The Centrality of the Heart

I'm in the middle of reading a really great book by Paul Tripp called How People Change. Here's a great quote on the centrality of the heart.

The average Christian defines sin by talking about behavior. For example, what is the goal of most Christian parents? Is it not to get their children to do the right things? We set up all kinds of relational, motivational, and corrective structures to constrain and direct our children’s behavior. These structures are not without value, but if this is your only response to your child’s rebellion and sin, you will leave him defenseless against sin once he leaves home and the structures are no longer there.

Beneath the battle for behavior is another, more fundamental battle— the battle for the thoughts and motives of the heart.

The heart is the real or essential you. All of the ways in which the Bible refers to the inner person (mind, emotions, spirit, soul, will, etc.) are summed up with this one term: heart. The heart is the steering wheel of every human being. Everything we do is shaped and controlled by what our hearts desire.

That is why the Bible is very clear that God wants our hearts. Only when God has your heart does he have you. As much as we are affected by our broken world and the sins of others against us, our greatest problem is the sin that resides in our hearts. That is why the message of the gospel is that God transforms our lives by transforming our hearts.

Lasting change always comes through the heart. This is one of Scripture’s most thoroughly developed themes, but many of us have missed its profound implications. We need a deeper understanding of Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."

Why We Talk About Sin 5

Because sin is a communal thing. Now by that I don't mean that we swap spouses at NC, nor that we have a supply closet full of scarlet letters to pass out.

What I mean is that we were never meant to deal with our sin alone. First, we have God. God's desire is not that we run away from Him after we sin, but that we run towards Him, or more specifically, that we run towards the Cross. But we also have other people.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, "Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy...He who is alone with his sins is utterly alone."

As I wrote yesterday, we are not meant live our lives with a mask on, pretending to have our acts together. This is true both with God and with others. I am very thankful to have a hand full of people in my life who are ok with the real me. They are a safe place for me to share not only the good but also the bad and the ugly. I hope that we all find this kind of community.

Rather than write anymore on this, I'd like to direct your attention here, to one of my posts on Tim Chester's book, You Can Change. He says it all so well.

Why We Talk About Sin 4

Because we're as messed up as you!

Understanding our sin should not lead to fear or condemnation but to humility and gratitude. It should not lead to hiding behind a mask but to being more fully human than you've ever been before. I love this quote by Brennan Manning, from The Ragamuffin Gospel:

To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace. Honesty keeps us in touch with our neediness and the truth that we are saved sinners. There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.

It is so easy for me to put that mask on and pretend (to myself and to others) that I am ok. But understanding my brokenness leads to a freedom that does not exist any other way. James (Jesus' brother) said that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. As I recognize my brokenness more and more, it should create in me an awareness of my true dependency. This then humbles me because I know that I am loved and accepted by my Father. I know that He has chosen me and pursues me.

And here's what else it does. It prevents me from having a posture that says, "I have everything together. I have no problems or worries. My life is awesome." Instead, I can be honest and say that I don't have a clue what I'm doing many days, but I trust my Father to guide my steps. I'm ok with that answer.

Sin and Grace

Here's a great quote from Cornelius Plantinga that goes with the post from earlier this morning.

To speak of sin by itself, to speak of it apart from the realities of creation and grace, is to forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it back. Human sin is stubborn, but not as stubborn as the grace of God and not half so persistent, not half so ready to suffer to win its way...To speak of sin without grace is to minimize the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fruit of the spirit, and the hope of shalom.

Why We Talk About Sin 3

Because before we can understand how bad things were, we need to understand how really good they were when it all started.

Now I realize that may sound like a contradiction in light of yesterday's post, but hear me out. We often think of "sin" as doing bad things, of breaking rules. But Cornelius Plantinga, author of Not the Way It's Supposed to Be, defines sin as a violation of shalom.

Before we can understand how bad sin is, we need to first understand the way God intended things to be (which is a good way of explaining the word "shalom"). We normally begin the "sin" discussion with Genesis 3, which is the story of Adam and Eve's disobedience. But we need to go back to Genesis 1 and 2, which is the story of God creating everything. After each day, God said, "It is good." God took great delight in everything that He created, including man and woman. Actually, after the creation of man and woman, He said, "It is very good."

