his point in writing that letter was not to make them mad but to show them his love for them. Paul is showing them discipline – not correcting them out of anger or condemnation but out of love and a desire for them to live the lives that God has called them to. Paul was genuinely concerned for the Corinthians, and he was trying to make sure they knew that.
It is often hard to receive correction or discipline from someone else, and we can often mistake someone’s motives in correcting us. We can easily misunderstand others’ intentions, and that is why good communication is so important. In Paul’s day, communicating across distances was significantly more difficult than today, and it took much longer. While there are benefits to slower communication, such as giving people time to cool off and think with a clear head before responding, it could also give them more time to dwell on what Paul said and possibly misinterpret it.
But regardless of the speed of our communications, we need to make sure that we have the same attitude that Paul had – providing discipline and correction to others when needed, but only out of deep love for them. We also need to accept discipline and correction when it is provided to us by those who love us. We need to make sure to listen to those who are correcting us and not make assumptions that are not true. While we are all fallible humans who make mistakes, often things that may not feel great to us are really for our own good, just as Paul was showing his love for the Corinthians by changing his plans.
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The righteousness of the blameless will direct his way aright,
But the wicked will fall by his own wickedness.
The righteousness of the upright will deliver them,
But the unfaithful will be caught by their lust.
~ Proverbs 11:5-6
When I read through Proverbs again recently, this passage stood out. Those who live righteous lives will have their paths made clear for them. The righteous are going to know what to do and when to do it when the time comes. There are many wrong ways to do things, and the righteous will not choose any of those paths. They will walk the straight and narrow. They will do their duty and will never have to worry about watching their backs for their wrong choices to haunt them.
The wicked, however, do not have this luxury. Sure, they may seem to thrive for a season, but they are always watching their backs. Whether they recognize it or not, they constantly have a tingling in the back of their head that someone is watching them and going to end their parade. As society falls deeper and deeper into depravity, the wicked feel empowered to where they can press the envelope further and think of the “lesser crimes” as being nothing. However, they will fall on their own by their own folly. In all their attempts to do wicked deeds, they will trip over themselves.
We need to understand that the wicked are not merely those who are tyrants, bullies, murderers, thieves, rapists, etc. “The wicked” does include those things, but it also includes those who truly try to do things “rightly” but in their own way. We need to understand that all those villains we love to hate actually think they are doing the right thing. There are only a few of them that know they are doing evil and love doing it anyway. Those who commit the white lies, cheat the system a little bit, copy answers for an exam, sneak a little candy from the store, watch a little snuff – that is all sin and wickedness. The main difference between the “small crimes” and the “big crimes” is how loose that sin’s leash is. If there were no real known consequences for sin, we’d all be turned loose, and we’d have destroyed ourselves a long time ago. It is only when God puts the clamps down on sin that it is restrained.
“The righteousness of the upright will deliver them.” Deliver them from what? The traps of the wicked. The wicked cannot stand having the righteous near them. Why? Even if the righteous don’t say anything, their actions will convict the wicked that what they are doing is wrong. Because they are cheating the system, and they are seeing someone using the system correctly, they feel inferior, and so they want to take that person out. They desire to put some dirt in their eye or do something to get them to do something wrong just to make them feel better. So while the righteous do not have to watch their backs for the law to come down on them, they must certainly act with sharp eyes and discernment because of the enemy seeking to take them down a notch.
But for the wicked, it will all come back on them. The very traps they set will be the traps they fall into. The Bible gives two notable examples of this: Haman in the book of Esther and the bulk of the government structure of Persia during Daniel’s time. Haman hated Mordecai because Mordecai would not give him the attention he wanted, so Haman sought to kill all the Jews starting with Mordecai. Those familiar with the story will recall how Esther, Mordecai’s niece, was the queen and vouched for the Jews. Haman was busted and was hung on the very noose he was prepared to hang Mordecai on. In Daniel’s time, Daniel was such a man of prayer that the other prime ministers and princes, the rulers of the Persian Empire, sought to bring him down and get him thrown into the lions’ den. Daniel didn’t budge; he prayed anyway, was tossed down into the den, but was spared. The king realized what was going on and had all those who plotted against Daniel thrown into the den themselves. They didn’t even make it to the ground before lion’s tore them apart.
God is going to preserve His people and only let them be touched for a certain time, a certain purpose, and to a certain limit. Think of Jesus. There were numerous attempts on His life, but nothing could actually touch Him until it was time for Him to surrender and give His life on the cross. As long as the righteous continue to seek after righteousness and constantly stay alert, they will not stumble and fall. They will be attacked and harassed and hindered, but they will not stumble. Each attempt to stop them will only make them stronger.
There is one thing the righteous can do to readily keep themselves strong and alert: to not keep company with the wicked. I am not talking about Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, treating them like real people and working toward their conversion. But rather I am talking about Psalm 1:1: the blessed man does not dwell in the house of the wicked, and they do not take council with the scornful nor sit in the seat of mockers. They give the wicked no credence nor approval in what they do, nor do they join hands with them. Working on a civil project together may be one thing, but the righteous do things the right way and do not take part in the coarse discourse of the wicked, the crude joking, the plots to steal away some of the company’s goods, etc.
Walk the righteous path. It will be difficult! There will be many distractions and many lures to pull you off that path. It will likely be a lonely path, but we must do the right thing even if there is a cost to it. The cost for doing the right thing is nothing compared to the cost for doing the wrong thing. Let the wicked target you all they want, then remember the psalmist who said his joy was renewed when he entered the House of the Lord and remembered the destination of the wicked. The righteous will prosper, even through hardship. The wicked will perish and everything they gain through deception will be taken from them.
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The Christian life is a life that is always in process – a process that works a sinful heart of stone and into a heart of flesh. We call this process sanctification. This only happens with someone who has already been born again. This does not happen with someone who just says a prayer or someone who makes a profession of faith, but someone in whom the seed of rebirth has been planted, watered, and now has sprouted and grown.
Sanctification is the process of removing sin from one’s life. It is often an unpleasant experience as we go through it. It’s often painful, and we wonder why God puts us through this. But we scrub pots and floors and walls and laundry all the time to get the dirt and grime off them. What if that pot, that floor, that wall, that piece of clothing had feelings? Would they not feel pain too? But the pain would be worth it because the grime would be gone. The same is true for us. Every believer who has been through this sanctification process does not like going through it but always finds it worthwhile once it is done.
