When the
- Unholy contentment suffocates your spiritual life.
“THE COMPLACENCY of CHRISTIANS is the scandal of Christianity,” said A. W. Tozer in his book, Man, the
Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:7-12, “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of the Christ. What is more, I considered everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him… I want to Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering… Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
And, he said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow my examples, as I follow the example of Christ.”
Our God is God who does extraordinary things. In twenty nine days, we are going to celebrate the greatest and mot extraordinary moment in the history when Jesus was raised from the dead. We serve God who is extraordinary who is after transforming our ordinary daily moments into the extraordinary moments set apart, holy given unto him. Yet, we insist on “the contentment with inadequate and imperfect progress in the life of holiness,” says Tozer. This he calls it again, “a scandal in the Church of the Firstborn.”
I am first to confess that I have bought into this scandal of abnormal, unholy contentment, complacency, as things are just plain ordinary or even worse substandard so called Christian life.
We recently did an evaluation on the life of our church. As I was going through the answers to these questions, I was stirred with this raw emotion inside of me. I set out five years ago to see a church that would rise up to love God and love people wholeheartedly. What the evaluation showed me was that we are a church that has the appearance of friendless, but live on the superficiality, superficiality with God and with each other. We come together Sundays after Sundays, but the sad thing is we are just content to leave things as they are just like the Israelites were content with the displaced ark of the LORD.
- The holy discontentment breathes new life for you.
Things were mediocre, substandard for the Israelites for twenty years, but something was happening. They began to mourn and seeking after the LORD. In 1 Samuel 4, their response to the devastating loss against the Philistines was to manipulate God for their gain by taking the ark to the battleground as though it was their insurance for sure victory. We know what happened when they tried to manipulate God for their selfish gain; the glory of the Lord left them as symbolized by the capture of the ark.
But, here in chapter 1 Samuel 7:2, we see a different ting happening. They began to mourn and they began to go after the Lord.
How can you explain what happened here? How did they go from being content with mediocre and substandard life to bemoaning and seeking after the LORD?
Our text doesn’t say specifically what happened. Jesus said about the Holy Spirit in John 3:8, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” What we see in 1 Samuel 7:2 is the invisible and intangible work of the Holy Spirit. He was awakening people from the deadly trap of unholy contentment, lethal complacency, accepting the displaced ark of the LORD as a norm. The Spirit was moving them from unholy contentment to the holy discontentment.
To mourn is to lament. In Micah 2:4, the same verb is used to describe the Israelites’ lament over loosing the allotted land into the hands of the enemies. It is a raw emotion of deep grief, sorrow, regret for something with audible wailing; in 1 Samuel 7:2, is the lamenting over the displaced ark of the LORD, that is the displaced glory of God.
- For the holy discontentment to be effective, you need change your direction.
In NIV, this is translated as “sought after the LORD.” In Hebrew, this is simply an adverb, “after.”
If their mourning simply ended with loud wailing, it would not have been a genuine result of the Holy Spirit touching them. Feeling sorry in itself is not enough to revive us. What we need is to “Strive to get beyond mere pensive longing” according to Tozer. What we need is the radical directional change.
“What are you after?” is the crucial question we need to ask. When you wake up early in the morning? What are you after? Are you in hurry to get ready to go to school or to work? Or, are you in hurry to go after God, to meet him, to hear him, to talk to him? When you get home from school or from work, are you after to fix up something to eat and sit in front of TV or computer to feed yourself with mindless moments of entertainment? Or, are you after something more substantial and meaningful and eternally significant like building relationship with God and with people?
Do you feel sorry that you seem to have only casual relationship in the church, at work, at school and at home? Or, do you go after to build meaningful friendship with people, something real, honest, heart-connecting kind of friendship?
- The holy discontentment and longing isn’t enough, you must act.
When the people began to mourn and sought after the LORD, Samuel told them in verse 3, “If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the land of the Philistines.”