God's design was for man and woman to be in relationship not only with one another but also with Himself. And that relationship was meant to be one built on trust. Man and woman were created to trust God for everything they needed, and through that to give thanks to Him for that provision and love. That trust was then to spill over to their relationship with each other. The Bible indicates this to be the case when it says that they were naked and not ashamed. Things were very good! Yet we know what happened. They chose not to trust God. They believed a lie that they no longer needed Him, that they could be like Him. The irony is that they were actually more like Him before they sinned than they ever would be again.

A few years ago I remember reading this story and being stopped in my tracks by the following verse:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves (Gen. 3:8).

I started thinking, "I wonder if this walking together in the cool of the day was a part of their evening routine?" It's as if God was doing what He did every evening. But on this particular evening, something was different. His children did not join Him. This is a great picture of intimacy to me, and the sad thing is that after sin entered the picture, the intimacy they had with their Father and Creator was broken. It doesn't appear that they ever took these walks again. But it didn't stop there. It was also broken between the man and the woman (remember, it was at the point of sin entering the picture that they first felt shame). And this brokenness continues to affect all of us.

So that's how things started. The Bible also tells us how things will end. Revelation 21 says that there will come a day when God will once again walk with His people. He will make His dwelling place with them, and get this: He will come near to wipe away every tear from the eyes of His children. Intimacy will once again be fully restored.

So we see how it began and we see how it ends. For now we have the Gospel. Yes, it's a time of tension, but it's a time of God doing His work of redeeming and restoring that which was lost and broken. God's work involved sending His Son to earth to make right what was wrong. And He did it through His death on the Cross. Through Christ's death we can once again be reconciled to God. We can truly know God, our Father and Creator.

Why We Talk About Sin 2

First, a more theological response...Before we can really appreciate why the gospel is "good news", we should first seek to understand how bad the bad news really is. And that's why we talk about sin.

The Bible says in many places that God's desire has been to save/rescue/set free His people. The question that must be asked is, "From what do we need to be saved/rescued/set free?" There are lots of things that could be mentioned here, but I'll let Paul do the talking, from Ephesians 2.

Paul begins this chapter by saying that at one time we were all dead in our sins (Eph. 2:1). In other words, we were unresponsive to God. The reason for this was that we were slaves. First, we were following the ways of the world. When Paul speaks of "the world" here, he is referring to the earthly system that opposes God's reign. Think about the The Matrix here. It wasn't until you were outside the Matrix that you realized the truth, that everyone in the Matrix was a slave. And the crazy thing was that they didn't even know it. That's how we were.

Next, Paul brings up Satan. The Bible says (and Bob Dylan later echoes it) that we all "Gotta Serve Somebody." If our allegiance is not to God, then it's to somebody else. And the Bible says that Satan is "the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). So when we were dead in our sins, our allegiance was to Satan instead of to God.

Now I know that most people don't consider themselves to be loyal to Satan. So if you're not buying that one, hang in there for this last one. Paul says that the third thing we were captive to were the passions of our flesh. All that means is this: we're in charge, and we do what we want to do when we want to do it. But this is also why the things that we fill ourselves with in hopes of bringing satisfaction or meaning often leave us unsatisfied or even empty. St. Augustine said it this way: "You (God) have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You." To be held captive by the passions of your flesh means that your heart is restless, and nothing other than God will fully satisfy.

So before God stepped in, sin held us in such a way that there was no way that we could be who were created to be. And that's bad news. However, Paul doesn't end with bad news. The rest of Ephesians 2 contains words such as mercy, love, grace and kindness. This is who God is, and this is where good news comes. The Gospel says that God, because of His great love for us, came and redeemed dead slaves (that's us). However, this redemption cost something: His Son, Jesus. Jesus' death brought our freedom, and that is extremely good news!

Why We Talk About Sin 1

Last night I began a three week series on the topic of sin. Sin is not a popular subject by any means. Some of us grew up hearing about sin way too much. It was never coupled with grace and love, but more with fear and legalism. Many of us also heard about only specific types of sins, while other sins went overlooked. We saw this as hypocrisy (think racism in the south). However, today as we look around our culture we discover that we've almost lost the notion that sin even exists. It's rarely talked about, and when it is, it's not done so in the way it once was (check out www.sinfullydecadent.com for more - don't worry, it's not a porn site).

So over the next four or five posts I want to give some reasons as to why we as a church are talking about sin. And if you're interested, the sermon and notes from last night can be downloaded here.

