Morning.
This morning, let’s open up to a few passages and read them before we start.
Beginning with Philippians 1:6:
Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Then, Ephesians 2:10:
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Then, Isaiah 43:1:
But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name;
You are Mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,
Nor shall the flame scorch you.
For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I gave Egypt for your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in your place.
Since you were precious in My sight,
You have been honored, and I have loved you;
Therefore I will give men for you,
And people for your life.
Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your descendants from the east,
And gather you from the west;
I will say to the north, “Give them up!”
And to the south, “Do not keep them back!”
Bring My sons from afar,
And My daughters from the ends of the earth—
Everyone who is called by My name,
Whom I have created for My glory;
I have formed him, yes, I have made him.
Then, Psalm 16:1:
Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.
And verse 6:
The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places;
Yes, I have a good inheritance.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we do thank You this morning for the knowledge of Your presence with us. Just as we’ve worshiped this morning and been around You, to know that You have made a way for us into Your presence—we thank You. And we have, Lord, rejoiced in Your presence this morning. We thank You for our redemption.
Now we do pray, Lord, that as we come to Your Word, this would not just be things that are somewhere in my brain, but that it would be the Word of God to us today. It would be from Your very heart to us, to encourage us in the places where we are, to give us a hope, Lord—a hope that finds its basis and rest in You.
Lord, we need Your Holy Spirit to do this. We commit this time and Your Word back to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I told you that the next couple of times I would be up here, I would be talking out of Philippians. Again, I just want to let you know that I’m not giving some verse-by-verse exposition, because I am not that good.
But there are things that have touched my heart in reading these things over the summer—things the Lord has touched me with—and I feel that these are the things the Lord would have me share.
The last time I was sharing out of Philippians, we spoke of it as being a very personal letter—a very personal letter of Paul. It was not really written for doctrine’s sake, but out of love to these brothers and sisters from Philippi.
Last time, we talked about rejoicing. One of the themes in this book is rejoicing: rejoicing in the Lord for what He has done, for what He is about to do, for His love for us, for His affection for us, and that He knows what He is doing.
That sets us on good ground, because it puts us in a place where we are looking to the Lord for what He has promised for us.
Today, I want to be a little more practical. I always hate coming to the practical part because I feel like I’m wearing a little hammer here. It always feels to me, when I come to practical parts, like I’m a big hammer—and that’s not what I want to be.
But it’s the Word, and we’ve got to look at the Word as it is for us.
I used this verse at the beginning of Philippians: “Being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Last time, we talked about that as something we can set our hope in, something we can rejoice in, because the Lord is going to carry that through.
But we also looked at another verse. I touched on it a little bit, and I said I would return to it: Philippians 2:12-13, where it talks about working out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
We have to find that God is not going to be a genie for us, all right? It’s not proof, and all of a sudden things are like they’re supposed to be. That’s not the way the Lord works.
One of the verses that we read in Ephesians says that we are His workmanship. In being His workmanship, and in these verses in Philippians—which we’ll get to a little later on today—we have to find that we are in a place where we must cooperate with the working of God.
What He is doing, and what He is planning to do in our lives, needs our cooperation. He will not do it without our being willing to have it done and without our cooperating in what He is doing in our lives.
So this morning, what we want to look at is this: if the Lord is going to complete these things—the good work He has begun—then what is my role in His work?
We get into the place where we think, “We’re saved by grace, and then He’s going to lay a trip on us. This is going to be some works thing. I’m not going to do that.” But I want to be true to the Word of God.
First of all, let’s look at what our role is. I am only going to share two things—two things as far as our role in the work of God, in the work that God is doing in us.
First, let’s read Philippians 2, beginning in verse 5. These are very familiar verses, and I do not want us to be lost because we are familiar with them. So let’s look at them.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,
Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,
But made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
That is where I am going to stop. What is our role? Well, the first thing our role is, is to have a mindset.
Last time, we talked about having a mindset. We spoke of needing to look at the finished work. We talked about the finished work of Christ not just being what was done on the cross—not saying that it ends with the cross—but the finished work includes our being glorified in Christ.
We need to have our eyes fixed on that, to see what the Lord is after, so that we do have a hope and can rejoice in it. We say, “This is what the Lord is after. This is what the Lord is going for in my life and for the church.”
That is what He is after: the new man, the bride.
