Christianity

Stay or Turn

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

If you’ve ever had those weeks (or multiple weeks) where you feel like a lousy Christian—this post is for you.  Because I’m there. And if we’re going to stop being lousy Christians, we have to first admit that we’ve been lousy.

The last two weeks have been awful, from a spiritual standpoint. I have not obeyed my God, I have dishonored Him in my actions, I have failed to trust Him to take care of me, and I’ve snapped and hurt some of the people I love the most.  I have confessed sin to Him, only to turn around a few hours later and fall right back into it.  I’ve let stress and fear make me lazy, instead of running to the arms of God.  I’ve let the temptations of this world into my life instead of pursuing joy in Christ.

It hit me as I went to bed last night and again as I woke up this morning that there are two choices before me: stay, or turn.

I can either stay in my sin, continuing to disobey God, walk away from my faith, and, ultimately, be proven false and spend eternity apart from Him. I don’t over exaggerate here–habitual, lifelong unrepentance ultimately leads to hell.  Not because “once saved, always saved” isn’t true, but because if you are truly saved, Jesus is Lord, and you dare not, and don’t want to, continue living life outside of His Lordship.

Or, I can turn.  I can turn away from my sinful actions, thoughts, and attitudes, confessing them before God, pouring my heart out before Him, and genuinely, sincerely, telling Him that I don’t want to stay this way.  I can turn from not walking with Him to ask Him to help me walk with Him.  I can turn from not trusting in Him and resting in His goodness to begin doing that.  I can turn from sin and start following Christ again, ultimately leading to the day where the good work He started in me is finished, and I rejoice as my Savior completes my salvation and takes me home into His presence for all eternity.

Obviously, option two sounds better.  But here’s the problem: option two is also harder.  It requires work.  It requires prayer.  Staying in our sin is always going to be easier than turning from our sin, because it doesn’t require change.  But it will always, always, always, cost more than turning from our sin, because it ultimately leads to hell.

But who creates that change?  We must be careful to not make repentance, the act of turning from our sin, out to be some work we do to earn God’s favor–it is not simply telling God we’re going to “do better next time” or “go to church more” or “try to be a better Christian.”  That’s a legalistic approach that denies the power of Christ and the necessity of the cross.

God doesn’t ask you to do better.  He doesn’t give second chances.  You and I have already blown it, and we will never get a chance to make ourselves right before God.  But God, in His mercy, sent Jesus to save sinners who have blown it.

Instead of giving us a second chance, which we’d ruin, He sent us Jesus.  And we are forever grateful that where we have failed, Jesus did not.  Where I fail to resist temptation, Jesus perfectly resists temptation (Matthew 4).  Where I fail to love others, Jesus did not (Luke 23:34).  Where I fail to honor God, Jesus honored the Father fully (Matthew 3:17).  And He did all these things not primarily to serve as my example, but to be my righteous substitute, my perfect Savior, in my place, before the Father.  So when you fall, as a Christian, as a believer in Christ, you fall dressed in the righteousness of Christ, no matter how far and how hard you fall down.  And you will get back up, continuing to trust in His righteousness and in His cross.

Martin Luther, in his 95 Theses, said, “All of life is repentance.”  We repent when we first come to God, and we will repent every day after, if we are truly His.  Repentance is about your heart before it is about your actions.  God-given repentance looks like Psalm 51, where David cries out, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!”  It echoes the cry of the hymn, “Rock of Ages”: “Be of sin the double cure; save from wrath, and make me pure!” We see this desire again expressed in 1 John 1:9, where John the disciple is writing to the church about how to handle sin.  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  True repentance desires both forgiveness and cleansing, because true salvation recognizes Christ as the Savior we need and the Lord we must follow.  Just as Christ is able to forgive us, so is He able to change us.

While repentance is a work we do, it is a work God gives, by His grace.  It is not primarily us changing our actions, but submitting our hearts and our lives to God, asking Him to change our hearts, and subsequently, change our actions.  I often pray that just as I trust Christ to save me, that He’d give me the faith to trust Him as Lord and obey Him for my joy, for His glory, and for the sake of the gospel.

One of, if not the, hardest things we do as Christians, as people, is admit that we’re wrong.  What’s even harder is to admit that we can’t fix it and submit to the authority of the One who can.  I wish I could say, “I’ll do better,” or, “I’ll try harder,” or, if I’m really confident in myself, “I’ll never do that again.”  But I can’t.  What I can say is this: The King who reigns and rules forever, the King who has full authority over all things, has authority in my heart and in my life, and even though I can’t fix myself, He can, without a doubt, change me.  And I am completely confident that He will finish what He started, no matter how far I’ve fallen.

If we are going to change, we must turn.  You’ll never start going north if you stay on a road going south.  It’s just not possible.  But when we turn back to God, confessing that Jesus is Lord and we want to follow Him, we can know for a fact that He forgives us through Christ, He accepts us through Christ, and through the power of Christ, we will not stay the same.  This is good news.  This is really, really good news.

So what do we do?  We ask Jesus to change our hearts and help us walk with Him, but does that mean we sit around waiting for a bright light to start leading us?  By no means.  Pursue Christ.  Spend time with Him and spend time with other believers.  Cultivate your faith and joy in Him.  Remember the gospel.  Pray earnestly and consistently.  As He changes us, we pursue Him, and seek to glorify Him in all that we do.

We are sinners.  But by the grace of God, we are also children of God, heirs of the kingdom, saints that are looking better each and every day, and one day, we will be just like our King and we will be with Him forever.  Rest in that.  Believe that.  Trust your Savior.

