03-22-09 A Time For Action

There is a fascinating relationship

between us and God’s communication to us through His Word.

Of course our King knows

that our minds are profoundly messed up when we come to Him.

Having entered this world with spirits that utterly reject His authority over us,

and having been nurtured by a world system

that resists His truth at all costs,

by the time He brings us into His family

we bring with us minds filled with lies

and reasoning processes built upon half-truths and misinformation.

It’s no wonder we so often struggle with what He says to us.

But even though He understands our ignorance and confusion perfectly,

He loves us far too much to leave us victims of our past.

In fact, rebuilding our lives

through introducing us to truth

is a major part of the work His Spirit seeks to accomplish within us.

And the pattern for that changing process

involves two steps.

The first step is His revealing the truth to us.

He doesn’t expect any changes to take place in our actions

until His Spirit has first been able to bring His truth into our minds.

That sounds simple,

but frequently the lies from our past

are so deeply imbedded in our thinking processes

that it takes Him years before He can bring us to the point

where we can actually hear what He’s saying.

I could offer dozens of examples,

but I’ll mention just two because they are so universal .

Take, for example, our God’s declaration that, JER 31:3 ..."I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness.”

For God so loved the world...

The statement of God’s love for us is not complicated.

It is a clear, simple affirmation from God to us -

He loves us.

It is not phrased in a way

that makes that love dependant upon anything we have done or should do or will do.

It isn’t in response to anything He has received from us.

It’s just a simple, clear, open affirmation on His part that He loves us.

And yet...

how many of us can hear that statement

and accept it as the simple truth it is?

When you respond to Him,

or interact with Him,

or reach out to Him,

do you do so with the assumption of that love?

With all of us,

our perceptions of that love

are deeply corrupted by our preexisting concepts of what love is,

and who God is,

and what others have meant when they have told us they love us,

and what we mean when we tell others we love them.

I spent a huge chunk of my early years as a Christian

boldly proclaiming God’s love for me and for others,

but it was a love limited to reason, and logic, and correct choices,

a love without heart, without feeling.

Of course God “loved” me,

but He didn’t really enjoy me or delight in me

or laugh at my stupid jokes

or feel my pain when I was sad, or lonely, or confused, or afraid

because my concept of His love

was based upon a profoundly corrupted concept of love within me.

What He was saying

and what I was hearing

were very, very different.

And bringing us to the place

where we can, even a little,

hear and then trust the truth of such a simple statement

takes many, many years of the Spirit of God removing lie after lie after lie from our minds.

Or take another simple statement,

the one He repeats again and again throughout the New Testament,

the one in which He tells us that we are His holy ones.

When He says that to us

we think He’s telling us that we should be His holy ones,

or that He sees us as holy because He somehow sees us through the blood of Christ.

The thought that we are literally, truly HOLY in spirit

simply doesn’t fit with the religious lies we’ve believed

or with what we think we know about ourselves.

And my point here is simply

that most of the time

God’s greatest task in presenting us with the truth

is His first removing from us those lies

that have made it impossible for us to hear that truth when He speaks it to us.

And so the first step in this changing process that God is accomplishing in our lives

is that of His providing us with the truth we need.

Without that truth

no change can ever or will ever take place.

And then, after He’s given us the truth,

the second step involves His calling us

to make choices in our lives that are consistent with that truth.

In other words,

He shows us what our lives will look like

if we have correctly heard and understood what He’s just said to us.

And I mention all of this at this point in our study of Peter

because of what Peter does next.

We have spent the past two months in the first 12 verses of 1^st Peter,

listening to Peter tell us things about our God,

and about our own future,

and about what our God is accomplishing within us

as a result of the things taking place in our lives right now.

He’s given us truth about the way things really are,

and what we’ve heard

has helped us realize

that things are very different than we thought they were.

He talked with us about a God

who treasures us as a highly valued possession,

a God who chose us and called us to Himself.

And he gave us just a tiny glimpse

into the remarkable future our God has planned for us,

and told us that even now we are protected by the power of God

so that no one can take us away from Him.

He also told us

that even the hard things taking place in our lives right now

are being used by our King

to bring about a growing, remarkable change within us,

a change Peter compares to that of removing the impurities from gold,

a process that will bring praise and glory and honor to our Lord.

Some of it, of course, is hard for us to understand,

but it’s truth - all of it.

