Tag: Sin

X-Ray Questions: What makes you tick?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Practical, X-Ray QuestionsLeave a comment

This week we continue our X-Ray Questions series, as we look at what makes you tick. You can read the other posts in this series by clicking here.

X-Ray Question:

(9) What makes you tick? What sun does your planet revolve around? 

Where do you find your garden of delight? What lights up your world? What fountain of life, hope, and delight do you drink from? What food sustains your life? What really matters to you? What castle do you build in the clouds? What pipe dreams tantalize or terrify you? What do you organize your life around? Many gripping metaphors can express the question, “What are you really living for?”

To be ruled, say, by deep thirsts for intimacy, achievement, respect, health, or wealth does not define these as legitimate, unproblematic desires. They function perversely, placing ourselves at the center of the universe. We are meant to long supremely for the Lord himself, for the Giver, not his gifts. The absence of blessing – rejection, vanity, reviling, illness, poverty – often is the crucible in which we learn to love God for who He is. In our idolatry, we make gifts out to be supreme good, and make the Giver into the errand boy of our desires.

Understand

This weeks question is designed to help you answer the question: what are you really living for? The answer to that question will reveal our deepest most hidden idols. When we desire, as our end, things such as intimacy, achievement, respect, health, or wealth, we are seeking to place these things at the center of the universe instead of God. As creatures created by the one true God, we are meant to long for God Himself, not for the things that He can give us. When we long for the things He can give us, and seek to please Him only so He will give us what we want, we have turned the all powerful Creator of the universe, the One we should be worshipping, into our errand boy.

Repent

First, we should repent by realizing our desires can get in the way of our relationship with God.

Second, instead of desiring the things God can give us, we should desire God for who He is. He is the one that regenerated us, and provides us with everlasting life. He is the Creator of the universe, the reason we all exist, the reason we are able to eat, sleep, live, and breathe. Without His hand on our life, we would not have the things we have currently. God, not self, should be the one we live for. Pleasing Him should be the heartbeat of our lives.

However, in our sinfulness, living for God, not self, is a foreign concept, but because of the regeneration our hearts experience through Christ’s death, we are able to live for God alone. Through the death of His Son Jesus Christ, and our subsequent belief that His death paid the price for our sins, we are able to enjoy a relationship with God. Since we are able to commune with God, we should seek to worship Him and do the work that He would have us do, remembering we were not created for our glory, but for the glory of God.

Scripture

Here are a few passages from God’s word to meditate on this week, as you consider what makes you tick: Isa. 1:29-30; 50:10-11; Jer. 2:13; Matt. 4:4; 5:6; John 4:32-34; 6:25-69.

All X-Ray questions taken from David Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes.

Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

X-Ray Questions: What are your plans designed to accomplish?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn Discipleship, Practical, X-Ray QuestionsLeave a comment

This week we continue our X-Ray Questions series, as we look at what your plans are designed to accomplish. You can read the other posts in this series by clicking here.

X-Ray Question:

(8) What are your plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions designed to accomplish?

This is another way to size up what you are after. The egocentricity lurking within even the most noble-sounding plans can be appalling. No one ever asserts,” The expansion of our church into a mega-church will get me fame, wealth, and power,” but such motives are garden-variety human nature. Their presence, even covertly, will pervert and stain one’s actions.

Understand

We should realize that by asking ourselves what our plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions are designed to accomplish will allow us to search out our true motivations for our actions. Our plan may be to do something noble, such as expanding our church. But we may be expanding our church for the wrong reasons. We need to check our motivations by asking ourselves what are we hoping to accomplish. Our human nature is geared toward self promotion and pride, so we must proceed with caution in all of our actions.

Another example may drive the point home better. Helping out at the local homeless shelter is a noble way to spend our time, but if we serve at the shelter with the intention of promoting ourselves to our community as a kind and charitable person, so we will be recognized or praised, even if the recognition or praise we are seeking is subtle, we have allowed our sinful nature to creep in and affect our intentions.

Repent

We must repent by meditating on the gospel. The gospel message teaches us that Christ humbled Himself to the point of death. He faced the cross for our sins. On the cross He atoned for our unrighteousness. Jesus could have followed His own agenda, worked off of His own plan, but He did not. Rather, He followed His Father’s plan. A plan that was designed to bring glory to God.

Christ’s death frees us from the bondage of sin. When we place our faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are given the power to resist sin, giving us the ability to glorify God through our actions. Since we have been freed from the bondage of sin, we should seek to be like His Son and glorify God, rather than ourselves.

Since Christ has given us the power to cast down our fleshly desires and passions, we should desire to be obedient to God (1 Peter 1:13-21). This obedience includes exalting God over ourselves.

Next time we make plans, we should ask ourselves if our ultimate end is to glorify ourselves or the Lord.