The Bible uses two main images to describe how sanctification works: a launderer’s soap and a refiner’s fire. The first image is what I just used above. A launderer’s soap is a scouring soap. It is mean to really dig into the dirt and grime to break up its bonds with the substance to water can wash it off. Let me emphasize this point more. The grease and grime that the fuller’s soap needs to cleanse is chemically bonded to the surface. It’s not like mere dirt or mud that a hose can simply wash off. You need the soap to break the chemical bonds.
The same is true for sin. It’s not just a “fall in the mud and get dirty” issue. It is bonded to you so strongly that the only way to get it off is through breaking those bonds. The only thing potent enough to break the bond of sin is the blood of Jesus Christ. Now, don’t hear what I am not saying. I am not saying that once we are born again then we are freed from sin. There is more to the image. The soap doesn’t just wash it off on its own. It requires scrubbing. When dealing with grime, you spray the cleaner on the area needing to be cleaned, let it sit for a while so the chemical reaction can do its thing, and then you have to scrub it and the scrubbing takes work. Likewise, God applies the blood of Jesus to our areas of life infected with sin and then He has to scrub us to get the sin out. How does He scrub us? With trials, tribulations, persecutions, difficulties, etc. People ask why God is so “cruel” to His own people; He is actually scrubbing them clean of their sin.
The other image used to describe sanctification is a refiner’s fire. There are two versions of this. In the first version, the goldsmith will take his raw material, place in in his pot or whatever he is using, and turn up the heat. The heat will melt the gold and leave the impurities on the top, because gold is one of the heaviest natural materials. The goldsmith scrapes off the impurities and then turns up the heat again. More impurities come up and are scraped off. Then more heat, and more heat, until all that is left is pure, unadulterated gold. The other version is the same idea only with silver. The silversmith does the same thing and knows when it is finished because he can see a reflection of his face in the pool of silver. I’ll dwell on this point next week in more detail.
I need to make this clear: sanctification is a process that will go on for the entirety of our earthly lives. As long as we live in this physical body that is tainted and corrupted by sin, we will always deal with our sinful nature and tendencies. Until that is finally dealt with, we will be warring against our sin. At the resurrection of our physical bodies, we will celebrate our final victory over sin.
I also need to make it clear that this is something we cannot do on our own. We can never overcome our own sin by our own efforts. This can only be done by the Holy Spirit’s work in us, though we still have a responsibility to submit to the process. Fighting the process is only going to produce more pain for us and make our lives even harder. The prayer of David was for God to wash him and cleanse him. David knew his sinful tendencies and his sinful nature and longed to be freed from that sin. It was attached to him, and he could not get rid of it. He needed help. He needed a Savior.
There are two equal and opposite heresies to the sanctification process. One is legalism and the other is antinomianism. In legalism, sanctification becomes about being morally perfect for the sake of being morally perfect. It is doing the law to make yourself clean and going through the rituals to get it all done yourself. Let me make this crystal clear: proclaiming God’s perfect standard as the ideal is NOT legalism. Proclaiming the goal and telling people they are wrong is not legalism. David Wilkerson said that the church is at the height of apostasy when we call “obedience” as legalism, and he’s right. The sanctification process is not legalism. But true legalism, the practice of doing good works to please God, is not sanctification either.
The other heresy is antinomianism, which basically makes everything a free-for-all, and we can do what we want and how we want to do it. We can believe the doctrines we like, and we can follow which teachers we want. Because we are all under the grace of God, we should all get along. That’s turning the grace of God into lawlessness. And I will argue that the ones who cry “legalism” the most are likely in this camp.
Sanctification is directly opposed to antinomianism, but it is also not legalism. It is the process of being rid of sin and being cleansed of sin. Salvation initially removes the penalty of sin from our record, then sanctification takes us through the process of being delivered from the power of sin. And then our final glorification will remove us from the very presence of sin. But there is more to what is happening in the sanctification process. It is not just deliverance from something (sin) but deliverance to something (Christ). That’s for next week.
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“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” -John 15:2
In 2015, my wife and I were blessed to move our family out to the country. On the property was a massive lilac bush, and we were very excited to enjoy the blooms we anticipated were sure to come in the future. Well, the first spring, not many blooms came. The next spring even less came. It went this way for the next couple of years. So, I decided in the fall of 2019 that I would prune the bush back quite a bit. This bush was at least 12 feet tall, and I cut all the branches of this bush back to about 6 feet tall. Some people were worried that I might have killed the bush, but I was to the point of attempting to replace the bush anyway, so I thought might as well go for broke.
In the spring of 2020, I don't know if we got any blooms. The next spring in 2021, new growth had happened but not many blooms were found on the bush. This spring, though, there are so many blooms on the bush that they literally change the smell of the air all around our home and their fragrance is powerful.
This got me thinking about our own lives and how God works in and through them. Friends, yes, the Lord will prune and even discipline those He loves so we can have the opportunity to have much good fruit in our lives. But please keep in mind, too, that the Lord has already shown us how to live. At times we need to “prune” things out of our lives in order to receive the good “blooms” that the Lord desires for us to have in our lives.
Please don't get discouraged when you don't see much fruit soon after making good godly decisions in your life. Sometimes, just like the lilac bush in our yard, it takes time for the good gifts to come. So, rejoice in the Lord always; I will write it again, rejoice!
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” -Philippians 4:4-7
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“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,
‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.’
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline —then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” -Hebrews 12:4-11
Moving into this next section of the book of Hebrews, the author begins sharing about different aspects of the Christian life. The first thing he shares is about discipline – a topic that basically nobody enjoys.
It’s important to note that the author starts this section with a comparison between the believers’ struggle and that of those who had been killed for their faith (verse 4). Persecution to the point of being killed for the Christian faith was a very real danger at the time when this letter was written. All believers struggle with sin, and one of those temptations may have been to give up their faith to save their earthly life. Remember that this is just a few verses after the author provided the great list of the heroes of the faith, many of whom were killed for their faith. The struggle with sin is very real, but it’s important to keep our own struggles in the proper context. Yes, we go through difficult times in life, but at least we have not yet been killed for faith!