But we also have to have this mindset: as the Lord begins to work in our lives, the things He is going to do to make us into that new man—that man after Christ, that humanity after Christ—we have to submit to that working.
That is tantamount to the whole thing. It is having a mindset that says, “I am submitting myself to God so that He can work those things which He has promised to do in my life.”
We want to submit ourselves to God. By that, we mean we want to submit ourselves to the rule of God in our lives, in order that His purposes for our lives might be fulfilled.
There are things that are going to happen in our lives. We talked last time about God’s tools. God uses circumstances, God uses other people, and God uses your jobs and things like that as His tools. But the thing is, are you pliable?
Are you one who is able to submit and say, “Okay, I am going to do it”?
I loved it when Kenny was talking about mercy and how we have this mindset of God. In California, there was an extermination company called Western Extermination. You had this man with sunglasses and a big old top hat, pointing at a little bug. The little varmint was looking up at him, and right behind him was this big old hammer.
I think we have this idea that, when we think of suffering, God is out to just mash us.
I remember Brother Stephen sharing messages for a couple of years, talking about the candlestick as a beaten work. You can look at that being a beaten work and think, “Oh man, the hammer is coming again. The hammer is coming again. The hammer is coming again.” Pretty soon, you get gun-shy about the Lord working in your life.
But that is not what this is all about.
Yes, there may be suffering involved in your life. But the big thing is not what is present; it is what comes afterward.
I do not mean to belittle anybody who is suffering under the workmanship of the Lord in their lives. I am not out to do that. But I am out to say this: we need to have a mindset where we submit ourselves to His working.
I want to give a couple of examples of what this type of mindset in action looks like. There are three Old Testament people I want to share a little bit about: Joseph, David, and Daniel.
Consider Joseph. Joseph had a dream, and in his dream he knew that the Lord had a purpose for him. He knew that the Lord was saying, “I am going to make you a ruler, so that your mom and dad and your brothers are all going to be bowing down to you.”
Joseph took that to heart. He shared it with everybody. Of course, everybody did not like him for it. At seventeen, if you get that kind of dream—that kind of sense that this is what the Lord is going to do with you—I do not know how you might take that.
If it was me, I know I would be way up here saying, “Hey, you guys are going to be under me.” But then the Lord allowed his brothers to sell him into captivity.
Joseph was thirteen years in captivity before he came to be ruler in Egypt. How do you make it through those thirteen years? You ever think about that?
I know for myself, if I had been thrown in the pit, crying all day and night for my brothers to let me out, I am sure I would have been praying and calling on the Lord: “Lord, come on. Get me out of here. Do not let them sell me.”
But He let them sell him. He did not stop them. Joseph went into captivity, and he became a slave. He had to be a slave.
I know it says that the Lord blessed him. But go on the camel trip with him, where he was not doing anything for Potiphar. He was just with a bunch of Midianites who were trading. Do you think he was treated in the best way? No, he was just another slave.
What was his mindset? I know what it was at first, because it is natural: “Get me out of here. Just get me out, Lord. Lord, whatever You do, get me out. I do not care—send robbers or anything. Get me out. Get me back to my dad.”
But I think it is interesting: if you read the story about Joseph in the Old Testament, you find that in the end he comes out with the saying, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” Isn’t that an amazing thing? How did he ever come to that?
I think that the promise of God to him was so real that he could not see God taking it away from him. No matter what happened to him, God was not going to abandon him. God was going to fulfill what He had promised.
Joseph took that and held on to it. I believe Psalm 105 talks about how the Word of God tested him. The promise of God tests us. Do we believe it?
Can we, when we are under the knife, under the hammer of beaten work, submit to it and come out?
I did not say that Joseph was unscarred, but I will say this: Joseph came out with more than what he gave up.
Not only was he the ruler of Egypt, but when his brothers came back to him, there were a couple of times when he said, even with tears, “Don’t you understand that I do not hold anything against you?”
Isn’t that an amazing statement? When God does His work, it is not just to bring you to a place of rulership; it is to build a character in you. Joseph could not have been that ruler in Egypt had God not built character into him.
Joseph had to submit. He submitted because he knew the promise. But in that submission, the Lord was able to work something of His own nature into Joseph.
It is funny—he was so opposite of his father. His father, when the circumstances were against him, would say, “All these things are against me.” I think that is our cry a lot of the time when the Lord starts using circumstances to work on us.
