Another year is coming to an end. People make resolutions this time of year. Last year I set up a “rule of life” for me to live by, instead of having New Year’s resolutions. I like the idea of creating a pattern of habits to live by, and I think it has worked out well for me this past year. I did fail this last month in the habit of “Limit the eating of sweets and fats”. I ate way too many cookies and now I have a couple pounds I need to lose. I was not intentional and disciplined in my eating this last month.
I think in today’s culture of comfort and convenience we need to be intentional and disciplined in how we live. The strong siren call of today’s culture is to live for oneself and to fulfill one’s desires. The goal of many people is to live a life of ease, one of comfort and convenience, where they can always be happy by having all their desires met. This last month I let my desire for sweet cookies rule my eating. It was not healthy. I was not intentional in my eating, and I was not at all disciplined. I gained a couple of pounds. Now I have to deal with the consequences of that lack of discipline.
God calls us to a life centered around him and not centered around us. That is very different from what today’s culture says. Culture today pulls us toward a self-centered life based on our desires. This is why we can not coast through life. If we do, we will not be living for God and we will have to deal with the consequences of the short term thinking of our desires. We need to be intentional and disciplined in life’s activities so that we can have that good and full life centered on God.
One good way of being intentional is to have a plan. We can not try to fit God into our lives. Instead we need to start with God and build our lives around him. That is why I created a “rule of life” document for myself, so that I would be consistent in how I live my life for God. I created the document by looking at what I was already doing and what I wanted to do. I did not get very specific (e.g. Every morning at 6:00am I will read the Bible), instead I kept my habits more general (e.g. Daily read Scripture). I am not that structured, but you may be. It does take some prayerful consideration to put together a plan or a “rule of life”. It is not something you should write up in a few hours. Spend some time praying about it while putting it together. Once it is done you will want to revisit it from time to time to see how well it still fits. For me this is the time of year when I think of such things. (I first started thinking about the idea of a “rule of life” around New Years 2022 and I put it into practice around New Years 2023 and now I am evaluating it around New Years 2024.)
Having a plan and wanting to be intentional is not enough. You need commitment and discipline to put your intentionality into action. This is the hard part but this is something we need to strive for. It is not easy and I have also many times failed to live up to the “habits” or “rules” that I have set (let alone God’s good standards), but fortunately, we have a God who is merciful and gracious. He desires that intimate relationship between us and him. I think my “rule of life” document helps me to pursue that relationship. Our focus should be centered on God, especially on Jesus. It is out of gratitude for God’s amazing love and for all Jesus has done for me that I want to live my life to his glory. He inspires and enables me to have the discipline to live life for him.
PS To find out some of what Gail and I did in 2022 and 2023, read our Christmas letter.
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Yeah, it’s good to be intentional about living for God and not for ourselves. And it’s good to have a plan and to be disciplined. But here’s the questions I have: WHAT is the plan I should be making for myself?? HOW do I live for God and not for myself?? WHAT does that mean, really?? What would it look like for me to “lose my life for Jesus’s sake”??
Sure, you can set up an arbitrary set of resolutions or “rules of life” (whatever you want to call them, which may be little more than semantics here), and decide to set aside x-amount of time for prayer and Bible study every day or every week. But how much and how often? There’s no prescription in the Bible for frequency or amount, no more than there’s any prescription for how often we partake of holy communion … or if, when, how often, and how long we fast, or what we choose to fast from. There’s not even any prescribed amount of giving in the New Testament’s New Covenant, other than that we should be “generous” and “give as we have determined in our hearts to give.”