Then, the author brings up the topic of discipline, starting with the relationship between a father and son in verse 5 that he uses to introduce quoting Proverbs 3:11-12 in verses 5b-6. God is our father and we are His children, so He disciplines us as a Father would discipline His children. Being disciplined by God is not a sign that God doesn’t like us but rather it shows us how much He loves us! A father corrects his children because he loves them and wants to teach them to live correctly, and God disciplines us in the same manner. Contrary to how we tend to react, we should be encouraged when God disciplines us because it’s Him showing us His great love for us.
The ancient Roman world had a different understanding of discipline than we do today. It was expected, and a father in the Roman world had absolute authority over his children, even to the point of deciding whether to keep a child alive! The father even had the right to execute his child as a form of punishment, though this rarely happened. This shows the extremely serious attitude that they took toward discipline in the culture when this letter was written.
Verse 7 encourages us to look at any hardships we face as God providing discipline to us. God is treating us as his children and providing us with the discipline that we need to correct our wayward behaviors. Again, it was completely expected that a father would discipline his children, just as God does for us.
In verse 8, the author turns that around the other way. Because we are God’s children, He disciplines us; and if we are not receiving that discipline, then we must not be God’s children. Just as it was expected for a father to discipline his children, we as children should expect to BE disciplined by our heavenly Father. If the father felt no responsibility toward his children, he would not correct them. Likewise, God is showing His love and care for us as His true children by correcting us to His ways.
Verses 9-10 again make the connection between the human family and God and us as His children. But the author takes it one step further, showing how God’s discipline is different than that of a human father. Earthly fathers do their best for a short time while their child is young, but God’s discipline is perfect and holy, and it lasts for our entire lifetime. The goal of God’s discipline is to make us more like Him – sharing in His holiness.
The first part of verse 11 may seem like a very obvious statement – “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.” The author puts this in contrast to the long-term effects of discipline, which is to “produce a harvest of righteousness and peace.” We need to experience the short-term difficulties, pain, and suffering of God’s discipline in order to become more like God, to work toward that goal of teleios.
Whether you are the giver or receiver of discipline, it is not a pleasant thing to experience. But discipline is very necessary for our lives, both from a human standpoint and a spiritual one. We need to be corrected and instructed in the ways we should live in this world, both by our human parents and by God. That often has to happen through discipline, being punished when we do something wrong.
We will all experience suffering in this life, whether due to our own actions, the actions of those around us, or for reasons we can’t figure out. But when we can look at those times of suffering as being disciplined by God, they have greater meaning in our lives. Jesus experienced suffering on the cross, not as a form of discipline since He did nothing wrong, but He was able to endure that suffering because it had greater meaning – the salvation of all humanity who would turn to Him in faith. If we see the greater meaning in times we’re suffering as God guiding and correcting us, we are better able to endure it as well.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” -James 1:2-4
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by Eric Hansen
Bible journaling is both one of the best things we can do daily and it’s also very easy to stop without restarting. For me the value was definitely there, but the time and effort it took made it quite easy to give up. The same goes with journaling in general. While the resistance can vary from person to person, one very common reason people quit most things is they don't make time to exert much energy into it.
There's a type of journaling called "interstitial journaling" which is a fancy way of saying "timestamped journaling." So instead of writing prose (like this post) in a journal, you simply write the time and what you want to make note of, typically as a bullet point style list. For example: "06:27 - Writing article for Worldview Warriors about interstitial journaling.”
From the technical side of things, you don't need anything different than journaling by some other means, but this does lend itself toward a more essentialist approach to journaling. If you have paper and a writing tool, you're good to go. If you want to do this digitally then I would highly suggest an outliner like Notion, Obsidian, or Logseq. While it's not in the scope of this article to explain the why, how, etc., I will provide some screenshots of my current setup in Logseq. While some of this will only apply to doing this digitally, the overall concept can be used in any medium.
Set Up
While the basic approach was already given (timestamp - event) there are various ways to make the entries you jot down more useful if you so wish. If you're a visual person, this may be helpful. For paper journaling you can do symbols or some other mark (even highlighters), and for outliners I find the ones I mentioned effectively make hashtags a solid option for this. For example, I have a list of hashtags that I can see what the entry is about at a glance:
These can be placed anywhere in the entry but I tend to try to write entries that flow with the idea. So instead of "did my devotional #🙌Praise," I'll write something such as "did my devotional and the Spirit told me to #🙌Praise #🔥God." The reason I do this is if I want to look back on things I was praying for, it's always good to see how or if the prayer had been resolved. If so, then I can make a note in today's journal about it, and if not, then I remember it's something that requires more prayer.
Journal Entry Example
While not the most profound example, and I'll expand on this in the next section, here is one example of what it looked like at the beginning for me:
All the blank-looking "#" are actual hashtags, just technical issues out of my experience to resolve. The "[[...]]" text is also more for linking ideas and again out of scope of this, but I wanted to explain in brief the differences here.
The idea here is still the same. I just make note of what the current time is of writing my thoughts down and what the thought is. If there are things to expand on, my preference is to sub-point it so my thoughts don't turn into run-on sentences. It also helps me keep my point clear on why I'm writing the event.
Highs and Lows
Now the point of Bible journaling, regardless of how, is to keep a record of how God works in your life. This looks different for everyone as each of our walks is also different. As much as I would love to say that this made me an expert Bible journaler, it is not the case. Each medium has its pros and cons, but I'll focus on the ones that I feel are equal regardless of how you may do this.
Highs
It was very simple, and any complexity that occurred was because of me. I also didn't feel punished for not writing a whole page of praise. If I had an off day or didn't feel like I could write much, then I just made a note of that when the thought came to me.
Seeing the flow of events made me realize the peaks and valleys of my days with emotions, thoughts, productivity, etc. This helped me better plan when I will start my day, learn Korean, read the Bible, and whatever else I wanted to do within the day.
Lows
It's still very easy to complicate things. The more friction we add into something (like visual identifiers), the more taxing it is to follow through on things. This is one thing I will probably stop doing except for possibly the most important. It's nice to be able to see links, correlations, etc., but the more we try to fluff up a simple process, the more convoluted it becomes. This is much like how the moral law from God went from 10 statements to hundreds.
