Transitions: Triplets of Purpose – What Time Is It?

 

Photo by Isabel Grosjean

As we have seen, God will guide our transitions through life, ordering our actions, direction and timing if we follow His lead. King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, taught that there is a proper time for everything. But he also taught that all of it is vain and meaningless (Ecclesiastes 5:10; 6:2-12) unless we honor and glorify God as we go through each of life’s seasons (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

God’s timing is always perfect, even if we wrongly experience Him as being agonizingly slow to fulfill His promises (2 Peter 3:8-9), or so sudden and swift in taking a loved one home (James 4:14) that we stagger in shock and dismay. If we follow His Word and His will for our lives, our timing will be synchronized with His rather than out of step. To rush ahead of His timing or to lag behind in disobedience is sure to propel us off the cliff into disaster.

Just as He orders our physical transitions throughout life, by the miraculous way in which He designed and created us (Psalm 139:14), so does He order the transitions to each new direction, the correct pathway at each fork in the road, if we follow Him (Proverbs 3:5-6; Psalm 37:4-6).

Waiting on His perfect timing and seeking His will (Lamentations 3:25-26) leads us to God’s best, as He delivers us from trouble (Psalm 37:7-13;34), gives us a new song of praise and testimony (Psalm 40:1-3) and prepares for us unimaginable blessings (Isaiah 64:4).

Before His ascension to Heaven, Jesus told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem “for the promise of the Father.” (Acts 1:4). Surely they were eager to start telling the world of their Saviour, and they must have felt prepared by the time He spent with them, His teachings, and their first-hand knowledge of His miracles and resurrection. Yet they waited in obedience and were rewarded by the Holy Spirit empowering them to lead many souls to Christ! (Acts 2)

One of the first acts of obedience for many Christians is baptism by immersion, which pictures the cross (as the believer sits upright in the water), Christ’s burial (as the believer is plunged beneath the water), and Christ’s resurrection to His glorified body (as the believer arises from the water). Baptism does not save us, nor does any good work (Ephesians 2:8-9), but it is a public confession of our allegiance to and identification with Him.

The sacrament of baptism represents the transitions from having our sins nailed to His cross, dying to our sin nature as He died and was buried, and rising again to walk as a new creation in Him. Solomon refers to these spiritual transitions in physical terms, all of which have an appointed time (Ecclesiastes 3:2-6). We must die to self (1 Corinthians 15:31) to be born to new life and to live for Him (Romans 8:10-11; Colossians 3:9-10; Galatians 2:20; 3:24).

Ecclesiastes 3:3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

We must kill, break down, and cast away our bad habits (1 Corinthians 15:31) so that the Holy Spirit can heal our wounds, build up our faith, and gather us together as living stones laid on His sure foundation (1 Peter 2:4). As we recognize our inability to save ourselves or to accomplish any good work in our own flesh (Romans 7:18-23), we weep, mourn and refrain from embracing those false gods that lead us to destruction (Romans 12:2). Then we can laugh and dance for our joy in the Lord (2 Samuel 6:12-15) as His everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27) firmly hold us in His loving embrace.

Before we are saved we build our lives around our own desires, goals, and abilities (Proverbs 14:12; 16:25).We get all we can, we hoard or keep it for future use (Luke 12: 16-21), and we sew ourselves garments of our own self-righteousness. But when we are saved we learn that to keep our life (Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; 17:33). we must lose our self-absorption, cast away our own selfish ambitions, and tear apart or rend our garments of self-righteousness, which God sees as filthy rags (Ecclesiastes 3:6-7; Isaiah 64:6).

The transitions of salvation do not stop there – we turn from apathetic silence about God to speaking boldly to and for Him (Ephesians 6:20); from hating to loving Him, and from being at war with God to being reconciled to Him (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) through the glorious Gospel of peace (Ecclesiastes 3:7-8). Ultimately, He even transforms us from being His enemies to being His ambassadors! (2 Corinthians 5:20)

© 2014 Laurie Collett

Edited and reposted from the archives

Must We Be Baptized?