The Man in Black

I know that we're several months removed from Lost, but I just read an interesting article on the Man in Black. Remember him? As I've said before, I'm getting ready to start teaching on the subject of sin, so for the past month or so I've been watching and reading things in light of the brokenness of our world. I think this article is a great example of brokenness. Here's how it begins:

He had no name, no family, no history, no future. His people lived far away, across the sea. The one who professed love for him took away his job and gave it to his brother--and then she killed every one of his friends.

At forty-three he was trapped on an Island with the woman who killed his mother and the infantile mama's boy who doted on her. He shared nothing with his brother, not priorities or desires or diversions--not even hair colour. His thoughts lacked any point of reference other than his home, across the sea.

His situation was infinitely worse than this, however. We have heard his story before. We know him from the holy text of every ancient religion. Mary Shelley wrote about him, and Edward Everett Hale fifty years after her. We have heard his story before, but every aspect of him is new. He is the Man in Black, Cerberus, the Smoke Monster, but he is so much more. He's not so different from you and me. In fact, we understand him best by looking at ourselves.

Read more.

Why Talk about Sin?

This coming Sunday night I'm going to begin a series on sin. We're in the middle of a larger series on the book of Ephesians, and chapter two gives a beautiful picture of what God has done for us through Christ. But in order for us to appreciate what He has done, we need to understand our position without His work. The following quote is from John Stott, Basic Christianity, and I think he describes this very well.

...in order to appreciate the work which Jesus accomplished, we must understand who we are as well as who he was. His work was done for us. It was the work of a person for persons, a mission undertaken for needy persons by the only person competent to meet their need. His competence lies in his deity; our need lies in our sin. We have tested his competence; we must now expose our need. Only then, after we have clearly grasped what we are, shall we be in a position to perceive the wonder of what he has done for us and offers to us.

You Can Change 16

This is my last post on Tim Chester's wonderful book You Can Change. At this point in my life it is definitely a Top-1o book, one that has both encouraged me and challenged me a great deal. I feel like I need to read it again soon, as I so want these truths to be internalized in my heart. I want to end this series with four summary statements that Chester gives:

1. Keep returning to the cross to see your sin cancelled and to draw near to God in full assurance of welcome.
2. Keep looking to God instead of to sin for satisfaction, focusing on the four liberating truths of God's greatness, glory, goodness and grace.
3. Cut off, throw off, put off, kill off everything that might strengthen or provoke sinful desires.
4. Bring sin into the light through regular accountability to another Christian.

You Can Change 15

The last chapter of Tim Chester's book asks the question, "Are you ready for a lifetime of daily change?" This question is an appropriate way to end this book. He begins by explaining that without Christ we are slaves to sin. We are not free to make the right choice. That doesn't mean that we never make the right choice, but it does mean that we're not truly free. However, Jesus set us free. We are no longer under the bondage of sin.

We are now free to choose, free to either sow to the Spirit or sow to the flesh. As great as that is, though, it is a huge responsibility. It would be great if we could make that decision once in our life, and the battle would be done. But unfortunately, walking with God is a daily thing. Everyday we choose. To know that we have to choose is the first step. The second thing we need to understand is that we are in a battle. Paul says in Galatians 5:17 that "the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other." Peter says that the passions of the flesh wage war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11).

The good news again is that we are able to choose. We are able, because of the hope we have in Christ and His work on the Cross (Galatians 2:20), to become more and more like Him every day. This is what the Bible calls sanctification. It requires daily effort, and it's hard work. Many days I don't want to be conformed to the image of Christ. I want what I want. And so in those moments I remind myself of what I know:

• Only God satisfies
• There is a lie behind every sin
• I am free to choose
• I have to choose
• God will continue to give me grace

I want to leave you with one one quote from Tim Chester:

The Reformers had a Latin phrase to capture this truth: semper peccator, semper iustus: "always a sinner, always justified." I still sin, but in Christ God declares me to be righteous here and now. So we needn't and shouldn't despair. If we think of ourselves only as failed sinners, then we may feel disqualified from Christian service and settle for a compromised life. You are a justified saint, equipped for battle, capable of adventurous, risky discipleship on the front line of God's kingdom.

