Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 212
TRANSCRIPT
The gospel of Jesus Christ is simple, but it is not always easy. When was the last time you did something that was really worthwhile that was easy? When you go to the gym and work out, the process is really quite simple, but it sure isn’t easy. It is hard work. Yet many of us want living the Christian life to be easy. In this podcast, I am going to talk about the simplicity of the Gospel yet how living that simple gospel is sometimes very hard.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. One of the verses for today’s podcast is John 1:12, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God.” That is pretty simple. Receive Jesus and what He did for us on the cross, and you are changed into a child of God. Why is it that something so simple can become so difficult? Let’s look at this issue in good RTF fashion. You knew I was going to bring RTF into this topic, didn’t you?
I believe there are a couple of generational curses that put pressure on Christians to make our relationship with Jesus into something God never intended. I have been on a journey over the last few years to keep from falling into the trap of living a cultural Christianity rather than a biblical Christianity. What do I mean by that? We have so integrated our American (or if you live in the UK, British) culture into our relationship with God. I remember reading about American missionaries who went to Africa and told the African converts that in order to be Christians they needed to wear a shirt and tie to church. That is almost funny now that almost no one in the US church wears a shirt and tie anymore. However, it proves a point that we may be allowing our culture to influence the way we worship God. From an RTF viewpoint, there is a generational curse of Religiosity that resides on American churches. How do I know that? Walk into most churches in the US and wherever you go, no matter what denomination, the church service will be very similar. Oh, some churches sing from a hymnal and some only sing worship songs led by a full rock band. The service follows a very similar schedule: Sing some songs, take an offering, have a sermon, maybe have an altar call, and go home. American church. This curse of Religiosity says that there is a right way and a wrong way of doing church. It says that unless you do it this certain way, you are doing it wrong.
That pressure that the curse of religiosity puts on people is to live by certain religious standards. You mix that curse of religiosity with the generational curse of performance, and you can easily see why we have made being a Christian difficult. This performance curse says that doing certain things is what makes you a Christian. In other words, the way you prove you are a child of God is by your performance. Several years ago, Paul Young wrote a book called “The Shack“. In this book Young told of a character named Mac who had an encounter with God at the Shack. Young portrayed God as a matronly black woman. Oh, my goodness, this caused a major upheaval in the Christian world. How dare he show God as a black matronly woman? My question was, why could God not present Himself as a black matronly woman if He wanted to? The religious spirit exposed its ugly head and called Young’s book heresy. I thought it was brilliant. It exposed the religious spirit in the church. Instead of looking at the character of the God figure in the book, most people focused on the fact that God was a woman, and a black woman at that.
Galatians 5:16 says, “So I say walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” That verse sounds pretty simple, yet most of the time it can be very hard for us to walk in the Spirit. If this is what God desires for us in our Christian lives, then why is it so hard to walk in the Spirit?
Let’s begin by defining a few terms. When this verse talks about the flesh, what is it talking about? It is not talking about the stuff our earth suits are made of that we call flesh. No, the flesh is defined as the sensuous nature of man. Another term that is very appropriate is that the flesh is the animal nature of man. That is the natural, unredeemed desires of man. It is man living for himself, making life work out of his own human resources. It is often used in the New Testament (especially by Paul) to mean human nature acting independently or rebelliously against God. It is described as a force or mindset driven by selfish desires rather than God’s Holy Spirit.
We are born with certain needs. We have a need to be loved. We have a need to feel valuable. We have a need to feel like we have a purpose. We have learned to try to get those needs met out of our own resources and abilities. So, we begin to use things like our personality, or our gifts and talents, or our looks to get those needs met. The cute little boy or girl will get more positive recognition than the child who is less attractive. The child who can sing or dance, or who is a good athlete, will get more positive attention than the child who can’t do those things. The child who is gifted academically or artistically will get recognition through those ways. All of these ways of getting our needs met begin to develop our unique version of the flesh. For the children who can’t get their needs met through these positive ways, they will develop a version of the flesh that will try to defend them from hurt and rejection.
The flesh has two goals. Since I am an old athlete, I relate these two goals to the offense and the defense in a sport. The offense is trying to score points = get their needs met. The defense is trying to defend against being hurt or rejected. Some of the defensive flesh will develop mechanisms to try to keep a person from being rejected. When I was a kid, I learned that if I could get people to laugh with me, and at times to laugh at me, I was protecting myself from hurt and rejection. I felt like if I could make them laugh, I was getting my need met for acceptance. So, I was the life of the party. When I would go somewhere, I would turn on the personality and make people laugh and have fun. What I didn’t realize until many years later was that the people might laugh with me or at me, but they didn’t really know me, and I didn’t know them. That was one of the ways my flesh operated.
We often think of flesh as only negative behaviors. Some people’s flesh is developed around very positive behavior. Someone whose flesh is built around getting positive strokes for their achievements is going to have to keep getting more and more positive strokes in order for their flesh to be satisfied. This develops a very positive-looking type of flesh. But all flesh is man’s way of getting their needs met apart from Christ.
We see in Romans 8:5 that the bottom line is that the flesh and the spirit are in conflict with one another. It says, “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” This makes it sound pretty simple, yet it is not easy. It is not easy to set our minds on the things of the Spirit because we have lived our entire lives, setting our minds on the things of the flesh, on the unique way we have developed to get our needs met. In fact, these two things are in opposition to one another. That is why Galatians 5:17 says, “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other.”
We know a guy who has been successful at almost everything that he tries. He was a good student in school without having to try very hard. He was a star athlete and was good at any sport that he played. He was good with money and today is very financially successful. Guess what his flesh is like? He believes that if he tries to do something, he will figure out a way to do it and he will be successful. Unfortunately, he also is so self-sufficient that he does not see a need for God. He has very good-looking and positive flesh. But positive or negative, flesh keeps people from experiencing a relationship with God. Even this guy’s very good-looking flesh is keeping him from God. If and when this guy decides to turn to God, it is going to be very difficult for him to let go of his positive ways of the flesh.
So, what is the solution? To die. Yep, that is the answer. It is simple, but it is not easy. The bible talks in several places about dying to the flesh. Let me quote just a few.
Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Luke 9:23, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
Romans 6:6 “We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be done away with.”
The truth of the gospel is that we are already dead to our old self. Romans clearly says that our old self was crucified with Christ. What is still alive is our ways of the flesh. That is why the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die daily.” We have Christ living in us and He can live through us, but we must continually crucify the flesh with all of our old desires. It is pretty simple. Die to our fleshly desires and allow Christ to live through us. It is simple but it is not easy. Those old fleshly ways are firmly entrenched in us. Galatians 5:24 says, “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” This verse says that we have already crucified the flesh. Pretty simple, right? Yes, we have crucified the flesh, but it is something that we have to keep crucifying on a daily basis. Any time those old fleshly desires raise its ugly head, we have to make the choice like Paul to die daily. Then we can walk in the Spirit.
The point of this podcast is that the gospel is simply, but it is not easy. Dying is not easy. But only as we die to the flesh will we be able to live in the simplicity of Jesus living His life in us and through us.
PRAYER
Father God, thank You for the simplicity of the Gospel: to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God. Would You help us recognize any time we are giving into the lie that the Christian life should be easy, and when it is not easy, then it must not be from You. Thank You for the wisdom to know the truth from the deception. Many are being pulled away from the simple gospel because they are buying into the lie that the Christian life should be easy.