If you don't enjoy journaling now, there's no guarantee this will make journaling fun for you. I’m not saying you shouldn't try it, regardless of how you feel about journaling in a journal. But it should be said that it's not a silver bullet to make recording your adventures with God any more appealing.
It can interrupt your already-structured Bible journaling. If you already have a system that works for you, then this may hurt that. But it could also help it as well. I always err on the side of caution so I put this here instead of as a high.
While I enjoy doing it digitally, I would say it can be a lot more difficult to keep up as well. Even if you are someone with their phone glued to their hip all day, usually it's easier to pull out some paper and a pen to write things down. If you are like me, though, and moving toward a purely digital way of life, then this could just be a small hill for major gain.
Lastly, while not specifically a high or low, I often found it difficult to keep track of any actual answered prayer. I feel if I had discovered this 1-2 years ago when I was in a season of God really working on me, there would be much more to highlight. But, the season I'm in now is actually quite relaxed in the grand scheme.
This isn't something I will stop, as I think the realization of how God impacts my life is important to see in retrospect. It also helps a bit to remember the important details of an event and not just that something happened. I do struggle, though, with writing full paragraphs, which makes the outlining approach this leans toward more suitable for me as well. None of the highs nor lows really sway me to either side of suggesting this style of journaling, though. It offers the ability to have greater insight and more un-fluffed thoughts jotted down, but finding that niche of making it work for you in an effective way is definitely trial and error.
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by Eric Hansen
Writing about being a Godly person can be tough, especially when you find yourself getting heavily distracted by the facts of life. These days between working from home, having a family, and trying to tend to the various duties we place on ourselves, one more distraction may not seem like a lot, but it could very well be the tipping point. This is what I experienced for most of 2020 and even all of 2021, until June.
We definitely need to find ways to take a step back, breathe, and remember that the only things we are granted are moments, not days, weeks, or years. Even as I write this, if it’s in God’s will that I no longer live after typing the next character, then my life bows down to His will. So then what is more important to me, serving God or worldly matters?
Biblical Christians will say “serving God,” and they are definitely not wrong. But how often do we find ourselves actually doing this? Throughout this month, even though at the time of writing this it’s only been a week or so, I’ve been trying to not only wake up more productive but more spiritually filled. The only way to be spiritually filled is to spend time with God, in His word and through prayer. However, this morning I woke up and scrolled through my phone for a half hour, then went and did dishes, then hopped on my computer to see why various news sites were down. This is the routine I often find myself falling into, whether I’m looking at Facebook, my email, some news feeds, etc.; it replaces time with God.
But, the Spirit will also convict you with a slap to the face if He has to. It’s not as though I have done this to spite God yet still call myself a Christian; I just have a really bad routine. While I was on my computer, the Spirit just suddenly hit me with the truth of, “So, this is how you’re going to spend time with God? By ignoring Him?”
The Spirit wasn’t wrong. I was ignoring God even though I got on the computer thinking, “I’m just going to see what’s up with this and then read the Bible.” But if I’m being honest, that wouldn’t have been how it played out. Instead, I would have sat there, watched YouTube, and then got into my work for the day. If this was before June, then throw in Facebook too, containing countless, and what can be considered fruitless, debates on there.
Essentially, we need to come to terms with what is valuable in our lives and what is noise. For me, after a hard retrospection of when I am and am not productive, I realized being on tools like Facebook are not fruitful ventures for me. While it does have some merit, my personal conviction is that relationships need to be personable not textual. People are much more bold and brash online than they are in person, more often than not. They are also far less likely to have an earnest conversation about faith and God. The monologue that happens is not productive in my opinion, and it only fosters anger and frustration. Knowing that the person on the other end needs Christ in their lives, but waiting for them to decide to respond back to you in the middle of the night, I highly doubt is what Christ had in mind when He said go out into the world and proclaim the gospel.
For me, this meant to step away from Facebook. This also removed me from keeping in contact with various people, but when I thought about it, I couldn’t remember the last time I had a truly honest conversation with almost all of them, even those I call brothers in Christ, old pastors, family, etc. Now, I’m not sitting here inferring any negativity towards them as we all have our own lives to live. But, the purpose of things like Facebook was to keep in contact with people, and all it was doing was fostering stress, anxiety, and discontent for me. It was taking me away from spending time with the One who truly loves me and wants to see me to my fullest potential, and instead focusing just as intently on people who have my number but won’t call or text.
In removing yourself from one thing, you will miss out on things going on, for sure. My own ministry’s Facebook page has a few followers and I don’t really want to see that go away. But, at the same time, we can only serve 1 master, and I’d rather my master be God not man. People are quick to tell you that you’re wrong, but yet they won’t guide you to show you the truth. It’s no different then than casting your pearls to the swine (Matthew 7:6).
I’ll leave this entry with one last thought on why stepping away from things may benefit you more than not. While I still struggle at times with being with God instead of doing “me” things, I do find it easier. I didn’t tell the Spirit, “One minute...” but instead thought about the fact I just had that experience for a second, then went straight to my Bible and finished reading Nehemiah. I’ve also started learning biblical Greek, which had been an interest of mine since I started believing in God. It’s also been helping me with my Korean studies as well, as I believe God is calling me to serve there in some capacity. But most importantly, I’ve begun to also really reflect on whether things I do, say, and think are truly of a character of God or not. I’m learning to say no to things far more, and I’m accepting that even though I really want to do things like crochet, right now it’s either I do that or spend time with God.
Are there any areas in your life where you feel you could dedicate more energy towards spending time with the Father? If you instead scoff or say no to this, then consider whether it be waking up 5 minutes earlier, or perhaps bringing someone into worship with you. You don’t have to go as far as to remove yourself from the Internet; tools like Facebook and Twitter are vastly important to also serve Jesus’s calling of sharing the gospel to the ends of the earth. We can have leisure; God blessed us with the sabbath after all. I’m also not saying you have to go learn a new language to devote yourself to Christ. However, as we are to do all things for the Lord, in what ways are what you do, say, and think fulfilling the love of Christ instead of man?
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“In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.” - 1 John 5:3-4
When my wife and I began raising the children that God had given to us, we knew we wanted to at least strive to raise them up not only in Godly ways but for them to learn how to discern the Word of God to make good and right choices on their own. We came up with only 2 rules to follow in our home. Those rules were as follows:
1) Honor and obey God and your father and mother
2) Do not lie.
