The Effort of Effortlessness
Hebrews 4:9-12, Philippians 3:7-14
It’s good to be back. It’s been a refreshing summer. God’s given me various preaching opportunities, He’s sharpened me through some gatherings of old pastor-friends as we discussed theology and ministry, I’ve worked a bit through my reading list, been preparing for the fall, and we have been busy with a lot of hosting responsibilities. Our family had a wonderful time with some of you at our first family retreat at Sandy Cove. But it’s so good to be back on the pulpit.
From last October to June, we had studied the book of Galatians. That study for me crystallized my vision to teach our Church how to Live in the Gospel, to live by faith.
I want to help us to see who He is and what He’s done, and to have that perspective change the way we see our lives, our circumstances, our fears, our desires. I want to help us live in His story of what He’s doing, believing that the real story is about God and what He does and not us and what we do. Meditating on the promises of God is helpful. APTAT.
It is living out of “having already received,” not living to “try to get.”
It is that in Christ, we already have communion with God. We want to see God, delight in God, treasure God, trust & obey God, and love God with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength. God is big and strong and loving and gracious and real in the everyday issues of our lives.
And having this God in our lives produces love, joy, peace; it produces thankfulness and worship. Last week P. Dwight reminded us, it also produces radical obedience, radical sacrifice, radical vision. How can it be that the people of such a great God would be any less?
This is what I mean by living in the Gospel, living by faith.
And I believe that when we are living in the Gospel, when God becomes a real part of our lives so that we deeply do love and trust Him, then we want to share Him with one another, we want to share Him with friends and neighbors.
We’re not just trying to “get people saved.” We want them to have the joy, freedom and transformation that we’re experiencing in Christ. There is an authenticity to our evangelism, outreach, and missions because our own souls have tasted joy, love, freedom and rest in God.
But this is not easy. It is not easy to rest in God. It is not easy to behold God so vividly that our hearts are filled with love, joy and peace.
We are instinctively and intuitively self-focused, self-reliant and performance-based. We put ourselves at the center of our thoughts, desires, hopes and plans. And we think it’s up to us. And we measure ourselves and others by some kind of performance. Even in religious things, we often remain self-focused and self-reliant. It is counter-intuitive to be God-focused and God-dependent and grace-based. It’s hard. In fact, this is why I feel Gospel-living is such a deep paradigm shift, because we are so deeply self-focused and self-reliant. And even when we become God-focused or God-dependent, we quickly fall back to our self-mode (default mode).
Steven Curtis Chapman:
Steven Curtis Chapman has 3 biological kids of his own and adopted 3 little girls from China. On May 21, Maria, the youngest who had just turned 5, was so excited to see her brother Will Franklin, as he was driving home. He didn’t see her running and ran into her. Will ran away, he just wanted to get away as far and as fast as possible. His older brother Caleb ran after him and brought him back. When the ambulance began to drive off to the hospital, Steven Curtis Chapman rolled down his car window and yelled “Will Franklin, your father loves you!”
Gospel Living is living in the freedom that, even though we’ve made horrible mistakes, shameful failures, and have deep inadequacies, we hear our Heavenly Father shouting, “Will Franklin, your father loves you!”
In one sense the Christian life is not about our effort, it’s about God’s work. And in that sense, it is effortless. God is the worker, not us.
And yet, the Christian life is not easy. It requires great effort. It’s not easy to live in the gospel, to live in the “Will Franklin, your father loves you” reality.
Paradoxically, it takes great effort to be effortless. Let me use two Scriptural examples.
9 There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; 10 for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. 11 Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. (Heb 4:9-11, italics added)
There is a rest, a Sabbath-rest for God’s people. This is not just rest from war or rest from work. This is rest with God; God completed His work and we participate in that completion/rest. The Israelites failed to enter that rest because of their disobedience. But that rest is available for us, and we’re to make every effort to enter that rest. There must be faith and obedience and perseverance.
There is the paradox: make every effort to enter that rest.
7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider 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 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
What is Paul’s goal? What is Paul striving for? To gain Christ and be found in him.
I take this to mean not that Paul is trying to gain salvation, but that Paul wants to know Christ experientially. He wants to experience Christ in the power of his resurrection and even in his suffering. And for Paul, that relationship, that experiential knowledge of Christ is worth everything he has to lose.
If I were to fill in the picture with my language, Paul wants to behold God and taste His love, grace, goodness, and faithfulness. He wants to see God, delight in God, treasure God, trust & obey God, and love God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength. I’ve been calling that living in the Gospel, living by faith.
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:7-14)
What is the prize? To know Christ, to be found in him.
But the picture is not passive, easy, but involving great effort, pressing on, throwing everything else away. There is great effort to have that experiential knowledge/reality of Christ.