And having given us this truth

Peter then takes us to the second step,

showing us what our lives will look like

if we have correctly heard and accepted the truths he’s just given us.

And so, the next word we come to is the word, “Therefore...”.

And with that word Peter is saying,

“Let me tell you how what I’ve just told you will impact your life if you have heard it correctly.”

And the first thing he talks about

is the way it will affect our mental outlook.

He says,

1PE 1:13 Therefore, gird your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

OK, Peter gives us three specific instructions in this verse.

The first thing he calls us to do is to gird our minds for action.

That word “gird” means to prepare...prepare your minds for action.

It came originally from those going into battle or preparing for a race

who would use a belt to secure their clothing

so that it would guarantee them absolute freedom of movement.

But in common use

it means simply to get yourself ready for what’s coming.

And Peter begins by telling us

that we need to get our minds ready for action.

And what in the world does that mean?

Well, it means, at least in part,

that what we say to ourselves on a daily basis

matters more than we could ever imagine.

And it means that we need to choose to tell ourselves the truth

over and over and over again.

And in the context of what Peter is saying to us here,

we especially need to tell ourselves the truth

about the effect of our actions

on the lives of those we come in contact with each day.

I know how it is, given the religious drivel so many of us have been exposed to.

When we hear an authoritative voice in the religious world

exhorting us to “gird your minds for action”

we just naturally assume the exhortation will be followed

with a call for us to become involved in some great movement,

or some aggressive evangelistic outreach,

or some new program that’s guaranteed to impact the world in a great way.

In other words,

we assume we are being called upon

to add some specific new religious activity to our life.

I don’t think that’s what Peter is talking about at all.

In fact, I’m certain it’s not.

I think Peter is attacking

one of the most powerful

and most common lies used by Satan against the people of God -

the lie that we are just one of the many whose lives don’t really matter that much.

We are one of the obscure, unimportant folks

whose actions have little impact, little significance, little ability to change anything.

Which brings me back to the importance of that truth we need to tell ourselves over and over again.

And this is the way it sounds.

“My God has carefully, specifically placed me in this place in His kingdom at this point in history.

He has equipped me for a role in the lives of those I will come in contact with,

a role that no one else can fulfill.

His Spirit lives within me

and His life will be seen through me,

not because I try to communicate Him in some overt way,

but simply because He uses my actions, my attitudes, my words to reveal Himself through me.

And whether I see it or not,

whether I feel it or not,

whether or not I ever understand why,

I know my life, my actions, my choices matter more than I could ever imagine.”

...gird your minds for action...

Never ever underestimate

either the significance of your life

or your importance to your King.

I don’t know about you,

but most of the time

I have to tell myself those truths again every single day.

I have to because I so quickly forget,

and because my default setting is to accept

our society’s evaluation of my value

and the significance of my actions.

And each morning I must once again gird my mind for action

because my God has told me the truth.

I’ll tell you, it does help when I hear some of the things Paul has said.

Take, for example, what he said to those folks at Corinth

who were so fond of judging everything and everyone

on the basis of the value system of the society around them.

Do you remember what he said?

1CO 4:5 Therefore do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts; and then each man's praise will come to him from God.

Do you think your act of compassion or kindness this morning went unnoticed?

Well, maybe it did go unnoticed by the world around you,

but it was not unnoticed by your God.

And what you have done,

and what you continue to do each day when no one else sees, or cares

honors your God.

And even though this is not why you have done what you have done,

still the time will come

when your God will honor you in return.

And what Paul says here is truly remarkable.

It gives us insight into our God

at a level we would never have expected.

Did you notice the last phrase in Paul’s comments here?

We talk much, and correctly, about the value, the necessity of our giving praise to God.

It is what is only right and reasonable from us as His created beings.

But Paul tells us in this passage

that the time will come

when there will be those who will receive praise from God,

those that He will publicly honor.

And I can tell you with certainty

that they will not be the ones we would expect.

They will not be the ones

who skillfully elevated themselves

into positions of prominence and honor in our man-made religious systems here and now.

They will be those who made sometimes very hard choices

of righteousness and obedience and kindness and compassion

when no one was watching,

when no one knew.

And they did what they did

simply out of faithfulness to their Lord.

It matters,

our lives matter,

our choices matter so much more than we could ever even imagine.

Well, after calling us to gird our minds for action,

Peter offers two more attitude instructions

before he moves on to our actions.

