Serving Ourselves

(This is a repost from two years ago but of general interest.  Initially, it was an answer to an email from a young Russian lady.)

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Regard all things with a grain of salt, no matter the source, save for the Bible - and that includes anything I or anyone else tells you.  You alone are responsible before God for your choices - I for whatever I tell you.  If I am admonishing you, it is to be extremely careful with how you choose to live your life, whom you listen to, how you serve our Lord.

We have such finite understanding of the Lord, often only noticing His leading in the past tense.  We live under the control of a God within two wills.  His first is what is called His determinative will.  This covers all those things He desires for us and are well documented in our Bible: how to deal with one another, how to live our lives, etc.  For example hunting spouses whom are already Christian, women ministering to women/men to men, paying your taxes, obeying the law, attempting to live in peace with those around you, etc.

Then you have the permissive will of God.  Here we are dealing in the gray areas of life and it grows harder without discernment to know which way to go.  Sometimes the Bible does not have the answers, sometime we only have a vague direction in which to go.  So, which church should you attend?  Well, the Bible tells you it must be based on Him and nothing else, it should be involved in the raising up and training of the believer, it sponsors missions, it cares for the widows and orphans, does not support sin within the body, etc.  Ok, that is not a whole lot to go on here other than it is service oriented!  It does not say, "Stay away from Pastor XYZ."  But, you must look at the teachings of any church, no matter how traditional, and evaluate where they are walking in their relationship to God.  If it appears their emphasis is upon themselves (health and wealth gospel) - you are not dealing with a Christian church - be they Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Catholic or unaligned. Yah, sounds harsh, and way too many of my friends are wrapped up in these churches, but I have to answer to God for my knowledge of His Word and to my understanding: their teachings do not come from the Bible but from man and his desire to control his environment.  My friends are equally accountable to God for their decisions to be there under this teaching (be that right or wrong for them!).

And given these two wills, one is often left with the questions as to what is exactly right or wrong.  Let us take an example.  You are going to go to St. Petersburg on a mission of some unknown period of time.  Ok, you feel strongly led and are sure it is of God.  Only one problem, you are newly married and your husband does not feel so drawn - but does tell you that it is ok for you to go - after a lengthy fight.  Are you in the will of God or not?  If you say “Yes”, well, you have just blown a stack of scripture concerning your requirement to be with your husband and the running your household.  If you say “No”, you will feel betrayed on the inside and question if you should have ever gotten married.  This is the kind of dilemma I was referring to.  We make choices all of the time and sometimes those choices bring with them dilemmas we never anticipated - and thus are borne all sorts of frustrations with God, of our own making.

If you are interested, here is a real situation:  She alone felt the need to serve in the mission field; her husband has no desire at all but is willing to let her go.  But, even if she does go - she will be serving herself and not God.  How can I say this?  Because, my Bible tells me that God has limited himself to working within a set of rules and her abandonment of her family, even with their permission, is still wrong.  Yes, you can argue from the perspective of logic as to why what she did was the right thing to do, but luckily God does not use man's logic.  And, the outcome clearly showed what she did was completely wrong - they almost ended up in divorce when she got back and are now in counseling to get back on track with one another.  So long term solution is he should have gone with her and if he is unable to, she should have stayed home - to err on the safe side if nothing else.  If God wanted her on the mission field, He will convince her husband to be there with her........

So, I am hoping you are getting the idea here that we are free to make choices but which choices we do make must always err on the side of caution or we will be serving ourselves and not Him.  If this lady had been in submission to her husband, yes she would never have gone to the mission field.  Yes, a great deal of good was accomplished by her being where she went, but you know, God does not specifically need anyone of us to accomplish what He wills.  If her husband could not go, she should have stayed home with him - God would have raised up another to do what needed to be done.  But, this is no excuse for not serving, just realizing that we need to realign our eyes to see what it is we should be doing within the context of where we are.  You can be the best evangelist there ever was, but if you are working outside of the Bible and the Spirit's leading, you are only serving yourself.

Ok, an example closer to home and painful for me.

Our church is going through an expansion phase.  Everyone is excited, everyone is gung-ho, I believe everyone is dead wrong.  Why?  Ok, the mission of the church is outreach and training of the believers.  Well, so far so good.  But, the first thing my church did was to kill the annual Nativity.  Why?  Because it would be inconvenient to hold it while there was construction going on.  Oh, and by the way, once the construction is complete, there will be no place to hold it in the future.  Ok, no Nativity, fine, most churches do not have one anyway.  So what is real the issue here?  It was and remains my church's only real outreach to the community.  It drew people driving by to stop and sometimes question what this ‘Christianity’ thing is really about.  The kid's teachers and friends would attend and sometimes start going to church (not necessarily ours).  Now we will have a big building, which no doubt will always be filled every Sunday, but what about the community outreach?  This continues to be unaddressed.  Is there a reason we could not build or buy a satellite facility somewhere else?  Yes, ‘they’ want a bigger church because ‘they’ are completely sold out to the approach Rick Warren has taken.  But our pastor is not Rick Warren - his walk and ministry are not necessarily what we should be following.  But, this argument is completely lost on those whom lead our church.  They are literally blinded by the concept of Warren’s success and wanting to duplicate it.  And that is completely wrong and not found in my Bible..... 

Following someone else’s program is not following God’s leading.  See the point now?  I am sure God will continue to bless my church, but what part of His blessing will be lost because our eldership’s motivation is wrong?  That is what I worry about for my church and those I feel led to share with.

Even with this letter the same could be true.  If my motivation is to show how smart I am and how dumb everyone else is - that would be sin.  If I am a control freak trying to draw allegiance of others to my way of thinking - that would be sin.  If I have a personal vendetta against Pastor XYZ - that would be sin.  But, if I am trying to share a concern, no matter how unpopular, I am being obedient.  You must discern which is true and go the direction you feel is right.  And, you alone are answerable for your decision.