Real Servants Have Empty Hands

For the last week I have been drawing the Living Water from a slightly different well than usual. I have been reading Comforts from the Cross and meditating and praying through the scriptures given and the wisdom with which God has blessed Elyse Fitzpatrick. My mother-in-law, Nancy (who also happens to be one of my dearest friends,) has been my drinking buddy. We both read a chapter in the morning and email one another any thoughts or insights. This morning, I was deeply moved by the reading and I wanted to post my thoughts here, but couldn't seem to find the words. When I read Nancy's commentary, it seemed to be just what I wanted to say! So I asked her if I could share here. I hope you are blessed by it, and I hope you can feel the joy in her words the way that I can.

(Our reading today was based mostly on Luke 23: 32-43. Jesus and the two criminals crucified beside him. If you haven't read it recently I invite you to click on the link above and read it.)

I am feeling closer to God with each chapter I read from this book! I am getting closer to that place where I was the day I called out to Him, "Jesus, remember me..."

I am learning to come to Jesus, each day, each hour, each minute in the same standing I came to Him the first time I came... destitute. Because in reality, nothing's changed without the work of the Lord! I haven't cleaned myself up one tiny bit! None of my own efforts at righteousness can ever get me past the point of destitution! Oh... doesn't that make God all the more glorious!!

Both criminals on the cross beside Jesus asked to be saved! I had never really seen it from the perspective Elyse showed. I can see now, that I have lived as both of these persons! The first time I came to Christ, I was the humble and contrite sinner, asking Him to remember me. As I became more legalistic in my approach, I became the proud and arrogant sinner, wanting to be sure Jesus recognized all I was doing to prove my love. Yes, you have saved me... I want to make you glad you did!

Then I read from this chapter... and I quote, " He doesn't even wish I were a bit nicer..." That would have seemed utterly preposterous to me a month ago! Now I see it differently. When God desires me to be nice, it is He who causes it to be so. The glory is always His...never mine! I know I have used the expression, "All the glory goes to God". But didn't really understand what I was even saying.

I haven't felt for a very long time that I could tell Jesus I loved Him and was thankful for my pardon without feeling obligated to Him. But in the beginning, I sure did. At the moment of my salvation, I felt more love and gratitude for God than at anytime since! Standing there with empty hands... I couldn't help but express it! My heart cried out to praise Him!
Standing before God with empty hands, makes His grace so much sweeter...so much more humbling.

I'll never love Him perfectly until I'm with Him face to face. But I can still express it today! I can still say to Jesus, " I really do love you with all that I am in the flesh, in the only way a redeemed sinner is capable of..."

Based on the peace and joy I receive from Him, I know He's still answering me today, the same way He did then, "I know you do...I believe you, because it is I who has given you that ability to know me, love me, and worship me as your Savior."

I'm seeing servanthood in a new way. I'm seeing my act of servanthood as always remembering who God is, and who I am. I'm seeing servanthood as an act of keeping my heart inclined toward Him and not myself. I'm seeing my servanthood wrapped up in "being for Him" and not "doing for Him". By my being a child of God, He has my works laid out for me. All of my abilities and acts are prepared for me beforehand according to God's will... not mine.
And yet in the end, knowing it is God who has done it all, He'll still say, "Well done, good and faithful servant" !
　
How great is our God!
~Nancy Livingston

Thank you, Nancy, for helping to incline my heart back toward Christ and away from me!

"Lord, today I thank you for your amazing grace. It becomes more and more amazing to me each time I look at it. Thank you for being a fountain of Living Waters that never runs dry. You are never boring! I never tire of seeing who you are. Just when I think I have it figured out, you show me more. I thank you that when you gave me the perfect husband, you threw in a bonus that not everyone gets, a mother-in-law that is a dear sister in Christ who can encourage and lift me up, and turn me to the cross! I thank you for the gifts you have given me in this life, and, Lord, I pray that you would continue to incline my heart more toward you, so that the gifts that you have given me will flow freely back into Your Kingdom!"

The Rescue

After sharing a burden with a dear friend this week, she encouraged me to read and meditate on Romans 7. I did. Then I came across the very same passage and encouragement in my devotional today. Since I'm overflowing with these thoughts, I think it is time to share!

Romans 7

7:1 Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Without much thinking, we can see that the language concerning the law here is pretty radical. We are "released from the law, having died to that which held us captive." The law here sounds like an oppressive dictator. You get the feeling that you were like a Jew who narrowly escaped the clutches of Hitler and his Nazis and you were taken to a free country never to return. Or that you were a slave living in the household of a cruel master who used you and abused you, and your true love has given all that he has to bargain for your release, and put you in a white dress, and carried you away to a life of love that you didn't even have the capacity to dream of!