Typically I pray when I feel particularly moved or motivated to talk to God. But I always find it difficult to pray. It’s always hard work for me, in part because I always struggle with one-way conversations* (*in the sense that we typically don’t hear any audible voice in response when we’re praying). So I don’t turn prayer into a ritual any more than my resolving to read one or more chapters a day in the Bible. I’ve already read the Bible more than once through in different translations. Yes, I will indeed finish re-reading it in the NASB, but how many more times do I need to keep re-reading and re-re-reading the same essential material over and over?? Some people read the Bible completely through every year. I want to ask them, “What more are you really gaining by reading everything 5 times, or 10 or 20 or 35 or 50 times??” I just don’t understand that thinking, except perhaps that they either have very poor memories, or they’ve turned that activity into something akin to Catholics’ praying the same ritual prayers over and over and over and over, using rosary beads or prayer rugs or whatever they use to facilitate that. It reminds me of what Jesus said in Matt. 6:7, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
I don’t like arbitrariness in discipline because that’s essentially busy-work that doesn’t necessarily go anywhere â and I would say it probably won’t go anywhere. It’s like rowing a boat with one oar out of the water. You can row that boat for miles and miles while never going beyond a tight circular radius. No, there needs to be a direction â a goal — and a purpose. Now if you want to read the Bible through again for a specific reason, like for historical context; or for hermeneutical, apologetic, or eschatological reasons; or to record and memorize key verses to help you evangelize, or to keep in mind all the commands and imperatives from Jesus and all the apostles who wrote the New Testament, OK, that’s a plan. That’s a purpose. That’s going somewhere. All those things lead you to equip yourself to create understanding and positive change in yourself and others, and maybe even make converts. But to any arbitrary disciplinarians, I want to say, “Don’t turn Christian discipline into little more than repetitive feel-good rituals that don’t ultimately make any real impact on you or on anyone else.” I could sit in a hot tub for a half hour each day to simply feel good.
So what do we do to live for Christ? Since we are constantly at war with our sinful, lazy, apathetic, greedy, self-centered flesh â as the Apostle Paul complained about with regard to himself — then our living for God will very likely require denying ourselves and taking up our ‘crosses’ (as Jesus said), and will involve sacrifice on our part â at least at some point if not now and if not constantly — and will probably require us to go down roads we’d probably never go down voluntarily. But it strikes me strongly that above all we need God’s direction, otherwise how can we possibly know what we should do and say, and where and how and how often? Sure, once we believe and are baptized, and have learned to follow the basic moral guidelines presented in the Bible, there are a few other basic, universal commands in it like “putting on the armor of God”, praying without ceasing, not allowing our good morals to be corrupted by bad company, being generous, doing whatever it takes to remove sin from our lives (including our thought lives), desiring and using spiritual gifts, and preaching the Gospel to all nations … baptizing them and teaching them to observe all Jesus’s commands (often called “The Great Commission”). So what’s my role in all that??? I don’t know where to even start once I close my Bible. That’s what I need to know. WHERE … DO … I … BEGIN, and what should I be preparing myself for??? The Apostle Paul assures us we can discern what God’s good and perfect will is if we put on the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). I think a key part of this is specifically asking to be infilled by the Holy Spirit in a new and unprecedented way, and praying for heightened spiritual hearing and discernment, because we very limited and finite and almost powerless mortal beings definitely need God’s direction and empowerment before we can truly be effective for him. Absolutely and most definitely.
Pastor Mark Cowart, whom I’ve watched sometimes host the Truth & Liberty Coalition’s webcasts over several years, introduced a YouTube video of an interview with Howard Pittman. Howard had a near-death experience back in 1979, and relates a very sobering story about his conversation with God (from outside the pearly gates), and how he learned that all the good things he’d been doing â even pastoring and fostering 32 orphans â were all done for himself and not for God. He also mentions how few people actually make it into Paradise / Heaven vs. how many don’t. It’s a chilling account, and very, very sobering, and really made me question all the more what would God have me do with the rest of my life here. The video is in two parts, the first at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKnwGMG7PHg, and the second at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqDtxBRUrfs&t=1s. This certainly isn’t the only video like this that I’ve seen over the years, but this one rattled me more than before … partly because of where I presently am in my prayer life and spiritual walk, and partly because it was endorsed by Mark Cowart, whom I trust as someone who is level-headed and is morally and spiritually grounded in Biblical truth.
Jeff
[cid:f52b3550-64c5-4e21-8250-694d571de5cd]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKnwGMG7PHg
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Howard Pittman’s Near Death Experiencehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKnwGMG7PHg
In 2015 Pastor Mark sat down with Howard Pittman and heard firsthand his near death experience. Howard shared what he experienced at the point of death when his spirit left his body and he crossed over into the spiritual realm. While having this experience Howard was taken by angels and given a tour of Satan’s kingdom in the 2nd heaven. He also …
http://www.youtube.com
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I should add a few more things. The third thing that disturbed me about this interview was that Pittman was a pastor at the time of his NDE (Near Death Experience). That’s not to say that pastors can’t be self-deceived into thinking they have a real and active relationship with the Lord when they actually don’t. Even he, after his experience, referred to Jesus’s equally chilling comment in Matthew about many who will someday ask, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” But Pittman’s supposedly having been a staunch Christian was another reason it perked my ears up more than most such experiences I’ve read about or seen in interviews. Also, the 2½% being saved was further shocking — if true — given the percentage of professing Christians around the world, which is about 2.38 billion out of 8 billion alive on Earth today â nearly 29% of the global population. Granted, few people would be naive enough to think that every church attender is saved, but are those “entering through the narrow gate” really that few in the end? (Matt. 7:13) Possibly.
