Sharing Magazine

     These words are addressed to believers.  Even as they believe, they are encouraged to take seriously any unbelief that may be in their hearts.  How seriously do you take your areas of unbelief? How seriously do you take your capacity to be hardened and deceived by sin? In my years of praying for others to be healed and in pursuing Jesus for healing for myself, I have seen that this exhortation from the writer of Hebrews is timeless.
     Have you ever approached someone for prayer, and felt immediately closer to Jesus? Have you ever approached someone for prayer, and felt contempt and condemnation from the prayer minister? Both have happened to me. It's such a blessing when someone models the character of Christ, and you sense that they walk closely with God and that He draws near to them. God's fragrance of life permeates someone like that, and just being near them is pleasant--how much more pleasant when they're willing to lay hands on you and intercede for you in love.

It's alarming and potentially traumatizing if you approach someone trained in prayer ministry, and the experience is unpleasant. It can be confusing to encounter someone involved in a healing ministry whose character is not very Christ-like. You might be naive like me, and wonder how on earth a person who is rude, manipulative, resentful, etc., could be involved in the ministry. The Lord is helping to remove my naïveté the better I get to know Scripture.
     Did you know the gifts of God are irrevocable?  Romans 11:29 says so.  Simply put, this means God does not take them away. I think sometimes we forget this verse when we see someone misuse a gift or calling. We can't understand how someone who is disobeying God openly or in secret could still have a gift. We think God surely would not allow a gift in someone like that, or that He would take it away if the person did not reflect His character. We can all think of well-known ministries which have ended in scandal, but we often can see the phenomenon in our local churches as well.
     The Lord makes clear that eventually we must give account for ourselves. This includes an accounting for what we did with the gifts He gave us.  It is up to us to draw near to God. It is up to us to humble ourselves. Too often we behave as if humility were an option, rather than a quality of absolute necessity which we are responsible for cultivating in ourselves. We sometimes behave as if humility is something the Lord is supposed to give us, and it's His fault if we don't have it. If you check a Bible concordance, however, you'll see that the word "humble" in Scripture is surrounded by references to the humbling of oneself. God is either remarking on someone who humbled himself, or is telling people to humble themselves. If you're waiting for God to humble you, you're soon likely to find yourself being disciplined. It's hoped you'll then realize you were provoking God by your unwillingness to humble yourself.
     I think sometimes we're reluctant to acknowledge how much we're supposed to be participating in our character development. We have to choose to die to ourselves and yield to Jesus. Remember that Jesus said that if anyone would follow Him, he must engage in self-denial – not the most popular practice in the U.S., is it? God's ways are not our ways.  "Make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love." (2 Peter 1:5-7)  I once heard Derek Prince refer to these as the steps to maturity, and he remarked that in his many years of ministry it did not surprise him that brotherly kindness and love were at the end of the progression. He had experienced that Christians do not always persevere in their maturity, and that we often fail to live by the Spirit and bear His fruit.
     Are you "making every effort"? Do you know how? We must engage in confession and repentance regularly. Remember we are repenting to Him who is love, as loving as the father of the prodigal. I have heard too many Christians refer to acts of the sinful nature as if they were personality traits, rather than things to repent of.  "That's just my personality, I can't help it, that's just who I am." But who are you in Christ?  "Since we walk by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit." (Galatians 5:25)  Are you willing to walk in step with God, and acknowledge your sinful nature apart from your personality? You don't repent of your personality; you repent of your sinful behavior. Can you tell them apart? Many Christians are fascinated by personality tests, and we need to be discerning in this. I have had Christians enthusiastically show me tests which state that behaviors listed in Galatians 5:19-21 as sin are merely aspects of their personality, or "shadow side."
Because of what Jesus has done, we should make every effort to die to ourselves and commit to following Him in the steps to maturity. It's part of working out our salvation with fear and trembling. If we hold our sinful behavior dear and declare it an essential part of our identity and personality, we deceive ourselves and will justify our sins instead of confess them.
     Satan sometimes has a hand in our deception, as he's fond of lying about a sinful tendency that's been there so long it does feel like a part of us. Don't let him deceive you with his lies. For instance, if you have always attempted to control through intimidation and anger, this is something to renounce--not something to embrace as your personality. Woe to us and the people around us when we cooperate with evil. We can renounce our sinful behavior and our giving a foothold to Satan, even if the behavior has plagued us for decades. Jesus declared himself to be "the Truth," and the truth shall set us free.  Are we willing to call acts of the sinful nature for what they are?  Paul told the Galatians the acts of the sinful nature were "obvious," but they're not so obvious when we make excuses and justifications and allow ourselves to be deceived.
     Reading through the acts of the sinful nature in Galatians 5 can be helpful, but it is also helpful to read through the description of what love is not in 1 Corinthians 13. "It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth." Love is the goal of our instruction. It is the pinnacle of maturity in Christ. When we fail, we must be willing to humble ourselves and be willing to repent.  When we refuse, our hearts harden by sin's deceitfulness, and the people around us can perceive the bad fruit.  We might continue to minister in Christ's name, but our character will not reflect His own and we might be deceived into thinking God's refusal to revoke our gift implies His tacit approval of all our conduct. Do not be deceived! As I once heard it said, "Your gift does not mean you're special, it means you have a special God." We are special in that we are loved beyond comprehension, but we must remember that gifts are not given according to merit. We should remember that reward is granted at the end when we give account for what we did with the gifts. The gifts are not the reward. They are given for the body of Christ.
     Jonah was gifted by God to be a prophet. However, he didn't want to reflect God's character to the Ninevites. He wasn't concerned with them, and he didn't want to see them repent.  He went and gave them the message after spending some remarkably uncomfortable time in a whale, but his heart still wasn't right. The Lord caused the vine to grow over him as a living lesson, and He tried to reason with Jonah to convince him to have a heart of compassion toward those mired in sin. The Lord used Jonah prophetically in spite of his hard heart, but I'm not sure I would have wanted to be a Ninevite seeking intercession from Jonah. When the Lord desires to use us to minister to someone, it's vitally important that we're willing to reflect His character. We must be sober about our potential for hard-heartedness even amidst gifting in ministry. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:17, "If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me." 
Jesus said, "So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should only say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'" (Luke 17:10)  And in Matthew 23:8-12 he said, "But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Messiah.  The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." Let he who boasts, boast in the Lord! He is the Great Physician, and we are merely serving Him and those around us. Should we not make every effort to do our duty in step with His Spirit?
     If we return to the passage concerning the steps to maturity, we will see that Peter goes on to say, "For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins."  (2 Peter 1:8-9)
There is nothing quite like the unpleasantness of being ministered to by a Christian who is spiritually nearsighted and blind. Are you hardened by sin's deceitfulness? Cry out to God for help.  It is good for us to be desperate when it is appropriate.  Remember the story of the afflicted boy whose father asked Jesus for help with his unbelief? Some translations say the boy "shrieked" in his affliction and that the father "exclaimed" or "cried out" for help. In fact, the two verbs are identical in the original Greek. The boy shrieked, and the father shrieked.  The father was in desperation for help with his unbelief.  Are you equally desperate? Belief goes beyond intellectual agreement with the facts of the creeds. After all, demons believe the facts about Jesus.  Our belief must go beyond the facts; it must include a response of trust and submission to Jesus' lordship over our lives.
     Let’s consider these words from James: "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does." Let’s make every effort to mature in Christ.