We say, “All these things are against me.” Yet Joseph had his turn: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”
David—we know he was a man after God’s own heart. As a young man, probably a teenager, he was anointed king of Israel. Samuel took him out, anointed him, and said, “You are the king.”
Then David went back out to the flock. Later, he was brought into the palace, and things looked cool. “They took me from the sheep coat. I get to play my harp. I get to sing for the king. I have made best buddies with Jonathan. Hey, what else could you ask for?”
Then he killed Goliath. Goliath was a pretty big guy. You think I am big—Goliath was about a foot and a half taller, probably about two hundred pounds heavier. David takes him, chops off his head, and things are really great. I mean, it could not get any better than this—not that he chopped off his head, okay?
Then they began to sing, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” All of a sudden, things changed.
The rest of David’s youth, until he was about forty years old, he was running around. The king of Israel was living in caves. What an amazing thing.
You have this guy who is king, and he will not take it into his own hands to make himself king. That in itself is an amazing statement, because we, of all people, want to take things into our own hands.
Remember last week I was sharing about being in that one school where I taught, saying, “Lord, I want to get out of this.” I had a brother who taught the morning session with me, and he said, “Well, maybe the Lord has something in this.” I thought, “No, it cannot be.” But we prayed, and sure enough, we stayed.
You do not take it into your own hands and leave. When you leave while the Lord is doing something, you know what is going to have to happen? It is going to have to start all over again.
David went through the caves and lived there. He submitted to it and waited until he was made king. He waited until the Lord took care of what needed to be taken care of—the death of Saul—and then brought him into his kingdom.
I think about a year ago I spoke on fellowship. David was made king at Hebron, which is fellowship. It came out of fellowship with the Lord. One of the ways we share with the Lord is through His sufferings.
David suffered, and yet out of that whole process, the character of the king was born. He was a shepherd, but he had to be a king too. A kingly character was brought about in him.
David was like Joseph in this way: they both had seen and knew what the Lord had planned for them.
Daniel is different. I really want to address Daniel, like Dana did with the younger Christians. Some of us have seen and say, “Yeah, I know what the Lord is doing. He is going to make us like Him,” or we have a vocation where we know what the Lord is using us for.
But when Daniel was taken into captivity, he had no idea. The Lord did not give him dreams saying, “Daniel, I am going to make you a great prophet while you are there.” He just got ripped from his home and put in Babylon, the seat of idolatry in that place.
What was it that kept Daniel? Daniel 1 says that he purposed in his heart not to defile himself with the king’s food.
Now, he could have done it this way: “You guys, I am not eating anything here, and you cannot make me.” You know what would have happened to him? That would have been the end of Daniel.
But in purposing in his heart—the thing is, when you purpose in your heart that you want to go after the Lord, the Lord makes the way.
Daniel went to the head eunuch and said, “Look, it is against our religion to eat this food. We cannot eat it.” Even though the man said, “This could be my head,” Daniel found favor with him. The man said, “Okay, look, I will give you ten days.”
Daniel did not kick against the goads. David did not kick against the goads. Joseph did not kick against the goads. They all submitted to this. They all submitted to the work the Lord had for them and let the Lord work in them.
Again, these things took years. I want us to get out of the idea that there are instant potatoes in the kingdom of God. There is no Minute Rice. There is no microwave popcorn.
It takes time, because character is being built. Something is happening. The Lord is doing something. The Lord is not wearing a watch.
The Lord does not have a quote-unquote deadline: “Well, it has got to be done by this time, or else I am throwing the whole thing out.” He does not do that. He looks at it, takes it, and says, “It is not done yet. It needs some more work.”
In looking at this, I do not want you to think that all this is, “Oh, these things are going to happen to me.” You get things out of it for yourself and for others.
For example, what did Joseph get from this? First of all, all three of these people learned that God is faithful. That is the number one thing you should understand when you are going through trials and through the work of the Lord in your life: God is faithful.
He who called you into fellowship with His Son is faithful.
What did Joseph get? Joseph got to see something about God that Jacob never saw. He got to see that God loves the world.
Who was affected by the famine? Everybody. Joseph said, “Let’s store it so that everybody can come.” He saw that God had showed Pharaoh these things because of what He was going to do for the world. He wanted to save.
Part of the character of God is the saving of other souls—that we are not just in it for ourselves.