We taught first-time obedience to all of our children from a very young age.
By only having these two rules to follow, our home became a very permission giving household. Our children learned the importance of liberty versus fear, shame, and control. This also freed up my wife and me to be able to give our children grace when they might do something unwise or sinful, and we would allow God’s “special revelation” (natural law) to teach them the importance of benefits and consequences in decisions they would make.
We did our best to try and follow God’s example in the Garden of Eden. God only gave Adam and Eve one simple rule to follow: do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the middle of the garden. If they did eat from it, they would eventually receive a consequence and they would surely die (Genesis 2:15-17). Everything else was fair game! Think about that for a moment. Nothing else was sinful. As it states in 1 John above, God’s commands are not burdensome. He desires for us to live without fear, shame, and control. God’s Word is very clear not to worry or to be anxious about anything (Philippians 4:6). God’s Word also tell fathers to not exasperate their children and to bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4).
Another thing my wife and I decided to implement in our household was the importance of first-time obedience and to administer discipline right away. Even if I would be relaxing in my easy chair after a hard day of work, it was my responsibility to get out of that easy chair and administer discipline, right away, if one of our children chose to disobey me or their mother. I could not be lazy, whine, or make up an excuse that I was too tired from a hard day to show our children love in this way. If we would let them get away with sinning now, how much more would that take place later in life? Our children learned that talking back to their mother or father was not honoring them and that this was not obeying us the first time we told them to do something, which was disobedience. This was a breaking of our first rule.
Discipline needed to be administered swiftly but lovingly. One way we chose not to exasperate our children was to make certain they knew why they were going to be disciplined for their action. This could literally take 30-60 minutes of our time to have a conversation with our child and talk out what had just taken place, allowing our child to understand that what they did was breaking not just our house rules but breaking God’s law as well. It was very important to us to instill this into our children to help them understand that as their parents we weren’t just making up rules willy-nilly but trying to honor and obey God ourselves. We would do this behind a closed door with just the one child who committed the offense, usually with just one parent. This helped our children to learn that they could trust us and that we were not going to embarrass them in front of others.
This also gave us the opportunity to allow our children to learn about the wonderful gift of grace. You see, my wife and I learned very early on that we couldn’t share with our children every single bad thing that might happen to them by making sinful or bad decisions. But, it gave us freedom to discuss things with them later and give them some grace after talking to one another so they could then have the liberty to make their own choice later on. So, sometimes we wouldn’t administer any discipline because they might have already learned the lesson needed to make a good and right choice on their own. After all, it really is about a heart issue, isn’t it?
Jason and his wife Jaya have been married since 1997 and have been blessed with 6 children, 2 boys and 4 girls. If the topic in this post interests you, check out Jason’s book on leaving a life of security for a life of liberty in “How Being Consistent Changed Everything.” You can get your own copy here.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
“Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me.” ~Proverbs 1:28
I started reading through Proverbs again to start out September, doing a chapter a day, and the first chapter leapt out to me. It’s something I’ve read numerous times, but this time there was an emphasis there which I had not seen before. The above verse of Proverbs 1:28 and the surrounding verses fly in the face of so many teachings we hear today.
The average church today describes how God will give us so many chances because He is so full of love and mercy. After all, He is longsuffering, not willing that any would perish but all might come to repentance. There is a lot of truth to this, but it’s often out of balance. Proverbs is telling us here that there may come a time where we may call out of to God for help, to seek wisdom in time of trouble, and because we refused to seek Him for so long, He won’t answer. Yes, I am saying that there could come a time where no matter how much we cry for help that God will not hear us. It happened at least once: with Noah’s Flood. God said He would not strive with man forever. He wasn’t going to let them sin for the sake of “love” and “mercy” forever. Many people would have banged on the Ark when the floods finally came, and God did not answer them. That should frighten us.
Jesus warned against the blasphemy of the Holy Spirt as being the unpardonable sin. While many interpret that as “rejecting Jesus as your Savior,” John MacArthur put a different twist on it that I had only vaguely heard of in this sermon 51 years ago. He made the comment that because this verse directly follows the Pharisees calling the acts of Jesus as being of the devil, that Jesus was suggesting that if you could see all the works He did and the only conclusion you could come up with was it was of the devil, then you were beyond the possibility of being saved. It’s a rather bold statement, but he’s not alone either.
Adrian Rogers, in addressing how God handles those who have never heard to the Gospel, said this: “Light received gives more light. Light rejected increases darkness.” Here is his message. Every person will be held responsible for the “light” or the knowledge he has been given. If someone did not have a lot, he won’t be held responsible for that which he wasn’t not given. But as Scripture declares every person has been given at least some knowledge of God, every person has enough knowledge and evidence to damn them. What is this knowledge? Paul describes both creation and conscious in Romans 1. None have any excuses. Each must make an account for what they know and how they responded to it.
So, what about those jungle warriors who never heard the Gospel? Paris Reidhead got to see that firsthand. He went to Africa initially thinking they had such a poor existence on earth that he’d bring the Gospel to them to give them hope, yet when he got there, he learned that the heathen there already knew more about God than he dreamed they knew of, and they wanted nothing to do with it. Reidhead noticed they knew of God, but they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it. God’s message to Reidhead shook him up. The Holy Spirit impressed upon his spirit this concept: “I didn’t send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen. I sent you to Africa for my sake.” Reidhead learned he was sent to claim what Christ purchased on the cross. God wasn’t so concerned about their “souls” as He was about His glory and what His Kingdom stood for.
We have got to learn that while God does take interest in us, we are not His first priority. His first priority is His Kingdom and His glory. That means when we choose to get in His way, things don’t go well for us. When we reject God and when we reject His wisdom, God is going to let us suffer the consequences. If we continue in that sin, then God will continue to let that sin boil and fester. Eventually the time will come when God will simply hand us over to a reprobate mind.
Several clichés come to mind. “If you made the bed, lay in it.” “Many people like to sow wild oats and pray for a crop failure.” Look, God is full of love and He is full of mercy. I am not questioning or challenging this. But we cannot use that as an excuse to take sin as flippantly as I’ve seen, including in my own life. I hate the fact that I don’t take God as seriously as I should. I know what I am, and I know what I can be apart from Christ. If God doesn’t apply His grace and mercy to me every day, even when I don’t ask for it, I know how evil I can become. And don’t think you are any different. You know who you are, too, and what you would be capable of doing if the guards and checks in your heart and mind were removed. Some of you may think you don’t do something because society says, “Don’t do it.” That’s fine. But if society didn’t check up on you about it, what would stop you? Don’t blame God when we choose to sin against Him and He lets us experience the consequences.