 

Photo by JGHowes 2007

An interesting question that came up in the Bible study of the Book of John that I am currently teaching: Why was Christ baptized if baptism is not a necessary step in the path to eternal life?  Jesus said He was fulfilling all righteousness (Matthew 3:15), and that He was perfect, and yet seemingly in need of baptism. Does this contradict our salvation by grace through faith alone? (Ephesians 2:8-9), as we are sinful and imperfect? Is it prideful to think that we do not also need baptism and works to be saved?.

Baptism doesn't make you saved any more than wearing a wedding band makes you married. Both are symbols of a deeper union. In the case of baptism, it is usually one of the first acts of obedience a Christian does once they are born again (John 3:3-8), as a symbol of their spiritual rebirth and belief in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the only Way to Heaven (John 14:6).

Baptism by immersion symbolizes the death and burial of Jesus as the believer is plunged under the water, and it also symbolizes the believer dying to his sin nature (2 Corinthians 5:17; Romans 6:2-7). When the believer is raised up out of the water, it symbolizes Christ's resurrection and also the believer becoming a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17), raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). Baptism shows those present that we are not ashamed to be followers of Christ, and that we are obedient to His Great Commission, which includes baptism (Matthew 28:19-20).

But baptism, or any works in general, are not necessary for salvation. To be saved, all we need is the freely given gift of God’s grace through faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

Ephesians 2: 8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:  9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

We cannot accomplish our own salvation, for we can add nothing to Christ’s completed work on the cross. However, once we are saved, obedience and good works, such as baptism, flow naturally out of our love for and gratitude to Him. Baptism and other good works are the fruit and evidence of our living faith (James 2:17-26).

 

When Philip preached about Jesus to the Ethiopian eunuch, he asked what would prevent him from being baptized, and Philip replied “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” After this confession of faith by the eunuch, Philip baptized him right away (Acts 8:26-38). This shows the proper order of being saved by believing and verbally confessing faith in Christ, Whom God raised from the dead (Romans 10:9) and then being baptized as an act of obedience.

Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, who immersed Him in the river Jordan ((Matthew 3:13-17). Yet John protested before baptizing Jesus, for he clearly recognized long before that Jesus was far more powerful and holier than himself (Luke 3:16-17). Only Jesus would be able to baptize with the Holy Ghost, and only Jesus was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29,36). None of these powers were contingent on Jesus being baptized. In fact, John, Mary, and Elizabeth all recognized Jesus as their Savior before He was even born! (Luke 1).

We cannot use Jesus’ example in being baptized to prove that we must be baptized in order to be saved, any more than we can use His example in being circumcised (Romans 2:25-28), or keeping the Jewish feasts, or other works of the law that He kept and fulfilled (Matthew 5:17), as works necessary for our own salvation. The law saves no one, for no one can keep it completely.

The law is only a mirror showing us the extent of our shortcomings and our need for a Savior. As sinners before a righteous and holy God, we deserve eternal punishment in hell, which would be our fate if Christ had not paid our sin debt in full to reconcile us to the Father (Romans 3:20-26).

If baptism or any other works were necessary for our salvation, then the thief who repented and recognized Jesus as Lord just before he died on the cross would not have been saved. He had no opportunity to be baptized or to do any good works, yet Jesus said to him, "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:40-43).

In a way, it is pride and unbelief that makes some think that God's grace is not enough to save their souls, and that they need to add their own good works to the amazing love and self-sacrifice Christ showed by dying for our sins. The Mormons like to say "We do our best, and Jesus does the rest." But Jesus freely gave Himself for us, and that is enough.

It is as if someone offered you a brand new Mercedes Benz as a gift, no strings attached, and you said -- "No, I want to help pay for it, so here is a penny." Thinking that our penny would make a difference would not only be prideful; it would also be insulting to the giver and would belittle the immense value of his gift. It is prideful to think that we could save ourselves by our good works, because the Bible says that our righteousness is like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).

Yes, we are all sinful and imperfect (Romans 3:10-23), before and after we are saved. We have no righteousness on our own, before or after baptism. But once we place our faith in Jesus, all His righteousness is imputed to our account, and all our sins are imputed to His account (Romans 4:6-8; 2 Corinthians 5:18-21). So, praise God, when the Father looks at a believer, He no longer sees our sins, but only the perfect righteousness of His Son!

© 2012 Laurie Collett

Edited and reposted from the archives

In Proper Order

 

The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, a widely used measure of Intelligence Quotient, or IQ, has a subtest known as the Picture Arrangement Test. Each of several sets of cards contains randomly shuffled scenes from an event, which the person being tested has to sort in the most likely chronological order. In the picture above, the crime happens first, then the arrest, the trial, and finally the prison sentence.

 

Or have you heard this riddle?  “It’s 7 AM, the doorbell rings, and you suddenly remember your in-laws are coming over for breakfast. You have strawberry jam, honey, wine, bread and cheese. What is the first thing you open?”

When I described this riddle to our son, who loves gourmet cooking, he went through an elaborate description of various recipes he could concoct with those ingredients. Sadly, none of the food items is the correct answer, as his love for food momentarily diverted his highly developed logical intelligence.

The point of the riddle, of course, is to distract us with useless information. When the doorbell rings and your in-laws arrive for a breakfast date you forgot, the first thing you’d better open is the door! Actually, someone pointed out that before you even open the door, you’d better open your eyes!  And after your guests come in, you’ll need to open the refrigerator and pantry before you open the first container of food.

Which brings me to my point – if we don’t do things in the proper order, and if we get distracted by enticing but unimportant options, we are bound to fail. The result may be ludicrous, awkward, or disastrous, but it will never be the optimal outcome. The world tantalizes us with so many temptations (Proverbs 22:5; Ecclesiastes 7:26) that we may fail to put first things first by seeking God’s will in all that we do (Luke 22:42).

My husband and I were at a crowded garage sale once when I heard a woman, a few tables away, give some advice to her friend: “When all else fails, pray!”

“Why not pray first, instead of as a last resort?” The words flew from my mouth before I even realized it, and I had no idea where they would land, and with what effect. Someone yelled, “Preach it, sister!” and I felt led to tell everyone about our pastor, who needed prayer for terminal cancer. Within moments, a group of Christians had gathered in a circle of linked hands for an impromptu prayer meeting!

When we place our faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as the only Way to Heaven (1 Corinthians 15:1-4), His Holy Spirit enters our heart (2 Corinthians 1:22), giving us the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). We have access to all His wisdom, knowledge, power and love, and we have the awesome privilege of instantaneous transport to His throne of grace, where we can boldly pray (Hebrews 4:16, asking for wisdom, mercy and grace and knowing that He delights in giving it (Matthew 7:11; James 1:17).

So why do we neglect this priceless resource, turning to it only when all other options leave us empty? Rather than relying on His omniscience (Psalm 139:1-6), why do we seek counsel from worldly friends who will tell us what we want to hear instead of Godly advice? Why do we run around pointlessly trying futile solutions in our own flesh, when He is the Master problem-solver? (Romans 8:28)

Priorities should order prayer life – seeking His face first before we embark on a new venture (1 Chronicles 16:11; Psalm 27:8), and proceeding only if He clearly leads in that direction, rather than doing what we want and then hoping to get His blessing after the fact. We should pray before we even get out of bed in the morning, putting on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:11-18) before we fall prey to the devil’s traps, lies and empty promises (John 8:44).

When we pray, do we thank and praise Him first (Luke 11:2), confess our sins (Luke 11:4; 1 John 1:9), and intercede for others before we bring our personal requests? Or do we just bombard Him with our own desires before even considering whether they are aligned with His will? (James 4:2-3; Luke 22:42)

Priorities should order our whole life, not just our prayer life.  If we seek Him first, and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33), He will give us all that we need, because He knows what is best before we even ask Him (Matthew 6:8). This includes not only our physical needs (Psalm 37:25), but our ministry needs (1 Thessalonians 5:24), provided our motives in ministry are to glorify Him and not to draw attention to ourselves (John 3:30).

Paul brought this out for when he provided detailed guidance as to the speaking of tongues, saying “Let all things be done decently and in order.” (1 Corinthians 14:40). Tongues were given to the early church as a sign gift so that those needing a sign to believe could see God’s great power. But it was intended for the sole purposes of educating members of the church and glorifying God.

The tongues spoken were actual languages understood by the listeners (Acts 2:6-11). If the listeners did not understand the language spoken, there was to be an interpreter. In that way the church body could be edified, or instructed, by those who prophesied one at a time (1 Corinthians 14: 31) and in order, so that there would be peace rather than confusion (v. 33). In no case was it to glorify the speaker or to make him appear to be more “spiritual” than one who did not have the gift of tongues. 

Order has always been important in worship, even in Old Testament times when God prescribed the order of what should be set on the table before Him (Exodus 40:4).Now that we are in the Church Age of Christian liberty, should we not still do things decently and in order, giving Him the preeminence (Colossians 1:18), rather than interspersing jokes, personal anecdotes, and even worldly theatrics with prayer, praise and preaching?

 

In our Christian walk, baptism is important as the first sign of obedience once we are saved (Acts 2:41), but many get baptized while they are still unsaved, or worse yet, think it will save them. Baptism is not a means to salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9), but a sign of identification with Christ's death, burial and resurrection. 

The order of steps we take determines our direction and ultimately our destination. If we take one step forward, one step back, and three to the side, we spend a lot of energy but go nowhere. (But if we’re dancing, we could at least turn it into a cha-cha!) God promises to guide us through the dance of life and to direct our paths (Proverbs 3:5,6) if we first trust in Him and acknowledge Him in all we do. Then He will order our steps in His Word, keeping us from sin (Psalm 119:133) and bringing us delight in the journey (Psalm 37:23).

As we speak and write, the proper order of our words is essential to convey the correct meaning (Job 33:5), particularly in English where noun forms do not change depending on their usage. “The hunter killed the bear” means something very different from “The bear killed the hunter.”

Paul was in the habit of beginning and ending his letters by acknowledging and thanking Jesus Christ and God the Father and blessing his readers with God’s grace and peace (1 Corinthians 1:1-10; 2 Corinthians 1:1-3; Galatians 1-3; Ephesians 1:1-3, etc.). What a wonderful example to follow, rather than starting Facebook posts or other communications with complaining, bragging, or vulgarity.

Praise God not only that He has ordered history, but that He has revealed to us the order of key events we are eagerly awaiting! Because Christ arose in His glorified body, all born-again believers will follow Him in their resurrected body to eternal life! (1 Corinthians 15:23). Look up (Luke 21:28), for before long, Christ shall descend from heaven with a shout and with the trump of God! The dead in Christ shall rise first, then believers still living shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and we shall forever be with the Lord! (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)

© 2014 Laurie Collett

Edited and reposted from the archives 

Take the Plunge!

Photo by Hubert Stoffels 2009

Many years ago I went to a swimming hole in a pristine wooded area with a waterfall plunging into a refreshing stream. Some young people had a Labrador retriever puppy with them, and they took great delight in carrying him to the top of the falls, releasing him into the current, and letting him plunge to the bottom of the falls into the stream, where one of them waited with open arms to catch him.

Labradors love water, and he seemed to enjoy the experience. But even though he could see his master waiting below with open arms, he paddled all four limbs frantically the whole way down and even after he was safely in his master’s embrace.

I was by far the worst swimmer at school and at summer camp, and I know I tried the patience of many instructors who attempted, to no avail, to teach me to dive head first. Even though I could see where I was going and had my body aligned properly as I stood on the diving board, my head inevitably lifted the moment before I entered the water, resulting in a painful “belly flop.” 

One day the swimming instructor had me repeat this so many times that my chest turned beet red, and as a last resort, he picked me up and hurled me into the water head first. But in my stubborn refusal to submerge my head under the water, I belly-flopped yet again.

A popular beverage commercial urged us to “Take the Nestea plunge!” It showed a parched cowboy in the arid desert reaching for a can of tea and experiencing refreshment so profound that it was like falling backward into a cool blue swimming pool.

It was fear that kept me from diving head first even though I could see where I was going, and a survival instinct in the puppy that kept him paddling even though he didn’t need to. I can only imagine what it would be like to abandon all fear and plunge backward into a refreshing spring, not seeing where I would land and surrendering all control.