It is not enough to feel longing, sorrow and good intention to change the direction. Feeling strongly about something but doing nothing about will set you back; it will kill your spirituality. Apostle James spoke about this plain in James 1:22-25:
“Do no 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.”
Samuel said to return to the Lord with all one’s heart involves three actions: 1) ridding ourselves of sins, 2) committing ourselves to the Lord and, 3) serving him only. Then, the promise is the deliverance out of the hand of the enemies, the Philistines in the case of
When God’s people put the convictions into actions, verse 10 says then the LORD thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.
When the Lord delivered them the victory against the Philistines, Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far has the LORD helped us.” Ebenezer means “stone of help.” The stone of help, Ebenezer became the memorial for them to remind them what happened when God stirred them into the holy discontentment, direction change, and concrete actions.
Will we have our turn to build the memorial Ebenezer in our church? God wants us to build the Ebenezer for
- So, here are some actions plans
I mentioned earlier that we have 29 days to Easter. I want us to have some concrete action plans to put things into actions. I like how Becky Tirabassi put things in the Burning Heart Contract. [i]
There are three elements to this contract.
Ignite your passion
Purify your life
Fulfill your purpose
Prayer Commitment—30 Minutes a day in Prayer and Bible for 21 Days:
The best, most practical, fool-proof method that has worked for me for over two decades is to write (or journal) my PART (praise, admit, request, and thanks) in prayer every day. That means I don’t forget to (1) confess any sin or to (2) pray for others specifically. I encourage, if you’re not doing it already, to get a journal—label it 21 Days—and have a record of ALL that God does. I also Listen to God by reading a 365 Bible everyday. In other words, it is most often through my regular daily planned Bible reading that God speaks to me—and I know He’ll speak to you. If you don’t have a One Year or Change Your Life Daily Bible…this might be the time to get one!
Purity Commitment: Not to touch or look at another person’s private parts, except your spouse (and if you’re not married, that means…no one.)
This is a practical way to gain power in your spiritual life that comes as a result of purity and holiness. Ask god to purify your mind…to prepare you to be more sensitive to Him, and to spend your time more wisely. But especially if you struggle with sexual impurity in any way, I would encourage you to get an accountability partner and check in with them 2 or 3 times a day for the next 21 days. (That might sound like a lot, but if you want to “get rid” of something…you can’t hide it, you must expose it.)
For some of you, this area may be less tempting than others—just ask God to show you any area that He might want to purify you more (II Tim 2:21-22).
The purity-piece to our “personal revival” is a holiness commitment…and God J likes (actually asks) us to be holy like He is holy. Think ahead--something happens to us when we become more like Him…we become powerful preachers, evangelists and leaders. Why? We’ve got nothing to hide. And we’re not ashamed of poorly representing the Gospel. We’re transparent—not perfect—but we honor God’s name by our choices in public and private…and people see, know, and they are watching!
Purpose—to lead one person to Christ in the next 21 Days.
Let’s not panic or competeJ! In Finney’s Lectures on Revival, he wrote, “Four factors have a part in conversion—three active agents and one passive instrument. The agents are God, the truth-bringer (you and me), and the sinner. The instrument is truth. Under God’s influence the truth cuts its way like fire.”
In the feedback from many of you, this piece of the commitment has been the “deal-breaker!” This is the area in which many struggled to commit. So I want to encourage you—the more often you share your relationship with Christ on a daily basis, the more comfortable you’ll become and the greater chance someone is going to be in your path (whom God puts) to hear His story!!! That’s being His agent/ambassador! But the Holy Spirit has all kinds of things going on we don’t even know…so when you are prompted to share (whether it feels funny or awkward or repetitive or you have no good reason to think they’ll even respond), go for it anyway!
One of our “teammates” has written the name of 5 people whom He knows God has placed on his heart to share with over the next 21 Days. I’d encourage you to do the same! (FYI: In the coming days, I also will send some great material from Spurgeon’s Soul Winner!)
You are loved and I am honored to be your friend. Call or write if you need anything!
Be encouraged,
Becky Tirabassi
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