Humbled by God's Love

I admit that I had a hard time getting my head around "self-control" as a fruit of the Spirit... Why wasn't it called "Spirit-control" anyway, if it was from the Holy Spirit? Then there was "Deception"... Was that really my problem? Do I tell lies? Maybe it is self-deception?

Christian Schwarz's definition talks about "Disciplined Love", "consistency" and "having power over yourself". His summary definition: "Self-control means sobriety and moderation in all areas of life. It's always targeted at achieving a specific goal". I gather the goal is to "serve other people better".

It is in the red (Truth) section, so relates to steadfastness and reliability. 

Now I don't know about you but to me this seemed just as fuzzy as some of the definitions of love that the book rails against. What did all this have to do with love?

It all looked too hard until last Sabbath afternoon when I decided to open the 3 Colors of Love book after several months. It opened to page 60, "1 Corinthians 13 and the spiritual color wheel" (wheel is the picture above).

Christian states in the first sentence that "Paul made it crystal clear... that even the most committed life is worth nothing without the fruit of the Spirit". I summarised it as: If my motive is not Love, any spiritual accomplishment is nothing. 

Then to test how strongly my life is driven by love, I took Christian's challenge of making my own personal version of 1 Corinthians 13:1.

So I sat down and wrote out a list of all the dreams and hopes I have, all the plans and all the projects that I'm working on. Then to each one I added a kicker, like Paul did.

It looked like this, in the only example I'm willing to share:

If I through NCD, helped Toronto church become so strong and healthy that we had have multiple sermons and plant another church to fit everyone in, if I'm not motivated by love for the church members and love for the lost, then it is worthless, pointless egomania.

And so on through all my dreams (there are four other big ones).

It was a God-moment. I sat back in my seat at the realisation of my great lack of love, my lostness and my total inability to do anything about it all.

I saw that all my busy-ness was a cover for my problems. I'm doing all these things for myself. I saw the depth of my sin and knew I was in a deep hole.

Suddenly my dreams looked unattractive and, to tell the truth, I just didn't want them any more. 

That probably sounds dramatic but that was the way it happened.

Suddenly I'm praying earnestly for God's love, because I just don't have it. I want to love Him with all my heart and soul. And I want to love people too.

The next morning I prayed earnestly before my Bible reading and God came through. My OT chapters included Deuteronomy 13:3-5,9. 

Wow did that hit home! My "dreams" were a test of my love for God and I had to be the first to strike the first blow.

Now I'm memorising Deut. 13:4 because, like all the commandments, it is a promise that I will be able to follow God and fear Him etc. because He has the power to do it. Now this is my aim, not all the other stuff.

I want to find out exactly what Self-control is and stop the deception. Time to start letting the Spirit love through me.

3 Colors of Love

Now it is time to get personal...
NCD provides tools for assessing and improving the health of the church but it also has tools for looking at our personal spiritual health and one of the best is in Christian Schwarz's book, "The 3 Colors of Love", with the Fruit of the Spirit Test.

The book's basic premise is that "the" fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 is love. The other eight "fruit" mentioned are parts of love. Like the NCD survey, the Fruit of the Spirit Test finds the "minimum factor", the area in my life where I am blocking the Holy Spirit's work, i.e. the way I am most unloving.

And that brings me to the second premise of the book; the biggest problem thwarting God's blessing in both the church and in my life, is lack of love. So by letting the Spirit flower and fruit in the particular part of "love" that I lack, I will become more healthy spiritually (and so will my church).

I'm not going into detail but I want to share my Fruit of the Spirit Test results then report how I'm going at letting the Spirit work.

I did the test on December 15, 2012 (I'll tell you in the next post, why I put off working on it).

I am 55 years of age, male, a Seventh-day Adventist Australian.