God gives grace and mercy when we disobey out of childish foolishness. Jesus prayed for His Father to forgive those crucifying Him because they knew not what they were doing. Paul affirmed that. If they did know what they were doing, they would not have crucified Christ. But when that childish foolishness becomes and grows into intentional defiance, then God will lay down the hammer of justice. And if it continues after repeated cases of mercy and grace being offered, there will come a point where God says, “It’s over. You are lost forever.”
Ahab was one such case. God revealed Himself to Ahab through a 3 ½ year drought, through fire from heaven, through an old prophet outrunning his best horses, through two battles against Syria, and even a final chance after getting Naboth murdered for a vineyard. In every case, God offered Ahab a chance to repent, but in each case a woman named Jezebel got in the way and kept him reeled in. Eventually God had enough and asked a lying spirit to convince Ahab to go to war to be killed in battle. Ahab rejected wisdom and rejected God. It cost him his life and to be forever marked as the evilest king of all the rulers, a king who refused to hear God despite the numerous attempts God made to draw him. Did God fail? No. He let Ahab make his choices. Ahab’s loss was Ahab’s loss, not God’s. Let us remember that. When we disobey God, we are the ones who lose, not God.
There is only one escape to this judgment. Accept the light while we can. What has God shown you? What truth do you know God has given you? Start with that. My pastor gives very solid advice: when you don’t know what to do, go back to the last thing you know for sure God told you to do and do it. You may not get further or clearer instructions until you do. Seek wisdom. Seek God’s knowledge. Only by obeying it can we get more, and the mine of God’s wisdom is inexhaustible. If we reject God’s wisdom, we truly become stupid, but if we receive it and search after it, we’ll keep getting more and more. And this treasure is simply invaluable. It’s beyond comprehension of how valuable it is. We are to pursue it, and if we get God, we get all that comes with Him. No words can describe that prize. Go after it and don’t scorn it.
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Years ago, when my wife and I had our first child, we had a decision to make. In fact, we had a whole lot of decisions to make. One of those decisions was, how are we going to teach our children the difference between right and wrong, and how would we administer this teaching? We decided very early on to be consistent in our teaching and in our delivering of benefits or consequences to one’s actions.
We decided to administer first time obedience with our children. Once they knew what we expected of them, if they chose not to obey the very first time, they would receive a consequence for their disobedience. My wife and I agreed long before the offense what this consequence would be, and we also agreed that if we were not consistent with our children in administering this consequence then my wife and I were the ones at fault because we were allowing our children to continue disobeying us without said consequence being administered. We decided to take responsibility for our own actions.
For instance, if I came home after working and was sitting in my chair in the family room relaxing and decided I was too tired to administer the consequence or discipline when an offense occurred, then I was now becoming a part of the problem because I was not teaching our children the difference between right and wrong. If I was “too tired” to parent, well, I was in the wrong. Why? Because the God of the Bible had given my wife and me these children and had chosen us to raise them in His good and right ways. By us not taking responsibility in training them up in His ways, we were teaching them that our comfort was more important than following God and His ways. Let me dig into this idea just a bit.
Years ago, a friend of mine told me, “I have come to realize that if there is a son problem, there is more than likely a daddy problem going on.” Ouch! But that is so true. It’s not that fathers are bad or are not needed, it’s that we as fathers need to take responsibility for our actions and be willing to show our children what is good and right and true in every circumstance. In fact, when we do mess up, that is a great time to show your children what true humility really looks like.
I praise God that He sent me an amazing woman into my life who is a very strong-willed Christ follower and yet also understands the importance of working together as a team in our marriage. This means that even when she thinks my leading might be too tough or strong, she still honors my decision because we made decisions together long before we got into the situation. We believe character is not built in trials, character is tested in trials; it is built before the trial begins. This goes for not only someone in raising a child but also on a very personal note for each person in this world as well.
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There was once an old man who lived in an arid land. He had a long white beard and sharp blue eyes. He looked like Merlin in a loin cloth. His muscles had that hard but sinewy look like he was carved out of hickory. The deep tone of his skin went clear to the bone from layers of sunburns laid on top of each other for decades. He is an ancient man, from an ancient land.
He did begin life wanting to live in a place where he may see an inch of rainfall in a month. It is hard to grow enough food in a place like that. But stronger men took the best places first, pushing our guy further and further out into a place where life is as hard as the dry cracked ground.
Ole’ hickory limbs had a family. They numbered nearly a hundred. His children and their mates and their children, and a few stragglers here and there, comprised a rabble band that looked to him for leadership and provision. Now this being an arid land, there was never enough water to go around. When it did rain, it was like manna from heaven! But the rain was gone too quickly and the cracks in the ground reasserted themselves quickly.
One day, after a rain, he noticed that the water drips for much longer from a rock formation nearby. It would drip sometimes for half a day after the rain had stopped. Soon he noticed other places where this happened too.
He immediately saw the potential.
If he could capture this water and store it, he would have that water to produce crops. He puzzled over how to capture it, how to collect it, and how to store it. Suddenly—huzzah! He had a flash of inspiration. He realized that if he hollowed out a pumpkin, he could use it to carry water.
He recognized that potentiality necessitates innovation.
That is to say, any potential thing requires innovation to bring it into reality. So, loincloth Merlin, Ole’ hickory limbs himself, hollowed out a bunch of pumpkins and sets them out under known drippy spots. Then he waited anxiously for the rain to fall and eventually it did. He watched with giddy apprehension as his pumpkins filled up to the brim and began to spill over the side. It really worked! He had never seen so much water since he was a small boy.
The man carried the pumpkins—my goodness they were heavy—near his plantings. He soon ran out of water, but he had tripled the amount of water. Soon, he found more drippy spots and captured every trickle he could. Every old pumpkin was hollowed out and turned into a bucket. And he faithfully, diligently would move the pumpkins around during the rain and fill up everything he could. He was exhausted. Be that as it may, it was working. The tribe had seen a small boost in production in the garden. Several of the other members of the tribe saw the connection and began to help out. The rest just showed up with their empty pumpkins.