After I watched the Pittman interview, it occurred to me that he was trying to justify himself before God by listing all these good things he had done in his life on Earth, but not relying upon the blood that Jesus had shed for him. The one thing he did not say he did was plead for God’s mercy based upon his acceptance of the covering of his sins that Jesus had provided through his suffering and death in our place. “But Lord, you don’t understand,” he said at the gate, while he enumerated his good deeds. He was depending on works righteousness for his justification. That’s where the Pharisaical aspect of all this came into play, as God allegedly pointed out to him … according to his story. Regardless of what you might think about this account, it wasn’t unbiblical. It was dark and sobering … although supposedly having a happy ending. Pittman died in 2019, four years after this interview, presumably having a much better spiritual understanding.
The timing of my watching this interview was interesting too. Several nights earlier I had already prayed a prayer slightly unlike any I’d prayed before. In past prayers I acknowledged that I am the Lord’s, that I and everything I have belongs to him, and that I want to know his will for my life, and want his help and power to overcome temptations to procrastinate or passively resist and quietly refuse to follow the path he laid out for me. And in many past prayers I also said I wanted the acuity of hearing to hear even his faintest whispers, and the fine discernment not only to distinguish his voice from among many others, but also to understand clearly his way forward for my life. I want to do everything he put me here to do without leaving anything undone. Once I had even referred to Elijah as an example that I didn’t want to follow in that regard, because Elijah didn’t do a couple things the Lord had told him to do at the end of his ministry. I want to accomplish everything (to the extent that’s still possible), and do it in the right way, at the right time, and with the right attitude. But this time I added one more little ‘nuance’. I said definitively and directly that I would do whatever he wanted me to do … but again adding that I needed to hear his voice clearly and be able to understand and interpret it accurately through whatever means he chose to communicate with me.
I confessed that as it is right now, I have no idea whether my current path forward will be worth it or not. No, I’m not proceeding forward blindly without any planned direction, I said, but even so, the road ahead is still completely shrouded in fog from my perspective. I don’t have any better plan, and the plan I have is cloudy and nebulous at best, with no guarantee of success whatsoever. I know he can see infinitely farther than I can, and that his understanding far exceeds mine, so I can really only rely upon his vision and calculations and wisdom. I know whatever he plans for my life will be far better for far more people than anything I could plan for myself, with my extremely limited vision, awareness, energy, and resources here in this life. So basically I put everything into his hands more firmly than I had ever done before. I later shuddered to think about being sent into Iran to be a missionary ð, or having to do or endure something else equally dangerous or otherwise unpleasant, but I don’t want to stand before God someday with any more regrets than I already have. But the bottom line is that I don’t see how I can really be of significant use to him unless he communicates with me in ways I can perceive and interpret correctly, and unless I’m willing to go ‘all in’ and fully commit to whatever he calls me to do, of course.
Jeff
You bring up some good points. First, we are saved by God’s grace. He does the saving. My “rule of life” document is all about responding to what God has done for me. It is not to get brownie points. The document is to help me “run the race” better.
I am glad to hear that you are giving everything (and everyone) to God. God desires that trust, that relationship. I have a little prayer that I say usually several times a day. It is “I am yours”, which reminds me who I belong to and allows me to recommit myself to God.
David Jeremiah says “God’s plan is good, and its purpose is clear, and his program is mysterious”. That is his explanation summary on Ecclesiastes 3:11. We know God’s plan and his purpose. His plan is all about the work of Jesus and his purpose is to restore us to himself and to make us more Christ-like. His program is mysterious. That program or future path is what would be nice to know more about, but instead we just have to trust him.
God is not thwarted when we do not follow his will. We cannot stop God. We may grieve him, but when we sin we only hurt ourselves and many times other humans. Actually his will is pretty clear. We know how we are supposed to act. The Bible makes that clear. It just does not give us that future path. We just have to trust God and know that he will be able to work things out, no matter what path we choose. His purpose is to make you more Christ-like and to draw you to himself.
Today, Pastor Glen preached on Ecclesiastes 3:1-14, and I thought of you and this post, so you might want to check it out.