I want to share with you about spiritual renewal for the next few weeks. We are preparing for our time of covenant renewal on October 4th. I would like for this to be a time when we examine our lives and our commitment to God. It should be a time of spiritual reflection on where we are in our life with God.
We’ll focus on Five Marks of Spiritual Renewal. And as we look at these, we will see what our Christian life should look like. And also reflect on what our Christian life often actually looks like. The difference between what should be and what is.
We begin with Complete Yieldedness to God. This mark is foundational, because without it you don’t get anywhere else in terms of faithfulness or renewal.
Another way to say this is that . . .
We are to give ourselves completely to God
- To be totally committed to God.
- To hold nothing back.
- To be obedient in every area of our lives.
- To yield in every way to what God’s will is for us.
Jesus calls us to this in several different ways: 1) He names this as the greatest of God’s commandments to us: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30). Every part of us is to love God. And to love God means at its core, that we keep God’s commandments, as I John 5:3 says.
2) Jesus also calls us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). The rule and will of God is to be our first priority in all of life. Think of all the other things there are in life; good things. The kingdom is to be first.
3) Jesus told this parable to tell us what God wants from us – “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” (Matthew 13:44). To be truly submitted to God; to be a part of God’s kingdom and under his rule – it will cost you everything. This man sold all that he had to gain the kingdom. We will have to do the same.
4) A final example is Jesus’ call to take up the cross. He said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34). The cross is an instrument of death. We have to deny ourselves; we have to die to ourselves. This is the commitment that is called for; this is the commitment that is required by God.
In all of these different ways, and more, Jesus calls us to complete yieldedness to God.
Now, if we ask, ‘What does this kind of commitment look like?’ The answer is – You just need to look at Jesus.
Jesus is the standard
And he’s the standard because he gave himself completely to God.
- Jesus was totally committed to God
- Jesus held nothing back
- Jesus was obedient in every area of his life
- Jesus yielded to God’s will. At the time of his greatest testing, he prayed, “not my will, but yours (God) be done.”
1) He loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength.
2) He sought God’s kingdom first.
3) He gave up all he had for the kingdom.
4) He denied himself and took up his cross – literally.
And he is now the standard for us as we seek to do God’s will. For he is the only one who truly and completely did God’s will. So if you want to please God; if you want to do God’s will truly and fully – do what Jesus taught and modeled for us.
This is, in fact, what Jesus calls us to. He said, “Learn from me” – Matthew 11:29. Jesus is our teacher. And so we learn from his teaching how to do exactly what God wants; how to please God in every way.
And Jesus is also our example. As we saw, he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34). What he did, we are to do. Just as he denied himself and took up his cross, we are to deny ourselves and take up our cross.
Jesus is the picture of complete obedience and we are to learn from his teaching and example how to be completely obedient to God ourselves.
Now, this is what we do at baptism. We commit to give ourselves completely to God, like Jesus did. But often it isn’t long until we have gone back on this; we retreat from such total commitment. And that’s because there are many –
Obstacles to complete commitment
And the first obstacle is You. Your own human weakness.
- Your propensity to do what you want, instead of what God wants.
- Your tendency to take the easy way, instead of the way of Jesus.
Jesus speaks of our human weakness in Mark 14:38 when he said, “the flesh is weak.” We are weak when it comes to doing what God wants of us.
And then there is the obstacle of the World – all those who don’t follow Jesus or share his values, who pressure us to go along with them instead of following Jesus. This is peer pressure. This is following the crowd instead of following Jesus.
- The world offers us many opportunities to fail in our commitment. Jesus said, “Woe to the world for temptations to sin!” (Matthew 18:7)
- The world offers us many distractions to keep us from seeking first the kingdom. Jesus talks about “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things” (Mark 4:19)
The world pressures us to fail and to be distracted, along with everybody else.
And in all this is Satan who puts us in tests where we have to make hard choices and then encourages us in our weakness to give in.
The result
. . . of these obstacles so often is that when hard choices confront us; when we are in difficult tests – we compromise; we choose what is wrong. We want what we want, not what God wants. We want the easy way out, not the way of Jesus. We want to fit in with our friends and peers, not submit to God.
And then we start to make excuses. We rationalize our sin. We think of many good reasons why we should do what we are doing. We think of why its OK in our situation. And we can always find someone else who is worse than us.
And then we become apathetic about our Christian life; we stop doing the hard work of denying ourselves and taking up our cross and dying to ourselves. We begin to coast.
And then we begin excusing this. We put our trust in cheap grace, telling ourselves ‘It’s OK if I allow constant patterns of disobedience in my life. I’ll just shoot a prayer up to God for forgiveness and all is well. We deceive ourselves forgetting that without repentance, there is no forgiveness.
What should you do?
First, be honest. Stop living in denial. Take a hard and rigorously honest look at your life. Stop making excuses – if my life had been different, if I were in different circumstances, if, if, if. And stop comparing yourself to other Christians, so that you come out looking good. Well at least I’m doing better than so and so. Jesus is the standard! Compare yourself to him.
Be honest with yourself and before God. God already knows the truth about you, it’s just a matter of whether you have the courage to know and acknowledge the truth about yourself.
- Where are you holding out on God?
- Where are you are not fully committed to God?
The second thing you should do is make some hard choices. Where you are compromising, choose to yield to God. Where you are holding out, submit.
1) Choose to love God fully in every are of your life
2) Choose to make God’s kingdom first
3) Choose to give up everything for the kingdom
4) Choose to deny yourself and take up your cross
And make whatever sacrifices you need to make to keep to this: friends, the approval of others, your privacy by confessing and being accountable to others; access to what leads you to sin. Even though its hard, do what it takes.
Jesus made this point in Matthew 18:8-9 –
“And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.”
Complete yieldedness to God has to be at the core of our Christian lives.
We will still fail. But with this in place we won’t excuse it or tolerate it. We will immediately deal with it.
And with this in place in your life, and in our congregation as a whole, we will be in a place to experience the spiritual renewal that God wants for us.
William Higgins
Christian teaching 