You Can Change 14

In about six weeks I'm going to begin teaching through Ephesians, so I was excited to see that this next chapter, which focuses on the role of community in change, follows much of the themes in Ephesians. One of which is this: not only is maturity possible through Christ, it's commanded. Chester says that just as sin is a community matter, so too is change.

Sometimes I'm able to remind myself that the sin in my life is rooted in lies. At that moment I can come back to the truth of the gospel and can overcome that sin. However, at other times I need someone else to say these things to me. That's the role of community. Unfortunately, this kind of community is often hard to find. One of the reasons for this is that community is messy. Though we may not want to be pretenders, it is much easier. After all, what will people think if they know the "real" me? So when we are held captive by some kind of sin, we either withdraw from community or begin to wear a mask. Chester says,

I need people who regularly ask me about my walk with God, readily challenge my behavior, and know about my temptations. I need my friend Samuel, who often asks, "What's the question you don't want me to ask you?"

The other reason this kind of community is so rarely found is that we don't want to speak truth to people. I have to say that this is one of the biggest things that God has been challenging me with these days. I don't like saying harsh things to my friends, even when I know that what they are doing is destructive. However, Paul says that one of the ways we grow towards maturity is by speaking the truth in love and having the truth spoken to us in love (Eph. 3:15).

I must admit that many of us don't know how to do this. I know that I struggle with it. How do we respond when someone confesses sin? How do we challenge them to seek God for true change? How do we help them to know the love and comfort of God? We need to come back to the gospel. We need to be able to say to one another, "Yes, this is sin. Yes you are guilty. But Christ has taken on that guilt. He has faced the judgment of God not because of sin that he committed but because of our sin."

I so desperately want to be a part of this kind of community. Not one where, as Bonhoeffer said, "Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is discovered among the righteous", but one whose identity is shaped by brokenness, grace, and hope.

You Can Change 12

The next chapter in Tim Chester's book asks the question, "What stops you from changing?" He says that it boils down to two things: love of self and love of sin. He writes:

...the number one reason why people don't change is pride, closely followed by hating the consequences of sin but actually still loving the sin itself.

Upon first glance, you wouldn't think that pride prevents true change, but pride goes against the gospel. Pride says that you can change yourself; that you don't need God. This is why humility is a prerequisite for change. We can do nothing to earn God's favor. Neither can we do anything to truly change our hearts. Only God can do that. Therefore, Chester writes:

If you're frustrated at your inability to change, then your first step is to give up - to give up on yourself. Repent of your self-reliance and self-confidence. Your second step is to rejoice in God's grace - his grace to forgive and his grace to transform.

The other reason we don't change is because we really don't want to. We may certainly hate the consequences of our sin, but we don't truly hate the sin itself. I know that's often easier said than done, but here are three principles that might help.

1. Ask God to reveal to you how He views your sin
2. Worship God
3. Cling to the Cross of Christ

You Can Change 11

Whereas the last chapter I blogged on (almost a month ago) was on the truths that we need to turn to, this chapter is on the desires that we need to turn from. Remember, behind every sin is some kind of lie. That's why we need to go back to truth. But that's just a part of it. As we turn to God, we are in effect turning away from sin.

Chester writes, "We sin because we desire or worship idols instead of worshipping God" (99). When we think of idols we usually think of some type of shrine or statue. But an idol is anything we look to to give us meaning and satisfaction. The Bible says that our first sin wasn't choosing idols. It was rejecting God (Jeremiah 2:12-13; Romans 1:25). And then, because we rejected God as the source of ultimate satisfaction, we had to look elsewhere. And that's where idols come in.

It's important to remember that an idol doesn't have to be something bad. It's normally something good. What makes it an idol is that we believe that if we don't have it, our lives are meaningless, and though that doesn't sound too harmful, it is in essence us saying that God is not enough.

And that's why Chester says that changing behavior is not enough. Instead, change will come as God transforms our hearts and gives us new desires (102). This of course is something that only God can do, but we do have a role to play. We are called to repentance. As I wrote earlier, repentance involves turning. Turning from idols and turning to God. The tragedy is that we've been led to believe that repentance is something that we do once in our life, at the point where we first turn to Christ. In truth, repentance should be a daily occurrence.

As God begins to change our hearts and give us new desires, we have another role to play. The Bible speaks of this role using the word "mortification", which simply means to put something to death. In this case, that "something" is sin (Romans 8:13). Sinclair Ferguson describes mortification this way:

It is the constant battle against sin which we fight daily - the refusal to allow the eye to wander, the mind to contemplate, the affection to run after anything which will draw us from Christ.

