Tom’s Provocation for 2025 (Revision 1)
The plank-in-the-eye obstacle to modern Christianity is to
acknowledge God, acknowledge Jesus died for our sins, and acknowledge that God’s
own Spirit lives within us, and then live unchanged lives because we hold our
own understanding in such high esteem.
Read
2
Corinthians 2
We will take
the first part of the chapter here and the rest at the next service.
Forgiveness
for the Offender
If anyone
has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you to
some extent—not to put it too severely. The punishment inflicted on him by the
majority is sufficient. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so
that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to
reaffirm your love for him. Another reason I wrote you was to see if you would
stand the test and be obedient in everything.
Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven—if there
was anything to forgive—I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake,
in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.
OK, you
remember that guy I told you to kick to the curb? Check on him see if he has
come to his senses. It might be time for forgiveness and reconciliation. I’m
ready—and I’m the guy who told you to give him the cold shoulder—and so too
should you be ready to forgive.
Forgive.
That’s a powerful verb and we need to wield it more. Yes, sometimes we do the
cold shoulder thing in extreme cases so that someone's soul might be saved on
the Day of the Lord.
If we do it
out of selfish motivations, we are playing for the wrong team. We have fallen
for the Devil’s schemes and have taken his yoke.
We all have
enough screwball issues of our own. We don’t want to discount this forgiveness
thing. God, through Christ, has forgiven us. Let’s not heap problems on top of
what the world throws on top of people.
Forgive.
Let’s cover the
part about Satan outwitting us. In the name of Jesus, get away from me,
Satan!
That should
be our standing conversation with the devil. You’ve got nothing good for me. Go
to hell. Go directly to hell. Do not pass go and do not collect $200. Some of
you are too young for the reference.
You play
Bunco now.
In the
name of Jesus, depart! That’s all we need to say to
Satan. We don’t discuss things further with him.
But we do.
How. It’s the devil. We know it’s the devil, so how can we listen to him?
We let our
own understanding lead us into temptation and conversation with the enemy.
The military
adage is to know your enemy. It is sound advice for the warrior
of any age.
But this is
what you need to know about your enemy. Don’t talk with him. Don’t reason with
him. Don’t expound on anything.
Satan is the
Father of Lies. Don’t try to outwit him. Tell him to go away. In the name of
Jesus, go away.
If we need
to talk about something, talk to your Father in heaven.
If we need
to wrestle with some of our thoughts, do it with God’s own Spirit first. You
both live at the same address.
If we need a
sounding board, we can talk with fellow believers.
The only way
that Satan can outwit us is if we play his games.
Go to bed
angry.
Don’t
forgive.
Trust our
own understanding over what God is telling us.
Be known by
your pointing fingers instead of your love.
Do you ever
get the urge to tell someone to “Shut Up!”?
You can tell
the devil to shut up. Make sure you tell him to Shut Up in the name of Jesus,
not your own righteousness.
Tell him to
go away, then walk away from the conversation you're not going to have. Satan
is not entitled to equal time.
But, but,
but, I’ve never had a conversation with Satan in my whole life… Yes, you have. It takes place in your mind.
We have all engaged in discussions that we should never have begun.
Why do you
think Paul directs us to take every thought captive and make it obedient to
Christ?
Most of
Paul’s counsel is in the realm of forgiveness. Elsewhere, we are told not to
give the devil a foothold. The failure to forgive as God has forgiven us is an
embossed invitation for Satan to take a seat at the decision-making table of
our lives.
That dog
don’t hunt. Forgive and tell the devil to hit the road in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Read Proverbs 28
Here we are
28 chapters into the Proverbs and Proverbs 3:5-6 keeps making an appearance. The wording is a little different, but the messages are congruent.
Those who trust in themselves are fools,
but those who walk in wisdom are kept safe.
How many
times must we try to build a tower to heaven before we realize that our own
understanding will always fall short of God’s plans for us?
God’s ways are higher than our ways could ever be, but how often do we
retreat to living by our own understanding.
It’s understandable. We think we understand our own
understanding.
Let’s return
to chapter 1 briefly.
The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Fools don’t
want knowledge, wisdom, instruction, or discipline. They believe in only what their finite minds
can conceive. They trust in their own
wisdom. A fool’s wisdom should be an
oxymoron.
They do not
want to even conceive of a Being whose thoughts and ways are higher than our own. The fool wants everyone brought down to his
level. The very idea of God is repulsive
to him.
We often
want to believe in our own understanding—our own wisdom if you will, but we
recognize that God’s wisdom far exceeds what we can comprehend. The wisest thing we can do is to trust
him—completely.
We want to
believe what we understand over what God tells us is best, but we know that
to be foolish. God knows more than we
can comprehend and the wisest thing that we can do is to trust him.
When we make
a habit of trusting our own understanding over God’s, then we have become
fools. We have been given eyes to see when this happens and we who desire to be
wise, slam on the breaks as far as trusting our own understanding goes. We trust God with everything that we have.
It is an
ongoing wrestling match with our flesh.
Our own understanding always seems to be right, but we must trust that
God is always right and is always looking out for us. We must trust him.
The Spirit is willing but the flesh
is weak.
The
circumstances were different, but the struggle is the same. Our human nature naturally thinks it’s always
right. We must embrace our new
nature—the new creature that we have become in Christ Jesus. Then trusting God becomes our first nature.
Those who
trust in themselves are fools,
but those who walk in wisdom are kept safe.
How do we
trust God more? Walk in his wisdom.
Put his words into practice.
We have to walk the walk. Doing helps our believing and our trust.
The more
that we practice living God’s way, the more it moves from theoretical to actual
in our hearts and minds. Walking in
God’s way is not only right, it keeps us safe.
Remember,
that all of the minefields lie in the everything else. Safety lies in God’s way—in walking in his
wisdom.
There is
God’s way and there is everything else.
Live God’s way.
Amen.
