Serving Rascals, Clumsy Disciples, and Physically and Mentally Ill Believers with the Unconditional Love of Jesus Christ
— Warren W. Wiersbe
9 “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”
Jeremiah 17:9
7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. 8 That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.”
Romans 8:7-8
The reality is that we are in a real fix. The grim news isn’t changed simply because we graduated from a ‘charm school’ or become Eagle Scouts. We are fundamentally flawed, our hearts throughly contaminated. Any good we try to do is a ‘freak of nature,’ and astronomically beyond our ability. The race of men has failed. (Maybe that’s why history keeps repeating itself.) Without the presence of God, we would destroy ourselves. And each other.
The word “hostile” is used. That sort of sums it all up, doesn’t it?
8 “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Romans 5:8
Although we’re in active rebellion, “God so loved the world…” His love for us is called ‘agape,’ it is a word used in the New Testament, and it’s a love marked by consistency and selflessness. God loves without any conditions or merit on our part. Agape is love undeserved. The word is full of mercy, a concept very hard for us to grasp.
God’s love for us the way the universe is run. Love is what empowers Him to save us from our sins. It is the Lord’s love that draws us to Himself. Love is like a magnet that pulls us out of darkness into the light. His love for you is infinite.
“In math, if you divide an infinite number by any number, no matter how large, you still have an infinite quotient. So Jesus’ love, being infinite, even though it is divided up for every person on earth, is still infinitely poured out on each one of us!”
Charles Spurgeon
You can trust the Lord to be fully loving you right this minute. It is a full and constant love— there is scarcely a human parallel. The ‘prophets’ exhaust language seeking a metaphor to explain God’s love to a doubting and disobedient people. I imagine they are frustrated; they can’t explain what they’ve seen. They try, and end up explaining God’s love by type: marriage, and motherhood.
Over and over, these two metaphors are used extensively. And over and over you can see the love of God for people (flesh and blood, like you and I) for us. He loves us like a husband loves his straying wife. He loves us like a father loves his struggling child. We stray and struggle, and we will find no peace apart from His love. After all we are His, and we really can’t ‘work right” apart from His guiding presence.
They both bear us witness of a supreme love. He loves you right now— wrecked and ravaged by your sin. I don’t know where you are at this very moment, but I do know He loves you intensely. Sin may have destroyed you, but His love never, ever vacillates. God is passionate about you— He won’t let you go. But you must risk being loved.
“See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.”
1 John 3:1
“And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.”
Luke 6:31, ESV — The Golden Rule
Luke 6:31-32, MSG
Sometimes it seems, I hit the switch, and shut it all down. Essentially, I get wrapped up with one of my favorite sins and soon I turn off my faith, unplugging myself from the wall. I have a desire to escape from what I see as restrictions that I believe faith brings me. I want to have fun–I don’t want to pray, or read the Bible.
Actually I can do this subtly. I just raise the volume of my sinful desires, and try to drown out that still small voice. I can maintain a holy life for my Christian friends, while I enjoy the pleasures of my favorite sins. Sins or holiness, I want to go for both– but the reality is I just get one.
There is still a voice that is speaking profoundly. “And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.” Our particular concepts of Christianity so rarely include this–“the golden rule.” In my own mind, I diminish this as a little bit antiquated. I will rarely feel its pinch or pull. It is never a topic of serious thought or meditation. It seems that it has become what I call–“an optional truth.” It is very much real, but it is not connected to me in my daily walk.
Treating others, the very way you want to be treated—do this! Love other people outrageously and deeply; because you like it when they do this to you. There is reciprocal action here, a sort of spiritual circle of kindness. Our vernacular says, “What goes around, comes around.” And it certainly has a ring of truth in it.
All too often we have a version of Christianity that has had its teeth pulled. We have tamed it, and brought the sharp teeth of the faith under our personal decision-making process. The wildness of a true faith is domesticated and ‘house-broken.’ And we start the rush to unplug things. The golden rule gets detached right away.
As I struggle as a mentally ill Christian, it is mandatory that the truth be lifted up in my life. I can become quite disturbed and manipulated by life’s dealings. My issues of paranoia and delusion cripple me, or they could become the step-stool for those wonderous things on the shelf of grace.
Dear ones, use your illness to reach for the best, live this and change your world.
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2 Corinthians 12:7
“I have thanked thee a thousand times for my roses, but not once for my thorn. I have been looking forward to a world where I shall get compensation for my cross, but I have never thought of my cross as itself a present glory. Thou divine Love, whose human path has been perfected through sufferings, teach me the glory of my cross and the value of my thorn.”
— George Matheson
We like the rose, but tolerate the thorns. But alas, if we want the flower we must by default receive those pesky jabs. It’s part of the whole package. They come together and you can’t separate them (perhaps scientists will engineer a thornless rose someday).
The Apostle Paul engaged his own version repeatedly. On three different occasions he asked the Lord for relief.
“Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
2 Corinthians 12:8-9
Some conjecture can be made to what this thorn was. A telling word is “infirmities.” It means “feebleness of health; sickness,” (Thayer’s Lexicon, #769). Some have surmised it was a problem with his eyes, and that could well be. He was blinded on “the Damascus Road” for a period of time (?).
Satan has the power to afflict believers, but only under supervision. The verses declare God’s sovereignty over Paul’s thorn. God would work it for His own glory. Satan would be ultimately defeated.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
This must of been an incredible truth for Paul to learn. Perhaps his entire ministry hinged on apprehending what the Lord wanted him to know here. It was a critical lesson for Paul to know. It would enable and sustain him through a very difficult ministry.
Those who are afflicted, mentally or physically, are in prime position to teach us about grace. They’ve experienced the thorns first-hand. And in their most lucid moments can tell us of finding strength in their weakness.
There is much to learn in these couple of verses. There is much to learn from our brothers and sisters.
What is your thorn? What repeatedly drives you to the power and grace of God? Can you see the Lord’s hand in it?
Broken Believers 