Spare Change

whats the worth you can do?

Posted by Bryan

and i'm not typing with a lisp, just so you know.

irene is discouraged. and my purpose here is not to exploit her discouragement; rather, she has inspired me to address the concept of worth. a faulty sense of worth is often the result of a time of discouragement.

most everybody gets discouraged from time to time. some people get a little down, and seem to bounce right back up. other people seem to linger in a slightly discouraged state (and i'm not talking about wyoming), and still others can get so low in their discouragement that it makes the dominican limbo champion green with envy.

i recently heard a very disheartening message -- in a church -- where it was said -- by a pastor -- that if you dishonor God when you experience times like this.

I'm here to tell you, that's a lie (hopefully inadvertantly spoken by that preacher). it's wrong, and it's just not true.

Abraham, Moses, Joseph, Job, Samson, Solomon, David, Elijah...they all experienced depression at one time or another, and they were all men of God. John the Baptist and every one of the Original Twelve^® had significant times of discouragement. did Jesus dishonor God when he lamented in the garden of Gethsemane?

of course not. and just because you might experience discouragement in your life -- whether it be brief or prolonged, never think for a moment that God has turned his back on you because you dishonor Him. It is precisely at this time that His Holy Spirit calls to you to be comforted, restored, and encouraged.

So what causes discouragement? any number of things. Typically, though, if you reduce down the particulars of whatever has you discouraged, you'll discover that it has something to do with performance failure. unmet expectations. not making the grade. missing the deadline. falling short of the standard. knocking the limbo pole off the pegs.

unfortunately, in this dysfunctional game, when you mess up, you only set the bar lower to a more exacting standard of perfectionism that will only guarantee another round of futility.

so who is setting the bar too low? It could be a boss. It could be a parent. It could be a mentor (who needs to learn something about mentoring, if that's the case). And you know what? it could even be yourself!

Jesus dealt with this. he lived in the age of ultimate perfectionism. The pharisees were all over the concept of perfectionism. this is why so many people were "unclean." nobody but them (and not even them, if they were *really* honest) could make the standards that were being established. Then Jesus came on to the scene and tested them. They sent in "plants" to test Jesus, but He turned the tables on them. "What does it take to go to heaven?" they asked. "simple," He said. "Be perfect."

"Oh, we're as close to perfect as you can get. We follow the law," they replied smugly.

"Yeah, you do pretty well. but if you break even one law, you're not perfect. that's why it's called perfect. You have to be perfect like My Father in Heaven is perfect."

< crickets chirping > "oh." < /crickets chirping >

you see, we have those same voices of phariseeism harping today. we just recognize them as such.

• a good christian never misses a sunday at church


• a good christian doesn't watch rated r movies


• a good christian reads only the King James Version


• a good christian doesn't mingle with the riff raff


• a good christian is the best employee, the best parent, the best child, the best neighbor, the best the best the best the best!

whuh?

according to whom? this isn't what jesus meant by "being perfect."

i mean, there's a theological truth to all these things. a "good christian" does all the right things, at all the right times, in all the right ways, to all the right people, for all the right reasons.

but you aren't that good.

and neither am i.

the only hope you have of doing anything right, any time, any way, to any body, for any reason, is to let the Christ do it through you. if you get His way, you're going to mess it up. guaranteed.

and even if you manage to do something right apart from the Christ, you'll try to (or at least want to) take credit for it, which invalidates it all anyway.

guaranteed.

the only way to avoid discouragement, to rebound from discouragement is to embrace the truth of God, by faith. it will be difficult, because the truth of God is being told in a still, small whispering voice that must be strained to be heard and believed in a world that is screaming in deafening decibels the lies of a performance-based concept of worth.

God's Word says that He alone matters. All God wants from you is to please Him.

And you have to be perfect.

Crud...we've already established that you're going to bomb out in that effort.

You're only hope is to be made perfect by the Son.

He's the only One who is sinless.