I just want to say that when we are focused on ourselves, how much harder it is for the Lord to work. But when we get our eyes away from ourselves and see what God is doing, it takes away some of the stiffness in us.
That is when submission comes. We start to see, “Okay, God knows what He is doing. I can relax.”
I wish I had that same sense when I went to the dentist. I think some of us, when we go through these things, are like that in the dentist’s chair. I come out of the dentist and it takes me about a minute before I can move my hand, because you are thinking, “This guy is out to get me.” You have watched Marathon Man, so do not watch that before going to the dentist.
What did David get? David was out in the caves all the time. You know what he found out? He found out that he wanted to live in a house.
When he built his own house, he looked out and said, “God is out there in a tent, just like I was out in the caves. God wants to live in a house.”
The Lord showed him that. Nobody told him that. He got it from the Lord: “Lord, I want to build You a house.”
Daniel lived for a long time. He outlived kings. I believe Daniel found out that God is eternal. The kingdoms of this world are temporal. The things that happen around here are temporal, but God is eternal, and the work He is doing is eternal.
I want to use a couple of other examples. I know these are not biblical, so bear with me. One is not even real spiritual.
When God is trying to do something for us, we think, “What are You doing, God?” A lot of times, He just wants to show us something of Himself, so that the next time it comes around, we just trust Him.
I want to give two examples. They both come out of my life.
I was telling you last time about how I was in a school and I hated it. I had to be talked into submitting to it. This other brother was such a good brother, and he was so gentle with me. Here I was, thirty-five, and I was crying. I wanted to get out—literally crying. Okay, a big guy like me.
Just to let you know what I got out of this job: when I said, “Okay, Lord, if You have something in this, You have Your way,” I got to wind up sharing with these kids. But let me tell you something really personal that happened.
When I took this job, this had to be the hardest year of my life. This was 1989. I had just quit the Christian school because we were not making enough money. Barb was pregnant with Jamie. We already had one child, and Jamie was due in April. Now I was out of a job, we were living at my in-laws’, and I got this crummy job.
I did a lot of complaining. They would not even let you have forty hours; otherwise, they had to give you a full contract. So I could only work thirty-nine and a half hours. But I got covered with insurance.
I went to the insurance company and said, “Are you going to cover my wife?” They asked what was the matter with her. I said, “She is pregnant.” The insurance company said, “Yeah, we will take the pre-existing condition.”
At that time, I did not know anything about insurance. I was very naive. I thought, “Okay, that is cool.”
Then we had complications. Jamie was born a little over a month early.
She was born on the Sunday morning that started Easter break, so I had a week off. It was a horrible situation. Barb was bleeding internally. We had to go to the hospital.
When we got there, they said, “Sorry, insurance says you cannot go to this hospital.” I thought, “What kind of thing is this?” So they put her in the ambulance and took us to the hospital that the insurance covered, which happened to be Children’s Hospital of Orange County—the number-one hospital in Orange County.
Jamie was internally bleeding, and we never knew why. We got to the hospital at about two o’clock in the morning, and the top neonatal doctor just happened to be there. The top anesthesiologist was there as well.
They had to do an emergency C-section. They had to breathe for her for a little while, and then she was in intensive-care nursery for about eight days.
She had tubes coming in and out of her. Just for the bed in the room, it was about ten thousand dollars a day. Then we had another four weeks where she had to be in a special-care nursery. We did not get her home until a little over a month later.
It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was real interesting to get the bill, because I had never seen numbers that big before.
But then, at the bottom, it said, “Patient’s responsibility: zero.”
I think I learned more about how the Lord cares for you from that experience: what I could not see, He knew, and He took care of it.
What a big baby I was. I look back and think, “What a big baby.” But the Lord was not offended with me. He said, “You did not know. You just had to trust Me. So the next time you do not know, just trust Me.”
Another little thing I would like to share is about my older brother, Mike. Most people think I am the older brother because I talk more, but Mike is my older brother. He is a big guy like me, a little stronger than I am.
There was a time in his life when we were both in college, going to a community college. He was taking police science, but he was very unhappy because he did not think that was the way for him to go.
My dad had been saying, “Mike, if you want, I will get you a job as a carpenter.”
We were not at a great place with our dad during those times. It was the rebellious late sixties and early seventies. My dad used to come in and wake us up on Saturdays by grabbing us in the hamstring, in the back of the leg. That was his way of getting us up. My brother hated him. He was ready to fight.