This concept amazes me anew every time I allow it to penetrate my stubborn mind. Think about the slave example. How would your true love, now your husband, take it if instead of basking in his love, you are constantly trying to find a way back to that slavemaster to fulfill your duties to him? That would be ridiculous! This is the point that Paul is making in Romans 7 about the law. We are FREE from it. Why do we keep returning to it only to be crushed under the weight of its condemnation? The law has absolutely no power over me and I am not bound to it. My true love came to rescue me, and I don't have to go back!

Now, if you're like me, you're getting nervous for me about now. You're wondering what grievous sin I'm going to fall into after allowing myself to think this way. Before we go down that road, let's look back at the text.

4Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.

Even though, in our flesh, we fear that straying too far from the law and rules and boundaries will cause us to stop bearing fruit for God, Paul says that we are RELEASED from the law so that we CAN bear fruit for God! Amazing.

He goes further.

5 For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.

According to verse five our sinful passions are aroused by the law and bear fruit for death! So, maybe holding ourselves under the law doesn't produce good fruit at all. If you haven't read it lately, I encourage you to read all of Romans 7, it is wonderful. Paul illustrates the vicious cycle of sin, guilt, and more sin that takes place when we focus on the law.

So, if we can't impose rules on ourselves, how can we produce fruit for God? Elyse Fitzpatrick puts it this way in Comforts from the Cross. "It is utterly impossible that my sinful heart could ever be conquered by anything but God's love and lavish grace." 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

"Thank you, Lord, for rescuing me! Thank you for riding in on your white horse and stealing me away from my oppressor, the law. Forgive me that I keep trying to go back to it to fulfill my duty when what you want from me is to see that I delight in your love. Help me to trust you, that you have prepared the good works that you want me to walk in, and you will guide me to them as I delight in You! I do not need to seek out rules to follow in order to bear fruit for Your Kingdom. Lord, you are amazing. Everything about you is so far above me and beyond my capacity to understand. Allow me to fall on your grace and just trust you. My own reasoning always leads me astray. Thank you for opening my eyes to more of your beauty today!"

Comforts from the Cross

I have begun a daily devotional called "Comforts from the Cross" by Elyse Fitzpatrick. I thank God for gospel-centered books and authors. It is so refreshing to read books and articles that point me to the gospel rather than leave me looking inward at myself and my sin. And this is one of them.

I know that there is a time for self-examination, but it should never overshadow meditation on Christ and the cross! Here is a quote from Robert M. M'Cheyne that really touched me this morning as I thought about self-examination and the cross.

"Now, do not look so long and harassingly at your own heart and feelings. What will you find there but the bite of the serpent? You were shapen in iniquity, and the whole of your natural life has been spent in sin. The more God opens your eyes, the more you will feel that you are lost in yourself. This is your disease. Now for the remedy. Look to Christ; for the glorious Son of God so loved lost souls, that he took on him a body and died for us--bore our curse, and obeyed the law in our place. Look to Him and live. You need no preparation, you need no endeavours, you need no duties, you need no strivings, you only need to look and live... Do not take up your time so much with studying your heart as with studying Christ's heart. 'For one look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ!'"

That 1:10 ratio of looking at self and looking at Christ seems to be the opposite proportion of what we see in bookstores and on the internet. The How-To and How-Not-To books seem to far outweigh the Here, Have a Drink of the Living Water books. Reading and contemplating how to be more Christ-like somehow doesn't quench my thirst the way that reading about and contemplating Christ does. I think maybe it is designed that way. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit," 2 Cor. 3:18.

According to this text, as we behold the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into His image. So, in contrast, if I am constantly beholding myself, looking inward, into what am I being transformed? Scary thought! I certainly don't want more of myself! "Jesus, Savior more of thee, Come and ruin me with Your love, So no other is enough."

"Lord, do come and ruin me with Your love! I am so weary of contemplating myself. Thank you for brothers and sisters in Christ who point me to You. Not only the ones near to me, but the authors and teachers who have labored for Your glory and have kept You at the center of all that they write and teach. Show me my sin for what it is, Lord, dark, disgusting and wretched. But I will be devastated if you don't then show me Your glory, bright, infinitely beautiful, and given to me at the cross! Let me be transformed into the image of Christ as I gaze on His beauty."