Scripture

Here are a few passages from God’s word to meditate on this week, as you consider what your plans are designed to accomplish: Matt. 6:32-33; 2 Tim. 2:22.

All X-Ray questions taken from David Powlison’s book Seeing with New Eyes.

Image: africa / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Go Up The Mountain of the Lord

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn DevotionalsLeave a comment

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“Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.” — Isaiah 2:3

It is exceedingly beneficial to our souls to mount above this present evil world to something nobler and better.

The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches are apt to choke everything good within us, and we grow fretful, desponding, perhaps proud and carnal.

It is well for us to cut down these thorns and briers, for heavenly seed sown among them is not likely to yield a harvest; and where shall we find a better sickle with which to cut them down than communion with God and the things of the kingdom?

In the valleys of Switzerland many of the inhabitants are deformed, and all wear a sickly appearance, for the atmosphere is charged with miasma, and is close and stagnant; but up yonder, on the mountain, you find a hardy race, who breathe the clear fresh air as it blows from the virgin snows of the Alpine summits. It would be well if the dwellers in the valley could frequently leave their abodes among the marshes and the fever mists, and inhale the bracing element upon the hills.

It is to such an exploit of climbing that I invite you this evening.

May the Spirit of God assist us to leave the mists of fear and the fevers of anxiety, and all the ills which gather in this valley of earth, and to ascend the mountains of anticipated joy and blessedness.

May God the Holy Spirit cut the cords that keep us here below, and assist us to mount!

We sit too often like chained eagles fastened to the rock, only that, unlike the eagle, we begin to love our chain, and would, perhaps, if it came really to the test, be loath to have it snapped.

Spurgeon’s Prayer

May God now grant us grace, if we cannot escape from the chain as to our flesh, yet to do so as to our spirits; and leaving the body, like a servant, at the foot of the hill, may our soul, like Abraham, attain the top of the mountain, there to indulge in communion with the Most High.

Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening : Daily Readings, Complete and unabridged; New modern edition. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006), Evening, April 4.

Sin: Do you have a thick or thin view?

On By Dr. Casey LewisIn DevotionalsLeave a comment

Do you have a thick or thin view of sin? Your answer will decide how you work to root sin out of your life.

Thin View of Sin

Those who have a thin view of sin see “sin as a series of discrete acts of non-compliance to God’s regulations” (12). In other words, those who have a thin view of sin believe sin to be nothing more than breaking God’s rules.

Thick View of Sin

In contrast, those who have a thick view of sin see all sin “as idolatry that pervades all we do” (12). External actions represent internal idolatries. Here the desires of our heart becomes important, not just our external actions.

The Differences in Dealing With Sin

The difference becomes even clearer when we look at how sin is dealt with in each person’s life.

Those with a thin view of sin believe they sin when they break God’s rules. As a result, they seek to place external restraints, or change their environment, to rid sin from their lives. They believe they are successful when they have removed all environmental temptations.

For instance, if someone is struggling with profanity, someone with a thin view of sin would counsel them to place some sort of external restraint on themselves, such as putting a dollar in a container every time they curse.  Or if someone were struggling with an addiction, such as drug abuse, they would be told to stay away from people or places that would tempt them to use.

However, those with a thick view of sin deal with sin much differently. They seek to drill down into the heart to discover the root cause of their sin. They will focus on the desires of their heart, not just their external actions. This is because they view their external actions as the fruit, which is the result of a much deeper heart condition.

So, instead of counseling someone addicted to drugs to stay away from places or people who will tempt them to use, even though that may be helpful, they are going to attempt to expose the idols of that person’s heart, in order to deal with their desires and remove that idol from their life.

Implications

It is true, withdrawal from certain environments will make you feel less sinful, but you have not eliminated the sin from your heart. Tim Keller says, “The complex organic nature of sin will still be at work making idols out of things that are not overt forms of law-breaking,” such as moral goodness, financial security, family, and doctrinal purity (12).

As you can see, changing your external environment does not really deal with, or eliminate, the sin in your life. All you have done is trade apparent sins for respectable sins. In order to truly root sin out of your heart, you must have a thick view of sin because it truly deals with the idols of the heart.

The goal is not to produce moralists, or people who look good on the outside, which is what happens when you have a thin view of sin. Our true goal should be to produce real heart change through the power of the Gospel, which will only happen if we have a thick view of sin.

Resources

In an effort to help my readers use the Gospel to root the idols out of their heart, I have started a series entitled X-Ray Questions. You can view my introductory post here and my latest post here.

Also, you can check out the following resources:

Contextual and Missional by Tim Keller (all quotes are taken from this article)

How People Change by Timothy S. Lane

Seeing With New Eyes by David Powlison

Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul David Tripp