If you consider the life of Paul, he did not live a passive, “easy-going,” “let go and let God” kind of life.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Cor 15:10)
Or consider the life of Jesus Himself. The sinless Son of God Himself would get up early to pray, pray all night, fast, even fasting 40 days. He had obviously studied and memorized the Scriptures. He would minister to people to the point of exhaustion.
The Christian life is not about our effort, it’s about God’s work. God is the worker, not us.
And yet, the Christian life is not easy. It requires great effort. Paradoxically, it takes great effort to be effortless.
Let me put the effort and effortlessness together with a metaphor I heard from Mike Shea/John Ortberg, who both got it from Dallas Willard.
The Christian life is a sailboat not a canoe
The canoe [picture] view is that if we want to get to the other side of the lake, we grab the oars, row, and pull our way through. The power of the canoe is within the boat.
In other words, for the Christian to love others, we have to rev up the engine and love. Try harder.
The sailboat [picture] view that that to get to the other side of the lake, we have the raise our sail and catch the wind. The power of the boat is not inside the boat. It has to connect with a power outside the boat.
In other words, for the Christian to love others, that love is not within us. Human effort is not going to make us genuinely loving. Rather, we need to “catch the wind,” we need the HS, we need God, and He will produce that love in us.
In this Christian life, the key issue is not, “did you get to the other side,” but “by what power did you get there.”
To use categories we’ve used before, when the Bible says, “Love your neighbor,” we might
try to love by our effort legalism, self-reliance; motor-boat
not try to love at all disobedience, laziness, no boat, no movement
live by the Spirit the fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of faith in the Gospel is love, joy, peace; sailboat
So how have we been doing? Are we loving one another by our own effort? Are we not even trying to love? Or are we living in the Spirit and finding God freeing our hearts to love? Are we living like a canoe or a sailboat?
Here’s the catch: it’s not easy to catch the wind. It’s hard.
In fact, it is easier pull out the oars. We intuitively and instinctively reach for something within us to solve the problem. It’s hard to feel helpless.
There are many reasons why it’s hard to “catch the wind,” to behold God, to taste His sweetness and rest in His goodness.
Perhaps the main reason why it’s so hard to catch the wind is that we don’t want to catch the wind. We have a sin nature. We have an enemy within (good dog and bad dog). We have a natural resistance to God. We don’t want to have God as the center of our hearts and lives. We want to be the center. We don’t want to depend on another, we want to depend on ourselves.
We are not spiritual neutral. We have a battle between our flesh and the Spirit, and these resist each other, they are at war with one another. We saw this in Galatians
So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. (Gal 5:16-17)
So if you want to turn to God, behold God, worship God, there is an enemy that wants you to turn to yourself, think about yourself, trust in yourself, love yourself.
This is where repentance comes into play. We don’t just repent for the “bad” thing we do; we also repent of the self-reliant “good” things we do.
We are called to live in the Gospel, live by faith, live in the love, joy and freedom of having a Great and Loving Savior in our daily lives, in whom we trust and find our joy.
We are called to live by “catching the wind” not by self-generated power.
But this is not easy. We have a sin nature that resists God.
This is where effort, discipline, self-control, training take their course.
I don’t know how many of us are watching much of the Olympics, but you hear of the amazing discipline and training some of these athletes endure. Supposedly Michael Phelps eats 10,000 calories and swims 5 hours every day. He doesn’t just get up one day and decides he wants to break all these world records. He trains, and he trains hard.
In a perfect world, we would naturally turn to God, put our hope in God, seek strength in God. Even in our failures and shame, we would live in the “Will Franklin, your father loves you” world.
But for us, we need to train ourselves to turn to God, put our hope in God, seek our strength in God. We need to train ourselves to look on Him, behold Him, because naturally, we don’t. Naturally, we remain self-focused and self-reliant/performance based. Naturally, our sin nature prevails.
And so I’d like to spend a little time in the next couple weeks to address the practices/disciplines we might do to train our hearts to turn to God, to trust in God.
Practical Applications
The first recommendation I’ve been making is for us to meditate on, memorize, and pray through the Promises of God [can download from website]. The goal is not to learn and memorize promises. The goal is to see God, to behold, taste, rest in, worship God. These promises are to strength our faith, faith in promises but more importantly faith in a Promiser.
Lord willing, the next couple weeks, we’ll consider some practical things we can do to “catch the wind,” beyond the meditating on God’s promises. But for today, let me point you to some Books on this topic.
Dallas Willard, The Great Omission (and Spirit of the Disciplines, Renovation of the Heart).