Sinless = Perfect.

He's the only One who is righteous.

Righteous = Perfect.

He's the only One who is Holy.

Holy = Perfect.

And if your faith is in Him as your Lord, then He indwells your spirit.

And by proxy, you have been made perfect.

The problem is, your flesh -- your heart and your mind and your body -- all tend to be easily deceived to yield to reign of sin. And when you do so, your flesh says "I don't feel perfect. I don't feel worthy. I don't feel holy. I don't feel righteous." At the same time, the accuser slanders you with accusations of imperfection, even when your spirit, reborn in the likeness of the Son, has established all these things to be true.

Paul talks extensively on this internal battle. His only hope was to be continually reminded by the Holy Spirit that He was born anew. His old life has been identified in the cross and burial of his Propitiation. Accordingly, his new life is identified in the resurrected victory of the Son; he was now an empowered, enabled, encouraged child of God.

So what does all this mean?
It means that God is radically -- and I mean radically -- in love with you.

you cannot please God any more than you do right now. Man, that one is tough for me.

But it's true. The Bible says He loves you with a perfect love. And perfect means perfect. It can't get more perfect, because then the prior love wouldn't have been perfect. capisca?

when you embrace and dwell in the spiritual reality that God is satisfied with you because His Son dwells within you, only then will you be freed to live the life God has designed for you.

There's no doubt this is a faith trial to live in the spiritual reality of God's unconditional acceptance of you as a sinner in need of reconciliation. In a world that says screams "do more! Do it better! do it faster! do it cheaper! Do it differently! and do it two days ago!" it can be very hard to feel like God's unmerited favor rests upon you.

just remember...God's favor isn't based on you.

it's based on Him.

It's not based on your fickle, fluctuating, feeble feelings.

it's based on his holy, unchanging, eternal, reliabe Word.

Look, Jesus is backing me up on this one. In His main treatise of preaching, He told those who would follow Him, "things are going to get bad. You're going to be poor. You will mourn. people are going to hate you. they're going to try to kill you. they're going to slander you. they will revile you."

some think this is why jesus never toured with Tony Robbins.

but then jesus said, "blessed are you when this happens, for great will be your reward in heaven."

realize that it was the translators, and not Jesus, who talked like Yoda. But truth of this promise is the heartbeat of overcoming discouragement.

Because you are fully loved, fully accepted, fully justified by God through Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, are you able to:

• be more than a conqueror.


• do all things through Christ who gives you strength


• perform exceedingly abundantly beyond your own ability


• be free from worry, anxiety, or despair


• grow in favor with both God and man

One more thing...you can't live a life in Christ if you only take out your faith when you are in a crisis. Major Ian Thomas, in his classic book The Saving Life of Christ calls this the "substituted life." Christ didn't die for you just so you could have a god in your pocket to save you from your messes, and stay out of your way the rest of the time. Jesus is just a little more possessive than that. He demands to be Lord of all, or Lord of none. The only way to live at rest is to get out of the way. all the time. It's the difference between living a "substituted life" and a "transformed life."

People who are discouraged don't typically worry about that verse that says, "don't think of yourself more highly than you ought," because they tend to be thinking so very lowly about themselves. but if you *really* think about it, this verse is for that person, too. because the more time you spend thinking about yourself, the less time you are spending thinking about God. The more time you spend worshipping at the altar of self-pity and discouragement, the less time you have to worship the God who left heaven so you could one day get there. and if this is the case...you're thinking about yourself (too highly) too much.

The key to changing this is simple:

Quit thinking about yourself. There's a great little acronym that may help (and I'd give credit to whomever came up with it if I knew).

Do you want joy? the thought process to getting it is to think of:

Jesus
Others
Yourself

discouragement, by definition is to have your courage be absent, undone, deprived, or removed. to you who are discouraged:

Be of good courage, And He shall strengthen your heart, All you who hope in the LORD. -- Psalm 31:24

September 26, 2003 2:23 PM