Fruit of the Spirit Profile
(the higher the value, the better)
   Name of the fruit, Profile Value
1. Gentleness 104
2. Patience       103
3. Peace           99
4. Goodness       96
5. Kindness        96
6. Faithfulness 82
7. Joy              82
8. Self-control 79


Color Area Profile
Justice (Green)         267.2
Truth (Red) 221.8
Grace (Blue) 261.6

To sum up:
My minimum love value is Self-control.
My weakest area of love is Truth.
So these are the areas to "work on" so I can "grow in love".

Some reflections:
All the scores down to Kindness are grouped around average, 100, then the dropoff to around 80, which is the bottom 2.5%. Pretty dramatic!
Self-control, joy and faithfulness make up most of the Truth area. So no wonder it is lowest.
I neglect Truth so have a tendency to Deception. This is where I am most unloving.
I lack the primary virtue of Trustworthiness
By overemphasising Justice and Grace I have become Anarchic and Hypocritical.

Pray for the Spirit

Last time we learned that, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, the followers of Christ first step was to be always praising and blessing God.

Apparently, from Scripture, they only took one other step! Luke continues his story in Acts 1 where Jesus explains more fully that the "promise of the Father" is the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5,8). Then, after Jesus' ascension, Luke states that "All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer"(Acts 1:14). The rest of the chapter is an example of how they prayed for a practical ministry problem, and God led to its resolution.

Prayer and praise are the only things we know, for sure, that Christ's followers were doing as "they were all together in one place" (Acts 2:1) on the day of Pentecost.

But what does prayer have to do with my assertion that Christian Contentment is the first step to receiving the Holy Spirit fully?

Jeremiah Burroughs believes that Christian Contentment "is opposed to murmuring and repining at the hand of God, as the discontented Israelites often did. If we cannot bear this either in our children or servants, much less can God bear it in us." Then after exclaiming, "What evil God sees in the vexing and fretting of my heart, and murmuring and repining of my spirit!" he goes on to detail "The Evils of a Murmuring Spirit":

The sixth evil in a murmuring spirit is, by murmuring you undo your prayers, for it is exceedingly contrary to the prayer that you make to God. When you come to pray to God, you acknowledge his sovereignty over you, you come there to profess yourselves to be at God's disposal. What do you pray for, unless you acknowledge that you are at his disposal? Unless you will stand, as it were, at his disposal never come to petition him. If you will come to petition him and yet will be your own carver you go contrary to your prayers, to come as if you would beg your bread at your Father's gates every day, and yet you must do what you list: this is the undoing of the prayers of a Christian.

The Father answered the disciple's prayer for the Holy Spirit at Pentecost because they were submitted to Him. Their contentment-based prayer and praise led them into full dependence on that great effective structure that brings spiritual life to Christ's church.

Do you see how contentment fits with the quote that started this section?

He who loves Christ the most will do the greatest amount of good. There is no limit to the usefulness of one who, by putting self aside, makes room for the working of the Holy Spirit upon his heart, and lives a life wholly consecrated to God. If men will endure the necessary discipline, without complaining or fainting by the way, God will teach them hour by hour, and day by day. He longs to reveal His grace. If His people will remove the obstructions, He will pour forth the waters of salvation in abundant streams through the human channels. If men in humble life were encouraged to do all the good they could do, if restraining hands were not laid upon them to repress their zeal, there would be a hundred workers for Christ where now there is one. - The Desire of Ages pp 250,251

My question is; What structures do we have at Toronto that help us "learn to be content", content in prayer, content in praise? Only if we let God teach us those first steps, God can answer our prayers and the Holy Spirit's power will light up Toronto church and our neighborhood.

Better than Heaven

The foolish virgins were not foolish because they were waiting, they were foolish because they were content with "enough already" and didn't take the steps they could while they were waiting.

Are you waiting for more of the Holy Spirit? The wise girls took steps to "learn" how to be "more content". They knew that in Christ's kingdom, the person who has the most gets even more Luke 8:18. We'll join them in stepping onto the bridge to more of the Spirit.

