Dave’s Monday Blast – October 29, 2018
Last week we were chatting about the importance of framing all our words and actions with love. The simple idea is that the Word of God is not efficacious to a lost and dying world if it is presented without love. Your witness is called into question by the very world you are trying to influence if love is missing from all you say and do.
Perhaps at the heart of this real problem is that we are a consumer based culture. Self is our Idolatry and Idolatry is at the root of all other sins. Oswald Chambers wrote: “Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God.”
Pastor Jim Denison writes: “Religions and societies devise laws to regulate conduct, but patching cracks in the wall does not repair the foundation. In the Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis notes: ‘We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are rebels who must lay down our arms.'” That’s good isn’t it!
Lewis explains why this is so hard for fallen people: “To render back the will which we have so long claimed for our own, is in itself, wherever and however it is done, a grievous pain, to surrender a self-will inflamed and swollen with years of usurpation is a kind of death.”
On his deathbed, King David instructed Solomon, “Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn.” (1 Kings 2:2 – 3) Tragically, David did not fully follow his own advice, as his affair with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband remind us. Nor would Solomon, as his sexual immorality and idolatry would lead to the fall of their united kingdom.
If trying hard to do better was enough, Jesus would have stayed beside his father in heaven. His crucifixion reveals the horrible price of our sin and our Savior’s redemption. Jim Denison comments, “Now he offers us a way out of Idolatrous consumerism into Christ-centered community. His Spirit living in us liberates us from the consumerism that cannot fill our souls and leads us into community that can.”
But the Spirit can lead only those who will follow and give only what we will receive. If we ask the Holy Spirit to empower and lead us today (Ephesians 5:18), he will make our lives more significant that we can make them ourselves. Andrew Murray notes, “God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.”
Surrender to his authority today my friends. Yield to Him. Let His love pour out of your words and deeds. Dwight Moody said it well, “Let God have your life; he can do more with it than you can.” 
This is an INTENTIONAL CHOICE.