When a sinful, idolatrous desire creeps into our minds, we can either feed it or kill it. (I should point out that the only reason we have that second option is because of Christ's death and resurrection!) Chester gives a few examples of how this works. Here's one of them:

I feel myself getting bitter. Once I might have fed my desire by reflecting on all the wrongs I endure. But I realize now that bitterness is grumbling against God's goodness. And so (in my best moments and with God's help) I try to stop it before it grows.

As you can see, on one hand this sounds pretty simple. But on the other hand it takes intentionality and requires that a new habit be formed. Once again, we go to the Gospel. Paul says in Galatians 5:1 that it is for freedom that we have been set free. That is how we have the ability to form new habits.

You Can Change 9

God is good - so we do not have to look elsewhere

One of the greatest lies our culture is fed is that sin satisfies us in greater ways than God ever can. Augustine, speaking to God, said, "You have created us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You." As I said in yesterday's post, if we don't fill our void with God, then we will most definitely fill it with something else. The problem, though, is that nothing, and no one, other than God can truly fill it.

The answer is not to give up on trying to be satisfied. It's to go the source of true and lasting satisfaction: God Himself. Jesus told the Samaritan woman at the well that the water that he offered was the only thing who could quench her thirst. I like how Chester puts it:

Sin is like the distorted reflection of a beautiful sunset that shifts with every movement of the breeze across the water. God is the sun itself in all its beauty and glory and energy.

Finding your rest in God; going to God for ultimate, lasting satisfaction and joy - these are two ways of talking about worship. Chester writes:

Worship is about what you desire most, what you think has most worth. Every time you look to God to satisfy your longings, you worship him in spirit and truth. Every time you look elsewhere, you commit idolatry.

You Can Change 8

God is glorious - so we do not have to fear others

Chester says, "One common reason why we sin is that we crave the approval of people or we fear their rejection." We tell little white lies to make people think more highly of us; we put on a facade even around those closest to us because we shudder to think what people might actually believe about us if they really knew us; we so often compare ourselves to others; peer pressure still affects us. The Bible calls this the fear of man, and the answer is not to try to bolster our self-esteem but to have an ever-increasing fear of God.

We were created to worship God. We were created to find our ultimate approval in Him, and when that isn't happening, there is a void that we will desperately try to fill with someone else's approval. Do you know the majesty, glory, holiness and beauty of God? Do you think about these things?

Oh fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!

The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. Psalm 34:9-11

You Can Change 6

The title of chapter 5 is "What Truths Do You Need to Turn To?" The premise of the chapter is that there is some kind of lie behind every sinful behavior. Uncovering that lie is key to overcoming the sinful behavior that results from believing that lie.

We sin because we believe the lie that we are better off without God, that his rule is oppressive, that we will be free without him, that sin offers more than God.

The key to overcoming sin and negative emotions is to trust God. It's starts with our beliefs about Him, and as Chester points out, this is not just what we believe about God on Sunday (confessional faith), but what we believe about him on Monday (functional belief). He says that we need to begin to preach to our hearts. I've always found this to be a helpful discipline. I have to constantly remind myself of what I know to be true God, especially when I don't necessarily feel it.

The remainder of the chapter focuses on four truths. I'm going to write individual blog posts on each of these, but for now, here's the list.

1. God is great - so we do not have to be in control

2. God is glorious - so we do not have to fear others

3. God is good - so we do not have to look elsewhere

4. God is gracious - so we do not have to prove ourselves

You Can Change 5

Chapter 4 of Tim Chester's You Can Change is titled "When Do You Struggle?" In the first part of this chapter he reminds us that God cares about our struggles. He doesn't simply make Himself available when we are good and then give us the cold shoulder when we struggle. He's here. And He got involved in a tangible way by sending Jesus into the madness that we call humanity. Jesus faced every kind of trial and temptation that we will ever face, yet He did so by staying dependent on the Father.

We all struggle, but the good news is that God uses our struggles for His glory and our benefit. Romans 5:8 says that suffering eventually leads to hope. James 1:2-4 says that we can count as joy the trials we go through because they lead to maturity. Romans 8:28-29 says that God takes all things, even those things meant for evil, and can bring good out of them. And He uses those things to conform us to the image of Jesus. And 1 Peter 1:6-7 says that God uses our trials to make us more like Jesus and bring praise to Him.