Lord, may we not stay in our sin.  May we turn, even though it’s hard to admit that we were wrong.  May we hate our sin and love your ways.  May we trust in you as Savior, to forgive us through your sufficient cross, and as our Lord, to change us and help us live new lives for your glory and for our joy.  May we realize that we can’t change ourselves, but that you who forgive us can also cleanse us.  May you finish the work that you started in us.

God bless,

Neal E.

We Are Already Like Peter–A Look at Matthew 14:22-33

/ Neal Embry / Leave a comment

I’ve been reading through Matthew 14 the past few days, and can’t get past the passage (22-33) where Jesus saves Peter from drowning after Peter decides he wants to get out on the water with Him.

Why is it that we focus so much on Peter getting out of the boat?  I even looked through sermons listed on Logos’ “Passage Guide” for this section of Scripture, and most of the sermons listed were titled, “Get out of the boat,” or “Living by Faith like Peter.”

Here’s the problem: Peter’s courageous decision to get out on the water lasts all of one verse.  Not to downplay his initial act of faith, which was very much real and sincere, but that’s not anywhere close to being the point of the story.  If anything, his second “act of faith,” which we’ll discuss shortly, is of much more importance.

What I’d offer is this: If you’re a Christ-follower, you’re already out of the boat.  You’re already like Peter in this sense.  You’ve stepped out in faith to trust Christ to be the Lord of your life and to satisfy you.  You’re trusting in what He’s done for you in salvation and you want to follow Him.  We already identify with the Peter in verse 29 because we are Christians.  What we don’t talk much about is the Peter in verse 30.  You see, we identify with that Peter as well.  We are, like Verse 29 Peter, desiring to follow Christ, but, like Verse 30 Peter, we’re also divided, weak, fearful, and in desperate need of a Savior.  The Peter in verse 30 points us to the real hero of the story, Jesus.

Let’s start in verse 29.  Peter’s act of faith and obedience lasts all of one verse.  It’s not even a whole verse, actually…just the last few words of the aforementioned verse.

Here’s the next verse: “But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.”   Jesus then rebukes him (lovingly), and says, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

So why is it that when Jesus Himself says Peter has “little faith,” we praise his faith?  Why do we hold Peter up as the hero of the story here?  Peter really does have sincere faith…otherwise, Jesus would have said, “You of NO faith.”  It’s just not the main point of the story.  So what (or who) is?  To give the Sunday School answer: Jesus.

It’s Jesus that calls Peter in the first place.  It’s Jesus who saves Peter when he starts to drown.  And it’s Jesus who receives worship in the end.

We already are like Peter.  We’re already “out of the boat,” following Christ.  We already (hopefully) seek to take fresh, new acts of faith and obedience for Christ and His kingdom.  And, like Peter, we find that as we pursue Christ, we often stumble, fall, struggle, doubt, sin, worry…all because, like Peter, we’ve taken our eyes off of Jesus.

Let’s talk about that for a minute: Peter focused on the situation more than the God of the situation.  If the God who created the universe by speaking a word is the God of your situation, why are you afraid?  Why am I afraid?  What have we to fear if God is God, and we belong to Him? Nothing!

But the reality remains, we are like Peter.  We identify with the zealous, Christ-loving Peter, the Peter who trusts Jesus and wants to be with Him in verse 29.  But, we also identify with the weak, anxious, sinful, drowning Peter in verse 30.  But more than anything, we need to trust in the Savior that Peter calls on at the end of that verse.

Peter cries out, “Lord, save me!”  And Jesus does what He does best…He saves him.

This is the best thing Peter contributes to the story–even in the midst of all of his doubts and fears and questions, he knows that he needs Jesus or he’s going to die.  More than we need to understand everything that’s going on in our various situations, we need God.  Because we are like Peter in our doubt, we need to be like Peter in trusting God to save us in our doubt, not by necessarily giving us answers, but by giving us Himself.  We need the God of our theology before we need our theology.

Back to the passage…here’s the bad news: Peter’s faith is really weak, and as stated before, not exactly the best example of a “strong” faith.  But here’s the good news: Peter’s weak, rushed, anxious, fear-filled prayer for Christ to save him works! Not because Peter’s faith is perfect, but because it is in Christ!  Peter’s faith isn’t just seen when he tells Jesus to call him to come to Him on the water–it’s seen when he starts to drown and he cries out for the Lord to save him.  It is after Jesus saves Peter that He tells him to trust Him more.  You can bet that when Peter got back on that boat with Jesus, he was a different man.  Jesus had proved Himself trustworthy.  Weak faith isn’t good.  Jesus wants to rid us of doubt (Jude 22).  But what He wants is for us to understand that even a weak faith in Him saves.  And from that, from the sufficiency of His work, we put off weak faith for a confident rest in Him.

As weak as Peter’s faith may have been, it was in Christ.  It may have seemed strong on the boat, but it weakened when he got out.  But the object of his faith remained the same.

No matter how weak your confidence may be, put it in Christ.  If your confidence for the day of judgment is as strong as can be, but is in something other than Christ’s finished work on your behalf, you’re going to hell.  I can have all the faith in the world that my seminary degree or mission trips or kind words to the homeless person down the street can make me right with God, but at the end of the day, they can’t.  Only Jesus can.  Trust His finished work.  Boast in that.  Let Him be your Savior.  He saved Peter.  And He’s saved countless others just like him.

If we are to “be like Peter,” let it not just be in our decision to follow Christ, but let it also be in this: that when we are drowning in our pursuit of Him, burdened by our fears, sins, and sufferings, we cry out, “Lord, save me!”  And when He does, as He surely will, let us praise Him like Peter did: “Truly, you are the Son of God!”

Lord, may we trust in You and lift You up as the Savior, as the hero of every story in Scripture.  May we follow You like Peter did.  May we, when we fall like Peter did, call on You to save us.

God bless,

Neal E.