“Preachers spend time trying to get people to do more and
more--to try harder, live radically for God, change your life, etc.—and the
result is really stunted spiritual growth because you fix your eyes on yourself
and you can’t do it,” he said. “It’s not going to be you. And when you’re in
those moments where it’s you, and you come to the conclusion, ‘I can’t do it,’
that’s good! Because you know where to go to the one who can.
“Most of the thinking about Christian living and
sanctification is really just terribly narcissistic. It’s thinking about, ‘How
are we doing? How are we growing? Am I doing it right? Am I not doing it right?’
“We ponder our spiritual failures and we brood over our
spiritual successes and it’s all about us. The more you focus on your need to
be better, the worse you really get. You wind up becoming neurotic and
self-absorbed and all of life’s about you.
“When you’re possessed with your performance, instead of
Christ’s performance; when you spend your time thinking about what you’re
doing, instead of what He’s doing, well, then, what are you going to do but get
worse? That hinders your spiritual growth because it makes you increasingly
self-centered.
“Sanctification, set-apart living, is forgetting about
yourself. ‘It’s not me! It’s Christ!’ The grace of God works--is manifested,
put on display--in your minuses, not your pluses. It’s in your weaknesses, not
your strengths. Now, that’s the opposite of religion. Religion says, ‘YOU got to
make it, YOU got to create it , or you’re going to fail.’
“My wife has a new chrysanthemum plant on the kitchen
counter that just had a little leaf come out. Now, if she’d of pulled that
thing up out of the pot and looked at its roots, and stuck it back down, you
know what would happen to it? It wouldn’t grow so good.
“If you’re always uprooting, digging the thing up, checking
on its growth (‘How am I doing?’), it ain’t never going to get anywhere. It’s
Christ who’s the issue. He’s the cornerstone; the point of reference all of our
life and all of our growth originates from. Spiritual growth and deliverance is
by God’s design and God’s timing.
*****
*****
“Back in I Kings 6, when Solomon’s building the temple, all
of the stones that were put into that temple were fitted, prepared, structured
off-site at the quarry and then brought and put in, and not a hammer—no noise as
the temple was put together. It just kind of grew silently.
“The work to shape and to form us was designed and finished
before we were ever set into place into the building. ‘For we are his
workmanship.’ You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. He already invented it.
“God’s made you a part of something that before the
foundation of the world He planned to do. He’s already formed it and fitted you
into it. It’s His design and you grow in that. If you’re going to bring that
design into the reality of your experience, you appropriate it by faith. The
reality is that’s the reality.
“He came to live His life fully in you and Paul says, ‘Wake
up, dudes, don’t you know that?!’ You’re
bought with a price. You ought to live in the reality of who God has made you.
If God came to dwell in you, how should you live?! Wake up! If you’ve got an
asset like THAT, what should you do?! USE IT!
“God’s in you to live His life. Now, in I Corinthians 6,
that’s talking about you as an individual. His purpose in you personally is to
make your life a vehicle, a vessel; that is, a living manifestation of the one
who inhabits you.
“You remember Paul in Philippians 1 says that his desire is
that whether by life or by death that Christ would be magnified in his body?
That when people would see him, even in the extremity of death, they would see
that the one he treasured, the one he valued, the one that was of the greatest
magnitude to him was Jesus Christ, and when he made choices, he made them based
upon what God’s Word said. When he took actions, it was based upon what God
wanted done.
“The way sin doesn’t run your life is you’re not under the
law; you’re not focusing on your performance. You’re under grace, looking at
who God has made you in His Son.
*****
“I have a friend who doesn’t like how a song says, ‘He set me free.’ He said you need to sing it, ‘He made me free.’ That’s a technicality but he’s right. God doesn’t just set you free; He MADE you something you weren’t before. You’re free. You’re the Lord’s ‘free man.’ That’s the reality and faith can believe that.
“But you know what happens? If you look at Romans 7:1, Paul
says, ‘Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that
the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?’ As long as it’s going to
be what you do, here’s what’s going to happen to you.
“Then he writes in verse 14, ‘For we know that the law is
spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.’ I don’t like to argue with Paul,
but that verse is wrong. Oh, I know Paul’s saying it, but Paul is not sold
under sin. He just spent 23 verses in chapter 6, and six verses in chapter 7,
telling you he’s free. And then he started looking at himself and his
performance and said, ‘You know, I don’t look free.’
“The more he focused on himself, you know what the more
happened? Those accusatory thoughts came in and sin revived and you know what
happens when you start looking at yourself? You begin to see yourself, and when
you begin to see yourself, you know who you begin to see? Failure.
“You say, ‘Well, I don’t have any failure.’ Well, that’s
called pride. The Bible says the man that says he has no sin has made God a
liar and truth’s not in him.
*****
“You go back to the psalmist in Psalms 3 and he could have
been talking about Job of old. He says, ‘People look at me and they see what’s
going on in my life, and they say, ‘There’s no help from God for him; he’s so far
gone even God can’t help him!’
“Paul says, ‘You know, those voices of condemnation and
accusing are going to come because you’re conscious of who you are in you, and
when you focus on who you are in you, you know what happens? ‘O wretched man
that I am.’
“You see it’s an inner struggle. There’s a spiritual battle
that goes on but of faith. The victory is an inner victory, seeing the invisible
reality. Moses won the victory, Hebrews 11 says, over Pharaoh by ‘seeing Him
who is invisible.’ By faith, looking at the truth of God.
“Paul says, ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless
I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in
the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself
for me.’
“When you have your ‘I’ moments, they’re really not ‘I’
moments. They’re moments when you need to be learning that, ‘I can’t do this.’
And when you see, ‘I can’t do it,’ that’s what Galatians 2 told you.
“You only learn two things in your whole Christian life: ‘It’s
not I, it’s Christ.’ And when you get into the, ‘The deliverance isn’t here; I
can’t do it,’ you say, ‘Whoa, I need to look at Christ! Because HE can; because
HE did!' ”
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