Finally, my dad said, “Look, I can open the door for you. I have this for you. I have a job for you. If you want it, take it.”
Finally, my brother submitted and said, “Okay, Dad.”
There is one thing I am really envious of my brother for. I had kind of overshadowed him because I played basketball and did all those things, but I am envious of him because he started that job.
His whole relationship with my dad changed. It was amazing. He was brought into a kind of fellowship with my dad that I did not have, and it changed him completely.
He would go and talk to my dad about things—not spiritual things, just about being a carpenter and stuff like that. He learned from him and began to take on the values for work that my dad had. It just transformed him.
I remember when my father died, my brother slipped away and just wept because he missed him. He had lost something that he had found very dear.
It is the same way with us. When we submit to what the Lord has for us, we find there is a fellowship there that can be gotten no other way.
You cannot read your Bible or pray and get the same thing you can when the Lord brings you through something and says, “Look, I am with you in this.” All of a sudden, you start crying out to Him, and He starts responding back to you. You find yourself being transformed, made pliable.
There is a verse that says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I did a study once on that. The word delight means to be made pliable.
Make yourself pliable to the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart because He will change your heart.
So the first thing is that we have to have a mindset, and our mindset is submission—not in a grotesque, subservient way, but a submitting that says, “Lord, You know what is best. I trust You in the work You are doing and in how You are going to do it. I just want to give myself to You for that.”
That is the type of submission we are talking about.
Secondly—and I know I am running out of time here—in Philippians 2, we read:
Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence,
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
For it is God who works in you
Both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Now, this sounds like a big works trip, does it not? “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” It sounds scary too, does it not? Like if you step out of line, you are going to get hammered.
Actually, the Greek word for “work out” is a big, long Greek word. I did not bring it because I could not pronounce it. But what it means is, do not stop halfway.
That is a neat way of looking at it, because it says God has begun something. I think that some of us think, “Well, God is going to start it, and He is going to finish it, so I just have to pull back and cruise.” That is not it. Do not leave it halfway. Do not leave things unfinished.
It says to work out with fear and trembling. This is not the fear and trembling of thinking you are going to get hammered. It is the kind of fear and trembling that says, “I really do not trust myself. God, I need You here. You have got to help me in this.”
That is the kind of fear and trembling it is. It is fear and trembling that leads you to dependence on Him, not something that gives you an untrue view of God—that He is out to hurt you. That is not it. He wants to draw you to Himself.
So it says, “Work out with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.”
I am not a great expositor, but let me give an example. The only thing I can think of is having a child. I cannot relate to that because I have never had children, but you ladies, let us see if I am right on this.
When you first conceive, does that have an effect on your body? Does it affect the way you are going to treat your body? Does it affect what you put into your body, the rest you get, and things like that?
It does, does it not?
I remember Barb, when she was pregnant with Katie. After three months, we were sleeping and she started to weep. I asked, “What is the matter?” She said, “It has been three months, and I still feel sick. They said after the first trimester I would not feel sick.” It is different for everybody, is it not?
She had gestational diabetes, so she could not eat certain things. She was not allowed to eat sweets. Some people have different needs, depending on how they sleep and all those things.
But there is a little person there. It is alive. It is the same with us, brothers and sisters: Christ is in us, much like a child is in a mother’s womb. That can have an effect on your life.
I make great chicken soup. I pride myself on my chicken soup. When we were bachelors, we would make this big pot, and it would last days. That was good because then you did not have to cook.
I remember when Barb was pregnant, I made chicken soup. She came into the house, smelled it, and said, “I have got to throw up. What is that? You have got to take it out of here.”
Seven days’ worth—I had seven days’ worth in that pot. So I took it to the manager of the apartment. Great chicken soup. I could not eat it.
Sometimes, when the Lord is in you, there are some things that are not generally bad for you, but you just cannot have those anymore. It is the Lord’s rule in your life. He is saying, “I am sorry. You just cannot have that anymore.”
There are some things He satisfies. If you take something in, you are going to hurt the life that is in you. That is a good object lesson.
Paul prays about this in Ephesians 3. Beginning in verse 14, Paul prays:
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
From whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named,
That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory,
To be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man,
That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.
