Servant Resources

Trust, Delight, Commit and Rest

I enjoy proverbs. Not only the ones found in scripture, but also those created in different cultures. One of my favorites comes from a saying by a friend’s grandmother. It’s simple, but carries a lot of weight:

 

If you’re frettin, you ain’t trustin

 

You can only have it one way. You’re either trusting God in your circumstances, or you are worrying about the outcome. If you’re not sure, check your thoughts. Are they thoughts of concern, or thoughts of faith?

 

Psalm 37 has been a great comfort to me in times of difficulty or hardship. David writes out of his own experience with God.  He says:

 

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.

 

David outlines 4 elements of finding peace in troubled times in this segment of scripture…

 

1.       Trust.  In other words, “to have confidence in.” Do I have confidence in the living God that he will accomplish what he has promised on my behalf? Confidence to take him at his word regardless of how things seem to be?

 

2.       Delight. The original language carries the meaning “to make merry over.” To dance about, to jump for joy, to be elated. This seems to be the hardest of them all. But note that he does not say to take delight in the circumstance, but rather, to delight in Him.

 

3.       Commit. This means “to roll.” It would be like rolling a boulder over a cliff. Once it reaches the tipping point, there is no return. It is committed; it is gone.

 

4.       Rest. The KJV translates this as “silence.” Be silent before the Lord. Come aside with him, away from the noise of the world and he will lead you beside the quiet waters, he will restore your soul (Psalm 23).

 

These four phases are built upon each other. You cannot rest without committing you cannot commit without delighting in him and you cannot delight without trusting.

Tactics of the Enemy

I’d like to look more closely at the tactics of the enemy of our souls. I outlined them in the last post, but want to take a closer look at how they come at us.

 

·          The Lust of the Flesh has to do with what we feel. It is an attack on the heart. It has to do with the cravings of sinful man and desires of a physical nature. These are wrong desires, the appetite of indulgence and inappropriate sensual pleasures.

 

·          The Lust of the Eyes has to do with what we see. It is an attack on the soul. It has to do with the insatiable desire for more and is an attempt to fill the emptiness of our being with things. It is delighting in riches and in rich possessions. This includes covetousness, or wanting what others have.

 

·          The Pride of Life has to do with what we think. It is an attack on the mind. It has to do with boasting in possessions and achievements. It is an empty assurance that trusts in its own power and resources. It is an ungodly presumption which trusts in the stability of earthly things. It includes thirsting after honor and applause.

 

To understand these tactics is only the first step. We want to do more than simply understand them, we want to move beyond understanding to victory. Jesus spoke directly to these three tactics in a passage of scripture recorded in Mark 8:34-36.

 

·          Victory over the Lust of the Flesh comes through submission to Christ’s life in you. Jesus first spoke of denying yourself. To deny yourself is not the same as practicing self-denial. Self-denial is not eating that second piece of chocolate cake—denying yourself gets to the very heart of your being. It is what John the Baptist meant when he spoke of Jesus saying; “He must become greater, I must become less.” To deny yourself is to say “no” to the very essence of your being. To reject who you are and accept who he is. To put aside personal ambition and self-seeking, self-serving actions. It is to live out Jesus’ words to his father in the Garden of Gethsemane; “not my will, but (your) will be done.”

 

·          Victory over the Lust of the Eyes comes through identification with Christ’s death for you. Jesus spoke next of picking up your cross. The cross is a symbol of death. The way to life, as a Christian is through death. The world clings to life out of the fear of death, the Christian embraces death in order to find life. To pick up your cross is to carry it daily, moment by moment. A hymn writer once put it this way:

 

I take O Cross your shadow, for my abiding place, and ask no other sunshine than that of Jesus’ face; content to let the world go by, to know no gain or loss, my sinful self, my only shame, my glory, all the Cross.

 

To pick up your cross is the recognition that the things of the world hold no more allure, attraction or charm to me than to a man in a casket. It is living out what Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20 – I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless, l live, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me.

 

·         Victory over the Pride of Life comes through availability to Christ’s will through you. Jesus spoke lastly of following. To follow Christ simply means to go where he is going. Where was he going when he made this statement? He was on his way to face the most difficult trial of his life—death on the cross at Golgotha. Why was he willing to go there? Because of Love.  Love submits itself to hardship, pain and suffering to accomplish the impossible. Christ gave up all his rights and privileges to face death—for you. And he asks you to give up the rights and privileges of this world to follow him in dying to your own way.

 

Where does the enemy attack you most easily to keep you from desiring God?

·          Your heart?

·          Your soul?

·          Your mind?

 

What particular tactic does he use to trip you up most frequently?

·          The Lust of the Flesh?

·          The Lust of the Eyes?

·          The Pride of Life?

·           

What is your defense against these tactics to assure victory?

·          Submission to Christ’s life in you?

·          Identification with Christ’s death for you?

·          Availability to Christ’s will through you?

Hungry and Thirsty for God

I remember the summer I spent working for a landscaper. I mostly mowed lawns all day. One particularly hot day I had been mowing for several hours. I was becoming dehydrated and all I wanted was ice cold water. I stopped at a convenience store and saw a bottle of Perrier water. Now, this was back in the day when you didn’t buy water at the store. I had no idea what Perrier water was, but I thought that it would be the most clear, refreshing water ever, so I bought it.

 

I climbed back into the truck and took a big gulp of Perrier and immediately spit it out. It wasn’t anything like I had expected it to be. I was looking for water to quench my thirst and I got carbonated fizz and an acidic taste. So I did what any self-respecting teen would do—I pulled over at Burger King and got a coke!

 

We’ve all experienced hunger and thirst. We feel them at various levels throughout the day. It’s a concept that is easy for virtually anyone at any age to understand. And so God uses this as a model to explain how we should feel toward him. He says that we should hunger and thirst for him.

 

Yet we sometimes find ourselves not hungry and not thirsty for him. What keeps this intense craving, this all-encompassing desire for him away? We are attracted away from him to other things that we think will fill our hunger. We are barraged daily by media, sales and advertisements promising to fulfill what we believe are our needs.

 

Beyond the pull of the world, we must also recognize the work of the enemy of our souls. There is one who seeks to fill our lives with all kinds of distractions. Understanding how he comes and what he attacks with can help us to overcome these obstacles.

 

Satan attacks believers on three basic levels. John spoke of these in I John 2:16 when he wrote:

 

For everything in the world, the cravings of sinful man, and the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does, comes not from the Father but from the world.

 

The King James translation of the bible describes them as the Lust of the Flesh, the Lust of the Eyes and the Pride of Life.

 

Throughout history, men and women have fallen prey to these 3 central temptations. We can go back to the earliest record and see how this holds true since man first waked the earth. See Genesis 3:1-6 for the background story of Satan tempting Eve in the Garden.

 

Genesis 3:6 sums it up by stating; “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food (Lust of the Flesh) and pleasing to the eye (Lust of the Eyes), and also desirable for gaining wisdom (The Pride of Life), she took some and ate it.”

 

These are the tactics our enemy uses to distract us. They are the strategies he employs to keep us from hungering and thirsting after God. To begin to combat them, we must first recognize them. Once we see how he comes at us, we can prepare ourselves to face them.