Yet that is exactly what we should do in our Christian walk. Trusting Christ means total surrender, with His perfect love casting out all fear (1 John 4:18), and His Living Water refreshing us so deeply that we will never thirst (John 4:10-14). Once we are born again by trusting in His death, burial and resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-4) as the only Way to Heaven (John 14:6), we are a new creature in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Once we are saved, baptism is a picture of “taking the plunge,” falling back into the water as a symbol of dying to our sin nature, then rising again to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). Christians should no longer be governed by the desires of our flesh and sin nature, but instead we should yield control of our life to His Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:16-25) Who enters us at the moment of salvation (2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5.

But so often I am like the puppy, paddling frantically against the current of my Lord’s will instead of trusting His everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27) to shelter, protect and lead me. In my own flesh, I can do nothing (John 15:5), but with Him, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26; Philippians 4:13). Peter even walked on water when Jesus willed that he do so, but the instant he looked at the turbulent storm instead of his Lord’s steady gaze, he began to flounder and sink (Matthew 14:28-31).

We walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), so ideally our journey in Christ should be more like the Nestea plunge rather than my painful experience of diving only when I can see where I’m headed. Only if we trust His infinite love (1 John 4:8-10), absolute power (Genesis 17:1, etc.), and complete wisdom (Psalm 139:1-18) can we fully experience the fountain of His blessings (Song of Solomon 4:15; Jeremiah 2:13; 17:13), being in His perfect will.

But if we try to do it ourselves, whether “it” is being saved, serving God, or loving others as He loves us, we are doomed to failure. How many people want to put off trusting Christ until they “clean up their act” or “get it all together”? How many new Christians put off witnessing to others until they learn “enough” about the Bible? Yet all that reasoning is futile because none of us is capable of doing anything in our own strength (2 Corinthians 12:9).

As Bible-believing Christians, we know that we are saved by God’s freely given gift of grace through our faith, not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9). There is nothing we can do to earn our way to Heaven, and any attempt to do that is an insult to God, Who gave His only Son as the perfect Sacrifice to pay for all our sins (John 3:16; Romans 3:23-25; 1 John 2:2). On the cross, He said “it is finished,” (John 19:30) because he paid our debt in full, once and for all, to reconcile sinful man to Holy God (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).

The tremendous relief many feel at the moment of salvation, far more refreshing than any earthly equivalent of the Nestea plunge, comes from leaving our burdens of sin and guilt behind and releasing them to Him, freeing us to receive His great blessings. In our gratitude, relief, and worship, it is natural to want to serve God by good works (James 2:17-26; Philippians 2:12). But there lurks the trap of feeling we need to work to please God or to figure out on our own how to serve Him.

Praise God that His love is infinite, so He can’t love us any less even when we fail Him, and He can’t love us any more when we work hard to please Him. As a loving Father, He places no pressure on us, yet sometimes we collapse under the self-imposed pressure to try in the flesh to work “for” Him. But paradoxically, the harder we work, the less we trust in Him. Only complete surrender to His will (James 4:7) and faith in His power to accomplish His good work through us (1 Corinthians 15:58; Philippians 1:6) allows His perfect plan to flow through our life (Ephesians 2:10; Jeremiah 29:11).

Saul of Tarsus learned that the hard way. As a religious zealot, he thought he was pleasing God by persecuting and killing Christians, for he did not accept Jesus as the Son of God. Finally, when Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, he recognized that He was God and surrendered completely to Jesus Christ as Lord of his life. The glorious light of Christ blinded him, perhaps in part so that he would have to rely on faith and not on his own vision (Acts 9:1-18).

Jesus gave Saul the new name of Paul, and more importantly, He gave Him new life, just as He does to everyone who asks Him (Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13). Except for Jesus Himself, Paul is the best Biblical example of what God can do through a fully surrendered life. Yet even Paul had the daily battle with his own desires and his own flesh (Romans 7:12-25) and had to put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18) to die daily to self (1 Corinthians 15:31).

May He empty us of self, leaving us as a conduit through which His Living Water can flow to others. May we remember that it’s not about what we can do, but about Who He is and what He does through us! May we not be afraid to take the plunge headlong into the rushing current of His will, for the reward of a surrendered life is blissfully exhilarating!

© 2015 Laurie Collett