The thing the Lord wants us to do is take care of this inner man. He says we have to have a mindset. The other thing is, we need to take care of this inner man. Those are our jobs in the work He is doing in us.
What do you mean, take care of the inner man? Well, if you are with child and you do not eat, what effect does that have on that child in you? He is going to be emaciated. He is not going to be healthy. He is going to lose something.
It is the same way. If we do not feed the inner man, the one who is made after God, then that inner man is not going to be strong, and the outer man is going to control you.
Remember, in Galatians it talks about the Spirit and the flesh. They are warring against each other. I will tell you: if you have two dogs, you know which dog wins? The one you feed.
If you do not feed the inner man, he will become sick and atrophy, and the Lord will allow it to happen.
It is our responsibility, brothers and sisters. Like I said, the Lord is not waving a magical wand and saying, “Bing, there, you are finished.” No, He has given us some responsibility. What do we do with it?
Then it says that Christ may dwell in you by faith. It does not mean that He may be a houseguest overnight. It means that He might live in you, having access to every part of you, every part of your life.
We just got a little dog, and we do not give her access to the whole house. You know why.
But Christ wants access to every part of you. It is up to us to allow Him to dwell in us, giving Him access. He has come to be Lord. He has not come to be a guest. He has not come to be treated as a guest.
That is one of the wonderful things about the Lord Jesus. We do not have to treat Him like a guest, because if we treated Him like a guest, we would always put on our best airs for Him.
But He wants us the way we are. “Be who you are,” the Lord says. “That is the way I like you. That is the one I bought.” Exactly. Do not put on a false air. Give Him who you are, because that is the one He is working on and forming His Son in.
When people see who you are, they see Christ in you. They are going to be amazed. They will say, “This is not this person. This has got to be someone else.” They will be right: it is Christ shining through you.
That is what the Lord is after. It is Christ dwelling in you by faith. Brothers and sisters, do you believe? Do you believe that He is in you? Do you believe that He wants to live through you?
The Christian life—and I am going to end with this, because I see kids swinging out there—is not a life of imitation. It is not that we try to be like Jesus, because none of us can be like that.
The Christian life is what Paul said in Philippians 1:21: “To me, to live is Christ.” That is the Christian life. It is Christ living in us.
If you look at the apostles, the disciples of Jesus, He once said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I distressed until it is accomplished,” because He had to deal with those twelve guys.
It just did not change them. The Lord Jesus did not change those twelve men in any way. At the very end, did not Peter deny Him? Did they not all flee? None of them were changed.
But after He went to the Father, and after the Holy Spirit came and dwelt in them, those men were not the same men. Why? Because it was no longer them; it was Christ.
Brothers and sisters, that is the same for us. It is no different. Just because they were apostles does not mean they get something that we do not get. It is for everyone.
Paul teaches to present every man perfect in Christ—every man. Even the Gentile may know the mystery: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Glory is the end. Glory is the end for us. Isn’t that wonderful? The end is not that we have this or that; the end is glory. We are completed. We are finished.
Isn’t it wonderful to know that there is a work that one day is going to be completed and done? And it is going to be Christ.
We have our personalities and stuff, but it is going to be the character of Christ in all of us.
I am looking forward to that, man. I want that, because I do not like what the Lord has to work with here. But that is okay, because He is the one who has to work with it. Praise the Lord.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, how I thank Thee that You are out to complete us. You said to us that the good work You have begun, You will finish. I thank You that it is true. That is Your heart.
I pray for us, Lord. I ask that we will have the mindset we need. I do not mean, Lord, that we just try to be submissive. I pray that somehow, in the circumstances we are in, we could even go back into our lives and look and see how You love us.
Lord, You say that husbands are to love their wives, and wives are to submit to their husbands. The husband loves first, and the wife submits. O Lord, as the church, Your bride, we are the wife. We are to submit.
O Lord, help us see Your love for us so that we will submit.
Then, Father, I pray also that You would help us in allowing You to live in us. Lord, help us to feed that inner man. Help us to let Him live in us. Help us to give Him what He needs. Help us to let You have access to our lives. Allow You to grow.
Father, show us the things that make for life, that make for the growing of this life, and then help us to do them.
Lord, You know we blow it at best. We just blow it. So we commit ourselves into Your hands, because You are able to take what we are and make us into the thing that You want: the image of Your Son.
We commit ourselves to Your hands, in Jesus’ name.