Even so, the old man was happy. He discovered the potential of the water. Then he innovated a way to capture the water. But he was discovering the third aspect of potentiality.
Potentiality requires innovation, and innovation requires LABOR to bring it into reality.
Loincloth Merlin had another flash of inspiration. If they had a big holding tank near the garden—by this time the crops were doing well and everyone had plenty of food—they wouldn’t have to have so many pumpkins, besides they didn’t last forever. He had his band of 20 hardy fellows. They were able to keep the pumpkins moved around and full every time it rained. He had another flash of inspiration: if everyone pitched in, they could fill a great big tank and each person would only have to fill a small gourd—no one would even have to carry a big pumpkin filled with water.
So he went around and he talked to everyone. He explained the potentiality—which got everyone excited. He explained the innovations—which impressed everyone. He explained the need for an investment of labor—their labor. Well, at first they didn’t really like this—most of them sought some kind of exemption, after all they had been getting food and water without any labor, so why chip in now.
He explained how so much of the burden fell on so few, and that it is only fair that everyone puts in work for the good of the tribe. Eventually, most of the people bought in. Everyone started donating a minimum of 10% of their time. The results were amazing. The rain didn’t fall any more often, but there was so much food and water—even in that dry place.
They had so much that they were bathing in it! And the people surrounding this little tribe began to notice it too. All of the desperate vagabonds who lived around this tribe begged for food and water. “What must we do to be saved from starvation and despair?” they cried.
The people of the tribe answered them with the words of Isaiah 55:1:
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.”
There is PLENTY! Come and be filled up!
The old hickory man himself, loincloth Merlin, looked out with great satisfaction and with great joy. And it wasn’t just because his people were well fed, the most numerous, and the happiest people in all the land. Partly it was because they had transformed the desert into a garden—and it was theirs.
Isaiah 41:18: “I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs.”
[See next week's blog post for the explanation of this parable.]
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
I am one of those hyper-focused guys where while it may take me a while to get started on something, once I get going, don’t interrupt me on it until I am at a good place to stop. I used to hate unexpected interruptions and it would make me shut down. I don’t remember it, but rumor has it that the worst tantrum I threw as a child was when my babysitter sent me to bed half an hour late. Why? It threw me off my schedule and I was not prepared for it. I am much better at dealing with this now, but I was not exactly the best person to be around when I was interrupted and inconvenienced. How do we handle interruptions and inconveniences?
I worked in retail for six years after high school and into my first couple years of college at a local grocery store. They had made me a jack-of-all-trades at this store. The only departments I did not work were meat market, bakery, and produce. I worked warehouse, I worked the shelves, I worked cashier, I sacked/carried out groceries, dairy, frozen, and even janitorial stuff from time to time. I remember one summer, I sought to do a thorough cleaning of the shelves I was primarily responsible for and I long lost count of how many times the front called me up to sack groceries or cashier for one or two customers when there were plenty of other people in the story who truly weren’t doing much. It was frustrating, and the more I reflect upon it, I did not exactly handle it the way I should have.
What dislodged this from my mind was Eric Ludy’s sermon “Fixing Broken Pots.” In this sermon, Ludy describes the mission work of Otto Conning in Ira Jaya and Papua New Guinea. Otto was sent to do language studies and to translate the Gospel of John, and yet every time he turned around the people came to him to fix their broken pots, busted shovels, bent machetes, and a rusty harmonica. Ludy shows how Otto had to get to the point where dealing with all these interruptions was more important than the primary job he was sent to do, and in the end he ended up being ahead of nearly every other missionary sent by the board by ten years. It was hard, but he learned to appreciate the inconveniences and that ultimately God was the one responsible for how and when he got things done.
When I first heard that sermon, I knew I was guilty of not handling things the right way. When things go as expected, life is easy. But something I have known for some time but never really appreciated so much is that God likes to make us uncomfortable because that is the only way to get us to grow. I can say this from experience and I am sure many of you can say it too. If you want God to teach you patience, I can guarantee you will get many opportunities to practice patience. I can also say from experience that if you want to have a time completely separated from everything else so you can focus on a project, you can expect a number of interruptions and inconveniences to come your way. My project I tried to do at this grocery store was a fine example.
What kind of inconveniences do we face? What are they for? How should we respond to them? Interruptions and inconveniences come from two sources: God or Satan, and between them there are three primary motivations in throwing them at us.
The first motivation for God to throw us inconveniences is when he wants to teach us something. Some of these are small things. A flat tire that actually kept you out of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Getting called to the front of the store when you are focused on a project in the back end. Dealing with the “customer from hell.” Having a manager constantly micromanage your work. In growing up serving on mission teams, the sewer line of our Colorado home would back up every Friday night, right before we were to leave before sunrise the next morning for Juarez, Mexico. Every time. Paul had his thorn in the flesh. He repeatedly asked for it to be removed, but God was teaching Paul to trust in God alone and not his own skills, abilities, and intellect. These inconveniences are to help us build our character and to make us stronger so we can handle even bigger issues.
The second motivation for inconveniences are where God wants you to set up your plans and then he will redirect your steps when you get there. A case of major inconveniences that years earlier would have really messed me up took place in 2011. I was the leader of one of the Christian organizations at my college and I had spearheaded an outreach with a professional pool player, Steve Lillis. The very week he was to arrive, we got hit with a massive deep freeze that impacted the entire country. He got on the first plane out of New Jersey only to arrive in El Paso, to high temperatures of 15 degrees. Never in recorded history had El Paso stayed more than 48 hours below freezing. This storm killed the power generators, which killed the water pumps, and El Paso was forced to manage rolling blackouts and boil water because the major pipes had busted because they were frozen. For our outreach, we lost our venues and our intended audience. Yet God opened up other venues and other audiences, and Steve Lillis told me that week was his best in 15 years of international presentations. He included this trip in his autobiography. Man makes his plans but God directs his steps. He created inconveniences to get us to reach those he wanted to reach.
But thirdly, Satan also gives us inconveniences which God allows but did not necessarily authorize. While God will use inconveniences to help us grow, the enemy uses them to distract us and pull us off our position. We are soldiers in God’s army, positioned at certain stations. Satan will try to throw interruptions and inconveniences at us to try to get us to respond to them and leave our post, because once we leave our post, he invades our territory to try to take it over. These are such inconveniences were are to silence. Paul did so in Acts 16:16-18. A girl kept following them and proclaiming their message in a not so appropriate way. Paul got annoyed and cast the demon out of the girl. This of course caused her owners to get mad and they started a riot.
Learn the difference. Learn what you can learn from God, but don’t let the distractions keep you from your post and your duty. If God needs you to change your duty, he will tell you so. But don’t let the enemy give you that counsel.
I have greatly improved in my handling of interruptions and inconveniences, however I am not perfected. As a substitute teacher, a few weeks ago I had a day where my assignment got changed 4 times before the 1st period ended and I was able to take it with class. There have been other times a few years ago when such a circumstance would have shut me down. Let us handle our inconveniences with grace and tact. Recognize where they may come from, and even if they are from the devil, let us seek what God wants us to learn from it.
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A month ago, we at Worldview Warriors looked at some of the statistics of our different blog posts. We looked at the top ten viewed posts of all time and the top ten of the month of July. We saw some interesting things. At that time, every active Worldview Warrior blogger was on the top 10 in either one or both of the all-time and month’s lists. But what really surprised us as a group was our #1 most viewed post: my “The Israelite War Cry” posted way back in January 2014. That was my third blog post for Worldview Warriors when I joined the ministry. So when I saw those stats, especially with it being #1 all time and #2 of the month at the time, I sensed this topic needed a revisit, not because people are missing the point, but to bring it afresh to both my old and newer readers.
The inspiration for that blog post came from Eric Ludy’s short video, The Ancient War Cry. We find this war cry initiated in Deuteronomy 31:6-8 and Joshua 1:6,7, and 9. It is the Hebrew of “Be Strong and Courageous” but the whole phrase Rak Chazak Amats is found in Joshua 1:7. Please look at my initial post or listen to Ludy’s 6-minute video to get the details about what it means.
When I set out to write this post, I mostly wanted to reiterate what I had in my original post. However, God would not let me do it. He gave me writer’s block. I wanted to go into greater detail about the meaning of “Rak,” “Chazak,” and “Amats.” I wanted to showcase the plight Joshua was going into in facing 31 empires with much stronger armies, massive city walls, and people who were giants. And I wanted to give you another “Hurrah! Let’s go!” But I can’t. I can’t write that message. I tried. I can’t. Instead, I have to write a post that is for me. I need to write this post as though I am writing and preaching to me as the primary audience. This post may not be for you, or it might be.
One of the images I have of Jesus Christ is as a Commander-in-Chief. He is the military commander of the spiritual army we are part of it. One of his titles is “Lord of Hosts,” the commander of the angelic hosts. So allow me to write you a letter as I would picture Jesus as Commander-in-Chief may write it, and I am going to write it to me, an officer in his army, as the primary recipient.
Officer Wolcott (or put your name here):
It is a great joy to have you serving in my army. I chose you to serve me because I made you with the skills and abilities needed for the jobs I wanted you to do. However, there have been some issues with your services I would like to address.
You have a great tendency of starting strong and being gung ho in the tasks you engage in, however you lack the endurance to maintain it over time. I greatly appreciate that you are not giving up and abandoning the task when it gets hard, however, you do not yet know how to push through and press forward when you run out of energy.
This lack of endurance has caused you to lose your fight and your desire to press forward. You are out of shape, Officer Wolcott, but you do not have to be out of shape. Will you trust me to train you properly? You have wisely learned from many others I have trained by reading of their biographies, but they can only take you so far. How about training with me directly? Last year you went for it, but you crashed and you have not gathered your strength up to stand again. I know what you can handle. I want to give you even more because I have jobs and tasks that I want you to do, but you need a greater strength to do them.
Training with me is going to require more dedication than you have been giving me lately. It means getting up earlier to focus your mind with me. It is not going to be easy to do it day after day, but you must resist the desire for more sleep. You know you are not getting the sleep you want anyway. Get up and let me be your rest. I know how much sleep you actually need for the day. You know this as well. Trust me.
I have heard your desire for the “growl” of a Christian man-warrior. I want to give it to you more than you want it. I have seen you with that growl when it comes to addressing false doctrines. I love your strong stance for truth. However, take that stance and pick up the War Cry I gave my people to stand against the sin of your life and the true power of wickedness in this world.
RAK CHAZAK! Be strong, Officer Wolcott! Hold your ground! You are placed in me as a citizen of my kingdom and a soldier in my army. Rise up and fight against all that would hold you down and render your service to me irrelevant. Those besetting sins you have been struggling with do not have dominion over you. Too long you have played only defense. Too long you have taken their blows. Yes, parry the attacks of the enemies, but riposte. Answer back.
Rise up! Be very courageous! Attack! Your battle is not against those who challenge my name and my kingdom. Your battle is against the principalities and demonic forces that have blinded them and held them captive. I know you know this, so stop engaging with your own wit and intellect and engage instead with my weapons and my armor. There is a time and place for defense, but I want you to be on the offense. Go! Conquer territory in my name and in my authority! Submit to my command. I will tell you where to advance, when to retreat, when to engage, where to fight, and how to fight. Let me show this world through you that I am still in control and I am still the rightful and ruling Lord and King over this universe. You do not need to defend me. Let me defend myself, but let me use you in doing so.
Get up, Officer Wolcott! Let me renew your strength. Let me be your source. Let me be your rest. Let me be your defense and let me be the weapons in your hands. I want you to be an officer in my army whom the Devil knows well. I know it is going to be hard and I know it is going to make you have to stay alert and on guard at all times. But you need me to train you so you can keep that on guard position for longer. Train with me, Officer Wolcott. There are no limits to the strength I can give you so keep training and when you get tired, rest on me. The enemy is doing to do everything he can to keep you from the battle field. Let me sound the alarm in your soul. There is a breach! RAK CHAZAK! Drive the enemy back! Build the walls around your soul! Keep a diligent watch on your soul’s territory. And every time the enemy comes, you take my authority, my weapons, and in my name, drive them out. RAK CHAZAK!
Sincerely,
Your Commander-in-Chief
Jesus Christ
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