Let's look at the steps that disciples took up to Pentecost, the prototype of being filled with the Spirit.

Please read Luke 24:45-53.

To sum up Jesus says, "Your job is proclaim Me all over the world (including Toronto), but before you start you need to change your clothes. Be clothed with power (and the Holy Spirit)."

Then He was carried to heaven. They were carried away too, with joy and praise.

So what steps did they take while waiting to be filled with the Holy Spirit: Continually praising God. Thats it (at least here in Luke, they did do something else, but we'll look at that next week). The formula is simple; if you want the power of the Spirit, praise God.

Does contentment have anything to do with praising God?

Jeremiah Burroughs says, "a contented heart is always praising and blessing God."
Let's put it in context:

What is Heaven, but the rest and quiet of a man's spirit; that is the special thing that makes the life of Heaven, there is rest and joy, and satisfaction in God. So it is in a contented spirit: there is rest and joy and satisfaction in God. In Heaven there is singing praises to God; a contented heart is always praising and blessing God. You have Heaven while you are on earth when you have a contented spirit; yea, in some regards it is better than Heaven.

How is that, you will say? There is a kind of honor that God has in it, and an excellence that he does not have in Heaven, and it is this:

In Heaven there is no overcoming of temptations. They are not put to any trials by afflictions. In Heaven they have exercise of grace, but they have nothing but encouragement to it, and indeed the grace of those who are there is perfect, and in that they excel us. But there is nothing to cross their grace, they have no trials at all to tempt them to do contrary; whereas for a man or woman to be in the midst of afflictions, temptations and troubles, and yet to have grace exercised, and to be satisfied in God and Christ and in the Word and promises in the midst of all they suffer: this may seem to be an honor that God receives from us, that he does not have from the angels and saints in Heaven.

Is it so much for one who is in Heaven, who has nothing but good from God, has nothing to try him, no temptations; is it so much for such a one to be praising and blessing God, as for the poor soul who is in the midst of trials and temptations and afflictions and troubles? For this soul to go on praying, and blessing, and serving God, I say, is an excellence that you do not find in Heaven, and God will not have this kind of glory from you in Heaven.

If we want more of the Holy Spirit, if we want to stand firmly on God's Effective Structures, we must praise God. By being content in Christ, we are always praising and blessing God, better than we will in heaven.

Photo Source

Enough Already!

How do we cross the bridge from self-sufficiency to dependence on God's Holy Spirit? How do we put "self aside (and make) room for the working of the Holy Spirit"?

The next few posts will look at the first steps onto the bridges we need to cross to continue our journey to church health, which in our case means, a church with Effective Structures.

These first steps are decisions we make individually, as well as a church. These decisions determine whether we stay in our rickety, ineffectiveness structures or travel on the effective, mighty structures set up by God Himself.

The first decision connects us to the Holy Spirit.

A contented heart is what allows the Holy Spirit to be effective in our lives. Contentment is, I believe, that connection.

Over the summer holiday, I read the old Puritan Classic, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, the writer, Jeremiah Burroughs says "Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal in every condition."

Our initial decision to find contentment ONLY in God, in every condition, is just the beginning; we will learn to be more and more content. Even the Apostle Paul, wasn't naturally content; he had to learn to be content (Philippians 4:11-13), and Christ through His Spirit, will teach us the same lesson. 

Contentment in God, prepares us for even more blessings and more of the Spirit. As self-sufficiency is pushed aside, the Spirit works more strongly in our lives. Burroughs calls contentment "a compound of grace" because almost all the fruit of the Spirit are "compounded in it".

Still, the first lesson, and maybe the hardest, is to decide to start being content just where we are right now. We need to realise that, if we have asked for the Holy Spirit, then we already "have" as much of the Spirit as God can safely give us.

So how much of the Spirit and of Jesus do we have? The Hebrews are told in 13:5,6, "...be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,
“The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear;
what can man do to me?”

