2005-10-21
Good Morning Treasured Readers,
As we know, MT 5: 38-48 is the Lord Jesus' teaching on revenge and learning to love one's enemies. These godly teachings call for living on a very high moral plane. They ask us to live beyond the letter of the Law and in the Spirit. We are not being called to live in legalistic approaches, but instead, to understand what God really means by the Law. God never felt that it was necessary to have more than Ten Commandments. It was the ancient rabbis that ballooned things up to 613 laws, up to which no one, except Jesus Christ, can live keeping them all. I will repeat the citation of RO 7: 6 for illumination of God's attitude about how things should be now that we are living in the Spirit. "Now, however, we are free from the Law because we died to that which once held us prisoners. No longer do we serve in the old way of a written law, but in the new way of the Spirit."
Living in the Spirit means not being occupied with oneself and one's own motives to the exclusion of the needs of others. It means being willing to make God's agenda one's own first priority. To do this, we need to study the word daily and have an active prayer life, where we let God speak first and listen well. That's how we learn God's will for us, and then we can, through the discernment these practices give us, apply it to our own life circumstances. God has told us in many ways that we can place our burdens on His ample shoulders. PS 68: 19-20, "Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, Who daily bears our burdens. Our God is a God Who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death." PS 55: 22, "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never permit honest men to be defeated." MT 11: 28-30 is Christ's own words, "Come to Me, all you who are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke and put it on you, and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest. For, My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."
When the Lord Jesus said in MT 5: 41 that we should "go the extra mile," the love that is at the basis of a life in the Spirit will compel us to do that by its own volition, not because we were forced into it. This reaches right to the point of having a different attitude than someone taking a legalistic approach and acting out some enforced ritual. I am not saying here that all ritual should be excluded from the practice of one's faith. Instead, we are called to live as the Holy Spirit dwelt within us would choose or us to live. This also points to the person who has willingly submitted to the leadership of the Holy Spirit in his life, just as our Lord does to the Father.
MT 5: 43-44a from the Sermon on the Mount brings up one of the teachings I have found to be most difficult to put into practice. However, just because I struggle with it doesn't mean that it should be modified in any way. My own personal struggle with this one just points out my need to mature spiritually in this area. It reads, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your friends, hate your enemies.' But not I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may become the sons of your Father in Heaven'" [LV 19: 18]. And yes, I'm working on improving in getting any kind of hate out of my life. My own struggle with this goes back to the fact that I lost a large part of my own family in the Holocaust. For years, the sound of a German accented voice brought inner fear and revulsion in me. This was purely emotional and well-conditioned by the experience of my traditionally Jewish upbringing. It wasn't until Rosemary and Tylo Claussen visited our congregation several years ago that I finally was able to deal with this pocket of unbelief that I harbored. Rosemary is Adolf Hitler's God-daughter. Her parents had been close friends of the Fureur. Her father was a top General in the SS. When he refused to obey Hitler's order to exterminate thousands of Jews in a concentration camp, Hilter had him shot to death. Rosemary and the rest of her family escaped to Poland, where they were exposed to terrible prejudice, fear for their lives, and poverty during WW II. Eventually, the situation was righted in 1945, and Rosemary went on to meet her husband, Tylo, and to strengthen her faith in Jesus Christ. We all know that Christ teaches forgiveness, and Rosemary began to do the same. She and Tylo began Joshua Mission Ministries, which is working with Holocaust families and others all over Europe. She spoke clearly and concisely about our need for forgiveness of our enemies in our lives, so that we could go on with them in the Spirit. Then, she asked for anyone with this problem to come down and place the burdens of the past on the Lord's shoulders with her in prayer. I knew that not all German people were Nazis, and it was time for me to get rid of this albatross of hatred and fear that I had been carrying around deep within me all my life. It's one of the few times I broke down in tears before others in my life. God was using Rosemary to help me expunge my own sin, the sin of hatred, desire for retribution, and fear. That night, Satan was not a happy camper! To reveal how foolish this kind of hatred is, many Austrians and younger Germans had nothing to do with the Holocaust, and are in fact ashamed of it. Yet they speak with the same German accent that a Nazi did.
PRAYER: O Lord, only You have the power to change our innermost beings [RO 12: 2]. You do this by commanding us to close that part of our spirit that is open to Satan's action on it and to open wide that part of our spirit with which Your Spirit can gradually meld. You tell us this will not be an easy thing to do [MT 7: 13-14], but that it will bring us many blessings [MT 5: 3-12]. This happens to us gradually as we mature spiritually and get rid of sin in our lives. You have made it clear that You are our One and Only True God. You have commanded us in EX 20: 3 to worship only You. It is by Your most excellent grace that Your Spirit joins with our human one to declare that we are Your children [RO 8: 16]. JS 1: 9, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go," You have said to us through Joshua. Furthermore, You have said through Paul in EPH 3: 12, "In union with Christ and through our faith in Him we have the boldness to go into God's presence with all confidence." Even in RO 8: 15, You have told us, "For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, 'Abba! My Abba!'" You would have never used the familiar form, "Abba," meaning "Daddy," had You not shown the tenderness of Your feelings for us. Our need to submit to You is crucial to our spiritual lives, for it is only by You that we can learn to "go the extra mile" and "forgive our enemies, those who persecute us." We are incomplete without You in our lives, and we are spiritually impoverished without Your leadership. That is why You said in MT 5: 3, "Blessed are the poor in spirit [those who recognize their need for the Spirit's leadership in their lives], for they shall inherit the Kingdom of heaven." We thank and praise You for the sacrifice of Your Son on the cross for our salvation and for Your loving, constant, and compassionate presence in our lives. In Christ's holy name, Amen.
Next week, we will look at more issues associated with learning to "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us." The issue of prejudice is one that, as a dear friend described is my "soapbox issue." I promise to be concise in what I must say about it, but it must be discussed. Our faith and our lives in the Spirit must involve our knowledge of God's will, our willingness to let Him reveal Himself, our belief in Him, our desire to submit to His leadership, and our apostolic actions. Put succinctly, it's head, heart, and hands. The Holy Spirit's influence on us stopped before it reaches the hands [meaning our service to Him and our willingness to share the Gospel with others] isn't enough. Via de Cristo talks about a three-legged stool, piety, study, and action, which is another way to state the same thing. This is what being whole in the faith of Jesus Christ is all about. 1 PET 1: 8-9 illuminates this vital issue. "You love Him, although you have never seen Him. So you rejoice with a great and glorious joy which words cannot express, because you are receiving the salvation of your souls, with is the purpose of your faith in Him." The Lord has promised to bless us and reward us in heaven. He has never broken a promise yet and isn't ever going to do that. So, we can revel in the wonderful bond that exists between ourselves and all other true believers that we all share with our Lord, Who created us and loves us beyond measure.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn