By Micayla Angel
The title of chapter 7 is Believing for the Blessings, and in it Pastor Chuck describes his struggles as an early Christian with understanding the concept of God’s grace and the importance of faith in receiving God’s blessings. He talks about his earnest desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit, but he had been misled to believe that “God only fills a clean vessel,” so the pressure was on him to become clean enough for the Lord to use. This misguided teaching cost him many years of confusion, doubt, agony, and striving as he witnessed others around him being filled and used by the Lord. Others who were not as “holy” and “disciplined” as he was. But by God’s grace, he did not give up.
And I want to highlight this point actually, even though it wasn’t a main point in the book. That despite the disillusionment and discouragement, he didn’t throw in the towel. I can imagine how the enemy may have delighted in keeping him stuck, focused on the wrong things, growing restless and maybe even resentful of others who seemed to be “getting it” without as much work. He could’ve been understandably taken out by this. The confusion could’ve led to strongholds of doubt, cynicism, anger at God. He doesn’t specifically say this, but I would imagine the Holy Spirit was right there with him, drawing him, fighting for him, working to set him free from the lies and confusion. It was as if deep down, he knew there was more to his relationship with God. He knew he was missing something, and the Lord graced him with the tenacity to keep at it until he experienced the truth.
May that be a lesson to us as well. I’m sure all of us can relate to a similar situation at one point in our spiritual walk. When our questions go unanswered for so long, when we were blind to certain aspects of the truth, when we feel burned out, stuck in a rut. May we not listen to the thoughts suggesting we give up, give ourselves a break, or just settle for a mediocre relationship with God. The enemy is always seeking to take advantage of our misunderstanding, our impatience, our incomplete perspective, and that line of thinking can be so easy to slip into. When we are struggling with the same issue repeatedly, when it seems like we are not seeing the results we want, it is so natural to become discouraged and give in to that discouragement. But I pray that the Holy Spirit would keep that fire alive in our soul. That even though we may become mentally exhausted and discouraged, the Spirit would remind us that the fight is worth it. To our natural perspective, sometimes it doesn’t seem worth it. But God, in His grace, uses these situations to develop in us the ability to see with eyes of faith. As Paul encourages us in 2 Cor 4:17 :
“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Let us be like Pastor Chuck, who kept seeking, praying, reading his Word, and eventually came to Galatians 3:2-3, where Paul asks:
“I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? 3Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?”
He realized this was a rhetorical question, and at that moment the lightbulb went on in his mind that the Holy Spirit is received by faith, not by works, not by “good behavior.” All this time, he had been trying to figure out what he was doing wrong, what he was lacking in order to receive the Spirit, but the answer was really that simple: He needed to ask in faith. And that’s exactly what he did. He prayed, “Lord, I am going to receive from you now the gift of your Holy Spirit,” and the next moment he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Finally! He recalls, “Once I began to understand the Word, I saw that it wasn’t my righteousness or ability to reach some plateau of holiness that makes me worthy of God’s blessing. God blesses me when I simply trust in Him for His blessings.”
How freeing and yet startling that reality is: that we simply need to believe in God to receive from him. As Heb 11:6 says:
“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
He doesn’t reward those who keep all his rules, those who discipline themselves more than others, or who have done impressive things. We all come to him as equals, as sinners in need of salvation. And maybe this is a hard truth for us to accept sometimes. The enemy does not want us to accept this. Sometimes, even mustering up that little amount of faith might seem like a lot. But, even in that, God does not leave us on our own. The next chapter over, in Heb 12:2, the writer reminds us to “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” So even the little mustard seed of faith that is required to please God is planted there by his Son Jesus. And we are told that Jesus is the perfecter of our faith. So when we find ourselves struggling to take God at His Word, struggling to let go of our tendency to strive, to accomplish, to earn his favor, let us remember to cry out to Jesus to help strengthen our faith. Like the honest prayer from the man in Mark 9:24 who told Jesus:
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
I resonate so much with this earnest, humble prayer. Aren’t we all like this man, a mixture of faith and doubt? That battle of our Spirit and flesh can be so clearly seen in our struggle to have faith. Our flesh gravitates so strongly towards pride- the idea that we need to have something to show for ourselves, comparing ourselves to others, even the temptation to give up because we can’t handle our constant shortcomings- it most always comes back to our pride. And yet the answer is to set our gaze and our hope on the One whose righteousness pleases the Father on our behalf- Jesus Christ.
Chuck explains, “The only thing holding back God’s blessings in your life is your refusal to trust him for those blessings.”
In James 4:2, we are told that we “do not have because you do not ask God.” But he also explains that the way we ask is important. Earlier, in James 1:6, he tells us,
“But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
I’m sure we’ve all experienced what it’s like to be blown and tossed by the wind, and it is sure not fun. When we start to listen to our questions and doubts more than the truth of God’s Word, we allow ourselves to be blown around, sometimes for a long time. For some reason, simplicity often seems suspicious. Like it’s too good to be true. Our cynical minds can so easily get us in trouble, because faith runs contrary to our natural way of thinking. But we must be willing to lay our doubts, our confusions, our misunderstandings, our worries on the altar and surrender them to the Lord in faith, choosing to take Him at His Word. Choosing to submit to His design. Trusting that we will see the other side in time, and that someday our questions will be answered or will basically become irrelevant in God’s presence.
I think so many things that trip us up in this life will literally melt away the second we stand before God. And actually, that is the concept of faith- bridging the gap between our present state and our future eternal state. Our view of eternity, of heaven, of God’s fulfilled promises becoming so big, so real, so sure, that we train ourselves to count them as already in our grasp. Already ours. And in many different ways, we do taste the firstfruits of those promises even now. We experience glimpses of heaven on earth. Every work of the Holy Spirit is a glimmer of the glory to come. An old English preacher named Thomas Manton wrote that “Grace is the beginning of glory, and glory is but grace perfected.” (By Faith, p 15)
And Paul explains in 2 Cor 3:18:
“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
So Chuck ends chapter 3 with the warning that when we become filled with the Holy Spirit, when we begin to grasp God’s earnest desire to empower us, regardless of our weaknesses, we should expect spiritual warfare to erupt. The enemy wants to keep us deceived and ineffective. But when we realize the simplicity of believing and accepting God’s plan to use us, we in a sense are entering a different stage of spiritual life. So the next chapter, chapter 8, is appropriately titled, “The Struggle Begins.”
Chuck talks about how we all struggle in the fight against our flesh. And many Christians fight a losing battle with their flesh for their entire spiritual walk. They keep trying to find victory through their own efforts. How many times have I walked out of church on Sunday feeling so pumped up, so inspired, that I think, “This week will be different. This week I will be better. I won't give in to the discouragement, I’ll preach the truth to myself, I’ll pray more.” Only to find myself in a completely different mindset Monday morning. Falling right back into my usual patterns, my usual struggles still getting the best of me. What I have realized time and time again is that personal motivation is a very unreliable source of change. It’s great when it’s there, but it’s very fleeting. And even when it does come, it can end up feeding my pride, causing me to fool myself into thinking I did something worthy on my own. And how often do I wait for a feeling of motivation to attempt a necessary change in my life? Many times, I find myself thinking, “I’ll wait to do that until I’m in a better mood, until I feel more inspired.” It could be something spiritual like reading the Bible, or even chores around the house. For me, this is an area where I struggle with surrendering control and trusting that God in His grace will provide what I need to honor him. It’s not on me to change myself in order to please Him. My mood or lack of motivation does not need to influence my ability or responsibility to obey the Lord if the Holy Spirit is truly empowering me.
Paul’s classic example of struggling with the flesh is something we can all relate to: Rom 7:15, 19-25
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Chuck points out something Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “What a wretched man I am! What strategy should I try next? What podcast or book should I look up? Who should I call for advice?” He realizes that this problem is beyond human help. God may certainly use various resources and people around us to lead us and encourage us along the way, but we must recognize Him alone as our true hope.
We can’t deliver ourselves from this “body of death” as Paul calls it. Chuck says that, “Our help doesn’t come until we realize the answer is far beyond our own resources. Crying out to God in weakness is the secret to our deliverance.” And this can initially be very counterintuitive. We want to believe we know what we are doing, that we have the answers. That we’ve walked with Him long enough now that we shouldn’t be getting stuck anymore. But that is just not the case. I think a more accurate sign of spiritual maturity is not having less struggles, but the speed which we get on our knees and admit our inability to overcome without the Lord’s help. The humility to cry out for His power before even attempting to proceed on our own. We will never outgrow our need for God’s help, the opposite is actually true. The more we grow in our walk, we realize with increasing awareness the weakness and hopelessness of our state without divine intervention.
Chuck explains that “the biblical prescription for resolving the conflict between flesh and Spirit is not personal discipline or self-control. Power over the flesh comes only through a Spirit-controlled life.” The Holy Spirit is the one who can produce the fruit of self control and all the other fruits of the Spirit to equip us to resist the flesh. These are not things we can muster up on our own, at least not for long. So we must become very comfortable with asking the Lord to strengthen us on a daily basis. He wants us to seek Him so He can bless us and fill us with His Spirit.
1 John 5:14:
“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”
We know it is His will for us to be victorious over our flesh, victorious over the enemy, so let our prayer life reflect that. We can have confidence coming to him when we are praying in line with His will.
1 John 5:4:
“And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
So faith and grace walk hand in hand. Our faith is evidence of God’s grace, and God’s grace is received through faith. As Paul states in Rom 5:1-2:
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
So notice how he says, “we obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand…” Faith is the key to God’s grace. We don’t need to understand it, we must simply submit ourselves to this truth and trust the Lord will deliver on what His Word says.
So if there are some of us here who are in a season of wrestling with something today, I pray we will be like Jacob, who, when he was wrestling with God in Gen 32:26, declared, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” That was a statement of faith, of determination, desperation. Wrestling is an unavoidable part of this life, but let us be those who cling to the Lord in faith, trusting that His grace will see us through to the other side.