What a reason to be content. We indeed have "enough already!"

Photo source: Ian Waldie/Getty Images

The Holy Spirit

The third great "Effective Structure", that God set up to restore this earth, is the Holy Spirit. It is God's way of connecting the first structure, the Word made flesh (Jesus), to the second structure, His church. The spirit applies the vast and precious blessings of Christ to our individual and church life.

In our little metaphor, if the church is the lamp and the Word made flesh is the oil in the lamp, then the Holy Spirit is the lighted wick. (see the picture above)

Our God is a consuming fire (Heb 12:29) and Jesus is the true light, which gives light to everyone (John 1:9), so when the Holy Spirit effectively links the church to Christ, we become the light of the world (Matt 5:14).

A healthy church glows brightly with the power and presence of Christ through His Holy Spirit. Natural Church Development simply measures the strength of the church's connection to Jesus though the Holy Spirit. The minimum factor is the area of church life where the Spirit is given the least access.

So, unlike the first Effective Structure where God acted unilaterally, without input from us, except our great need, the third structure involves not just God's promise and gift (Luke 24:49, Acts 1:4, 2:33) but our reception of it. It is possible to quench the Spirit (1 Thess 5:19).

The Father longs to give us the Holy Spirit (Luke 11:11-13) but the third great Structure is Effective only when we remove the obstructions, when we love Christ and allow the Spirit to work.

He who loves Christ the most will do the greatest amount of good. There is no limit to the usefulness of one who, by putting self aside, makes room for the working of the Holy Spirit upon his heart, and lives a life wholly consecrated to God. If men will endure the necessary discipline, without complaining or fainting by the way, God will teach them hour by hour, and day by day. He longs to reveal His grace. If His people will remove the obstructions, He will pour forth the waters of salvation in abundant streams through the human channels. If men in humble life were encouraged to do all the good they could do, if restraining hands were not laid upon them to repress their zeal, there would be a hundred workers for Christ where now there is one. - The Desire of Ages pp 250,251

"Without complaining"... The foolish young women (unhealthy churches) made the complaint "Give us some of your oil, our lamps are going out." But the wise answered, saying, "Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves."(Matt 25:8,9)

To be ready for God's kingdom, to be a healthy Christian, and a healthy church, we must, individually, have "enough" of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

Next week's Blessings is entitled "Enough Already!".

The Church

You and me, together, at Toronto church. That's the second Effective Structure God established to restore this lost world. Pretty amazing isn't it!

When Jesus commissioned His church (remember that is you and me) He gave us all the authority we need to go all over the world (including Toronto) making disciples, baptising and teaching (Matthew 28:18-20). He expects us to do the job so well that it will glorify the Father... forever (Ephesians 3:20,21)!

To do such a big job and make Jesus really happy, each person at Toronto has to have "be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind." being helpful and humble.(Philippians 2:2,3). How is that achieved? By "having this mind among (us), which is yours in Christ Jesus." (Phil 2:5).

The first paragraph of Mrs White's "The Acts of the Apostles", from the chapter entitled "God's Purpose for His Church", is:

The church is God's appointed agency for the salvation of men. It was organized for service, and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world. From the beginning it has been God's plan that through His church shall be reflected to the world His fullness and His sufficiency. The members of the church, those whom He has called out of darkness into His marvelous light, are to show forth His glory. The church is the repository of the riches of the grace of Christ; and through the church will eventually be made manifest, even to "the principalities and powers in heavenly places," the final and full display of the love of God. Ephesians 3:10.

So there it is... our little church, is the second Effective Principle God has set up to carry the gospel to Toronto.

If we return to the analogy, from last time, of Jesus, the Word made flesh, being the oil in the lamp, then the church is the actual lamp itself, the "jars of clay", "earthen vessels" that the power of God, not ours, is displayed. (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Next time we look at the third structure.