Now before I go any farther with this, let's talk about this word "struggle." In the context of the book so far I have imagined the word in a very negative sense. It's talking about sin. We struggle, we fight. Sometimes we overcome, and sometimes we're overcome. But as I was reading, and especially reading the passages noted above, I remembered that the primary Greek word translated "trials" is also translated "temptations." The Greek word I'm referring to is πειράζω (πειρασμός) for those of you interested.

In passages such as James 1:3-4, 1 Peter 1:6, Luke 8:13, and James 1:12, this word is most often translated as "trials" or sometimes "testing." Yet in passages such as 1 Corinthians 10:13, 1 Timothy 6:9, and Matthew 6:13, the word is translated "temptation."

Why does this matter???

This is huge. I don't like suffering (trials), but I know that God uses it to make me more like Jesus. Further, He can bring beauty and blessing out of it. This is why I can say that it is good. However, I never look at temptations as a good thing. Perhaps it's because it's easy to be overcome by temptation instead of overcoming it. Yet God wants to use this kind of struggle for His glory and my benefit.

So God can use all of our "struggles" for His glory and our benefit. More on this chapter tomorrow.

You Can Change 4

In chapter 3 of Tim Chester's book You Can Change we're presented with the question "How Are You Going to Change?" Tim Keller says that religion leads to either pride or despair. Chester has so far talked a lot about pride. But at some point, we realize that we can't check off all the boxes. We come to the conclusion that change is not really possible. The pride that we had in our achievements now turns to despair. And that's where the gospel comes in. Chester writes, "The glorious good news of Jesus is that you and I can change" (41).

The problem is that we try to change in the wrong way, and for most of us, this involves the law (legalism). We believe that if we just try harder, or do this and don't do that, or make lists that we can check off, that we eventually will see change. The problem is that the law was never meant to bring change. The purpose of the law is to show us that we can't change ourselves, that something else is needed. And that something else is Christ.

This is why we must not only repent of sin, but repent of our righteousness as well. In other words, we repent of trying to make ourselves "right with God" based on our efforts. This is the foundation for change. It's understanding that it's impossible on our own, that we are completely dependent on God for anything good to happen.

This is where God's sanctifying work through the Holy Spirit comes in (2 Thess. 2:13). Whereas we often try to change our behavior, God goes straight for the heart. That's the only way lasting change can happen. Ezekiel 36 says that God has removed our heart of stone and given us a new heart of flesh.

But not only has God given us new hearts, He also sent Jesus to die on the Cross so that sin would no longer reign. Paul says, "We know that our old self was crucified with him (Jesus) in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin" (Romans 6:6-7).

Because of Christ's work on the Cross, and the Spirit's continual sanctifying work in our hearts, we do not have to be slaves of sin. By the grace of God, we can change because we are changed. We can be led by the Spirit instead of the flesh. We will of course continue to face temptation (Chester says that we're like a former prisoner who still wakes at prison hours, or like a freed slave who still jumps at his old master's voice), but we don't have to sin. The key is repentance, which is a daily activity for God's people. Every day we remind ourselves that it is only through God's work that we that we have abundant life, that we have forgiveness, that we have freedom. And this repentance opens the door for God's Spirit to move in our hearts.

You Can Change 3

I divided chapter 2 into two posts. In the last post we looked at three reasons that we often give for wanting to change, and in this post we'll look at what Chester said is the true motive for change:

to enjoy the freedom from sin and delight in God that God gives to us through Jesus

He breaks this down into four parts:

1. Growing in holiness is not sad, dutiful drudgery. It's about joy
2. Change is about living in freedom
3. Change is about discovering the delight of knowing and serving God. Chester writes, "All too often we think of holiness as giving up the pleasures of sin for some worthy but drab life. But holiness means recognizing that the pleasures of sin are empty and temporary, while God is inviting us to magnificent, true, full, and rich pleasures that last forever" (36). Amen!
4. Becoming like Jesus is something that God gives to us. It has nothing to do with our achievement.

Chester ends this chapter by comparing two feasts that we're presented with every day. On one side is the feast of sin. It calls out to us, promising a satisfaction yet never delivering. On the other side is the feast of God. This is the only feast that truly satisfies, and it's given to us freely through Christ.