The problem is that conducting the religious life can become an entirely cultural kind of thing. And we can idolize our religious culture. . . I’m sorry to say this, but too much of what we call Christian is not a manifestation of the supernatural life of God in our souls. Too much of what we call Christian really just human. (p. 51)
Spiritual formation does not aim at controlling actions. . . If in spiritual formation you focus on action alone, you will fall into the deadliest of legalisms and you will kill other souls and die yourself. You will get social conformity. . . To focus on action alone is to fall into pharisaism of the worst kind and to kill the soul. (p. 55)
The decision is to release the world and your fate—including your reputation and “success”—into the hands of God. This is not a decision to not act at all, though in some situations it may come to that. It is, rather, a decision concerning how you will act: you will act always in dependence upon God. You will not take charge of outcomes. . . [Such people] have learned by experience and grace that all is perfectly safe in God’s hands. Now they can be active, if that is called for, but even then they act with settled love, joy, and peace. (212)
John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted (preached, summer ‘02).
I would also urge us to consider taking a Christian Education class this fall. I find that studying the Bible is the most direct means see who God is and what He does. That is what the Bible is, it is a divine self-revelation. It is God’s directly revealing of Himself in a story of how He has come to save us.
Starting in September, I’m planning to preach through parts of the life of David. As you read the Psalms, David learned how to trust God, to how savor and delight in God, but David did not have an easy life. I hope we can learn about how David trusted in God, and more importantly, how God worked in David’s life. We want to see who He is and what He does.
These classes will help us to be able to do that. You need to learn how to see God and nurture your faith through God’s Word. Faith is most directly strengthened through God’s Word.
Gospel Community. Practically, often what helps us the most if when a beloved brother or sister can “preach the Gospel” to us. Sometimes we need someone to help point our hearts to God, to remind us of His faithfulness, to display His grace and kindness. Even more specifically, sometimes we need someone to help us see how a Big, Good, Loving God meets us in our troubles. We need someone to remind us how a Big, Good, Loving God frees and emboldens us as we try to minister to others. We need living examples of weak and imperfect people who hold onto a Big, Good, Loving God.
Henry, a Temple student, had his grandmother in the ICU for several weeks
…. How I've been doing.
I'll admit it. I cried one night.
I'm really close with my grandmom. She has always been there for me since I was born. She would always take my side for everything even when I was wrong, cause she loved me that much. She was a family member that I could always count on.
I Love Her So Much that I would do anything for her.
well moving on...
-In the beginning again was just in that stage of being shocked.
-then it moved on to mixed emotions.
(Psalms 5:1-6)
-It's weird in a way, but I felt that God was speaking to me SO MUCH THRU THIS.
-when I was going thru my mixed emotions. I was actually trying to see different scenarios of how I would react to the results of my grandmother.
and I'll be completely honest with you guys one of them was me falling away from God having some doubts, questions, and losing Faith.
- But then I felt that God really spoke to me and that He told me to not lose Faith in Him.
-We say we are Christians and We say We have Faith, We say We Trust in Him, We say We Believe, We sing songs about his Grace, about how HE IS SO GOOD and HOW HE IS ENOUGH.
- BUT Can We say thru A TIME or Situation like mine or similar too..
CAN WE TRULY SAY THAT GOD IS GOOD OR THAT GOD, YOU ARE ENOUGH!
- That definitely questioned where my Faith and Trust was with God.
- and it Made me think more about what I'm doing as a Christian and where I'm growing as a Christian as well.
But these past couple of days God has been reassuring me again and again of Who He is and What He has been doing.
and especially Trust in Him thru this time.
(Psalm 40:1)
AND ALL I CAN SAY NOW IS GOD FORGIVE ME OF MY SELFISHNESS AND OF MY LACK OF FAITH & TRUST,
BUT GOD, YOU ARE GOOD AND YOU ARE ENOUGH!!! . . .
I'll keep you guys posted...
Your Fellow Brother in Christ,
Henry S.
Last March, not long after this hospitalization and email, his grandmother did pass away. But when I spoke with Henry, his comment was that he’s been learning how God has always been there for him.
How we handle our struggles, big & small, say a lot about our faith in God.
Sometimes we need someone to help us see how a Big, Good, Loving God meets us in our troubles. Sometimes we need living examples of weak and imperfect people who hold onto a Big, Good, Loving God. We encourage, inspire, spur each on other to trust Him more deeply and sweetly.
I believe the Church, in its diversity of gifts and passions, works together so that all of us can see more clearly who God is and what He does. It is through the Body of Christ that people experience the Gospel.
Our vision is to renew lives in Christ to transform our city and the world.
We have a Gospel that changes from the inside out. We have a Jesus in whom our souls find rest, joy, love and delight. And we want to train our soul to rest in Him. For
The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. (Ps 145:8)
No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor 2:9)
we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Ro 8:28)
His promises are true, He is trustworthy!