The second thing he says is keep sober in spirit.

Peter is the only New Testament writer to use this phrase,

and he actually uses it a total of three times,

all of them in this first letter.

And with this phrase I hear him encouraging us to keep focused on the life our Lord has given us.

He wants us to know it’s not a game,

it’s a calling,

a stewardship given to us by our God.

That certainly doesn’t mean we should attempt to paste on

some hideous solemn religious facade.

We, of all people on this earth

have both the right and the ability to enjoy life to the fullest.

But it does mean

that we hold tightly to the conviction

that who we are and what we do

matters more than we could ever imagine.

And then, the last attitude instruction Peter gives us,

after calling us to gird our minds for action and to keep sober in spirit,

is his instruction that we fix our hope completely on the grace to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And I’ll tell you before we go any farther with this

that there are some things about this statement that I understand,

some things I can share with you with both clarity and confidence,

and then there are some I understand in theory,

but up to this point I’ve been far less successful building into my life.

But let me start with the part that I do understand,

and I’ll tell you I really do love the way Peter does this.

OK, what’s obvious in this statement?

Well, it’s obvious that Peter is talking with us

about a point in the future which he calls the revelation of Jesus Christ.

It’s a great concept - a great hope for the people of God.

That word “revelation” means to uncover or to reveal something that’s been hidden from sight.

And if we take nothing else away from this phrase,

that right there is worth it all

because that one phrase captures so powerfully

two of the most crucial truths of life on this planet.

The first is that right now the truth about Jesus Christ - who He is,

what He’s doing,

and what it means,

right now He’s hidden from sight, covered, obscured from our view.

The world around us never sees it correctly,

and most of the time even the people of God don’t see it correctly.

Which, of course, is why this life we live

is such a constant, raging battle.

Every day we live

there are things that happen

or things that don’t happen

that cause us to cry out inside, “Where are You, Lord?!”

I can’t see where You are,

I can’t see what You’re doing,

I just don’t get it!

And even though it doesn’t fix it for me,

I have to tell you

it really helps me to hear Peter openly affirm

that right now none of us are seeing things the way they really are.

But the second truth that’s obvious from this statement

is that a time is coming when the curtain will finally be pulled back,

a time when at last all of the games,

all of the obscurity,

all of the darkness will be gone,

a time, at the revelation of Jesus Christ,

when at last everything that matters will be clearly seen for what it is

because it will be seen in the perfect light of His presence.

For many years now

I have kept two quotations, one from the Prophet Amos, the other from the Prophet Habakkuk,

tucked in the side drawer of my desk.

For me they provide the perfect picture

of what our world will look like

at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The first, from Amos 5:4 says, “...let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

And the second, from Habakkuk 2:14 says, “For the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, As the waters cover the sea.”

That is the great and glorious hope of the people of God,

the hope of a world in which righteousness and only righteousness dwells,

a world in which there are no longer any games,

no longer any evil or hatred or filth or corruption or cruelty or perversion.

A world in which truth and purity reign.

And that time will come

because our King will come

and when He comes all will be put in order.

That much I understand about this statement of Peter’s.

And there is something else I understand as well.

In fact, it obvious if we simply read the words that he wrote.

We who are His

never ever need to fear that day

because what He will pour out on us when He comes is His GRACE.

And with this phrase

Peter is once again reinforcing that truth about our Lord

that we find it the hardest to remember.

He is for us, He is our hope, He is our friend,

and when He is revealed

what He brings for His people

is a revelation of His grace as we have never seen before.

Don’t be afraid,

don’t be afraid,

don’t be afraid.

But I can’t end this morning

without also sharing with you

the part of this statement that I struggle with.

And it’s found in those words where Peter says, fix your hope completely ...

You see, I’m not very good at that at all.

I still have way too many hiding places,

alternate “hopes” in my life.

I do understand what Peter is saying, I think.

He wants us to know

that no matter what’s going on in our lives at any given time,

no matter how young or old we are,

no matter what our life situation,

what we really hunger for,

the only thing that will bring us the peace and fulfillment we long for

is when we see our Lord clearly.

But most of the time I seem to get just glimpses here and there,

and then in between the glimpses,

I retreat once again to my hiding places.

I am better than I was,

but then that’s the nature of this daily walk with the King, isn’t it -

our spirits forever hungering for our King,

while we drag our screaming, kicking flesh along with us one step at a time toward the truth.