How to Hit the Mark

Talk about missing the mark. Yesterday I played basketball with some guys who play better than I do. It was exciting. I started off hitting some shots, so they thought I must be pretty good. Then they started passing the ball to me a lot and encouraging me to shoot. At that point, I missed...and missed...and missed...and missed...and missed. It was a little deflating.

If you heard my message last Sunday about the deceptiveness of sin, you know that sin makes us feel deflated. The struggle is real. Jesus defined our human problem this way: our spirit is willing to hit the mark, but our flesh is too weak. Life, society, and human history are full of continual deflation—not because of a lack of good intentions, but because of the weakness of our flesh. 

In my sermon I shared how we can keep from losing hope and being overcome by that deflation. We need to rest assured in the forgiveness and faithfulness of Jesus. We need to remain in the truth by developing a love for the truth. We need to encourage one another in the right direction since we’re so prone to wander. And we need to rejoice and respond when we feel conviction, because it is proof that the Spirit of God is working in us. 

I want to add one more important thing we can do to keep from deflation. I was reminded of this important thing this week when someone asked me for advice on how to stay healthy in relationship with God and the world around him. I told him that he needs to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry” from his life. This phrase comes from Dallas Willard, but the idea comes from the Scriptures. When God created all the good in the world, He eliminated all hurry on the seventh day. When God gave the Ten Commandments to His people to help them be right with Him and the world around them, He told them to eliminate hurry one day a week. In our technology, accomplishment, and material addicted society, there really is no time or space for God to break in. It usually takes tragedy or illness to cause us to pause. Yet, even in a pandemic we can find ways to get over-busy. 

What we can do is make space for God’s love to come to us and go through us. If we don’t have blocks of time on our calendars that are set aside for rest (and I’m not talking about sleep), we can schedule it in. If we don’t, we’ll have a much harder time hitting the mark. 

Though our spirits might be willing, the lack of rest will cause our flesh to be that much weaker. And our kids, our spouse, our friends and family, and a world that doesn’t know Jesus, really need us to hit the mark. Whenever we hit the mark, the world experiences a little more healing. 

David

Lay It All Down

It was really nice to follow the anxious uncertainty of Tuesday night’s election with the peace of prayer and worship on Wednesday night. We sang all the anxiety, fear, offense and anger out of our souls with lyrics like, “I'm gonna see a victory for the battle belongs to You Lord,” “Yours is the Kingdom, Yours is the power, Yours is the glory forever, Amen,” and “All is for Your glory, all is for Your name, that in all things You may have the first place, that in all things You may have preeminence.”

We laid down the stress we’ve been carrying this year. We laid down our verbal defenses, and the argumentative ammunition we have stockpiled against those who are on the other side. We laid them down because Jesus came and asked us to. He asked us to disarm—to let go of all that we were holding onto with tightly closed fists. He asked us to do this so that He could fill our hands with His love. He wanted us to get rid of our anxiety and anger so that He could fill those places with His compassion and grace. He wanted us to put down our defenses so His love could come in and then go out from us to others. We went to the Father’s house and He both comforted us and reminded us of His command to love one another. 

This doesn’t mean we can’t disagree with others. There is definitely right and wrong. There is Biblical and non-Biblical. There is good fruit and bad fruit. There are good ideas and philosophies, and harmful ideas and philosophies. But above it all, Jesus loved us and gave His life for us when we were totally caught up in harmful ideas and philosophies. We were at enmity with God, we were controlled by the devil and his deceitful schemes, and we were prideful and self-absorbed, hurting God and others without even caring. While we were still sinners, God rescued us, and He is remaking us into His image. Now He commands us to love and give our lives to the people who are caught up in those same old things. 

In order to help us get the love of Jesus into our souls, we sang lyrics like, “You gave your life, I’ll surrender mine. So take this heart, won’t you purify. I’ll raise my voice, I can’t help but sing of the sweetness of your love and your gracious offering.” And then, to finish the night, we thought of the people who have opposed us or hurt us or offended us. We thought of our nation and leaders. We thought of the rich and poor, black, white, and brown. We thought of the people who don’t know Jesus that He is asking us to share His love with, and we sang this over them: “The Lord bless you and keep you, make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn His face towards you and give you peace. May His favor be upon you and a thousand generations, and your family and your children and their children, and their children. Amen!”

I pray those same words over all of the Living Streams family. We need each other so desperately during this time. Our world needs for us to be united in Christ’s love and armed with His compassion and grace, and the truth that sets people free forevermore.

Please stay connected to Jesus, the True Vine, so we all can bear much good fruit in this time of great need. 

David