Venom or Victory?

Posted: June 20, 2009

I took the picture above when I was on a fishing trip in my Kayak. I had been in my Yak for a while and needed to stretch my legs, so I went ashore and as I was exploring I found this little guy. Little guy with big fangs!

I love snakes. They fascinate me. I love the scales and tough skin God designed them with, their “cat” eyes they have when they are the poisonous type, and the way they freakishly smell your presence with their tongue; like this here Copperhead. I just love admiring their beauty - God’s great design!

As a 11 year old kid I would catch snakes in the wild, teach/train them not to bite, and then sell them to pet shops for a little spending money in the summer, or anytime I could catch em :0)

So for most of my life I’ve loved snakes - unless they’re poisonous. Therefore, the Copperhead above was no friend - and I kill ALL snakes that aren’t my friend. Even though it may be scary sometimes, I still kill them because I don’t want them to bite, infect or kill another human - or me for that matter. 

PETA would not have liked the result of my encounter with this Copperhead... but that’s o.k... I’m not a PETA fan :0) but I also don’t like anything to suffer... so, I sent him to snake heaven quickly, as you see below.

It reminds me a lot of the sin in our lives. 

As we read the Scriptures and God reveals the sin

in our hearts, He intends for us to confess it,

repent of it, to forsake it, to kill it!

But many times we want it for a pet, we like the 

way it makes us feel, we say 

“It’s no big deal if I have this in my life, 

besides, I’m not hurting anyone...”

When I saw this Copperhead I intended to kill it

because it is a very dangerous snake. If it didn’t kill

someone that it bit, it would surly cause them a lot

of pain; I know because Pastor Kevin has lived through that himself. (Note to self... always wear shoes, not sandals, when feeding the pigs; thanks for the lesson brother ;o)

So, I asked myself why I don’t treat sin the same way I do poisonous snakes. 

My answer?  Because I enjoy the poison of sin running through my veins. It (sin) feels good, but only for a little while - then it’s poison spreads and starts to visibly take its toll - ending in imminent death.  

Before you write me off - can I tell you that you’re the same? You see, we sin because we want to. We sin and we know it’s going to destroy us, we sin and we know it’s going to cause us pain, we sin and we know it’s going to hurt others... yet we still sin.

So, how do we “kill it”? How do we escape the venom and have victory instead?

Through loving Christ! 

Our love for God must be so great, we must thirst to please Him so much, that we can cry out like king David and say Psalm 63:3 “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.”

Because glorifying Him is better than anything we could ever attain! That everything else is LOSS compared to knowing Jesus!

Why don’t we choose to do this more often? I believe it’s because we don’t love Him enough. Jesus said in John 14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments.”

If we truly love Jesus enough we would strive to obey Him, to honor Him, to pursue Him as “water in a dry and weary land”... 

I would ask that you not let sin rule in you body - because it’s poison, it’s death, it will kill you! And, if you are a Christian, you’re already dead to it! But you will always fight sin as long as you’re on earth. 

So do that - FIGHT IT, KILL IT, DON’T BE IT’S FRIEND; IT WILL BITE YOU AND FILL YOU WITH ITS POISON! 

DON’T LET IT BITE AND CONTROL YOU - KILL IT.

Meditate on this passage, as I have today, I pray it helps you as it is helping me.

Romans 6:12-14

12 Let not g sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 h Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but i present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For j sin k will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

PT

How do you talk with suffering people who are in the midst of you?

Posted: May 13, 2009

The following was taken directly from www.desiringgod.org and I thought it was greatly worth reposting. 

My heart is also conveyed in Piper’s sermon below, therefore I have no issue encouraging you to take and heed it as I did.

PT

How do you talk about suffering with people who are in the midst of it?

Listen   |   Download   |   Podcast

By John Piper

August 20, 2008

The following is an edited transcript of the audio.

How do you talk about suffering with people who are in the midst of it?

I think you need a pastoral, wise, tender, patient, and discerning heart when you approach a suffering person, especially one who has just entered profound shock and pain (like the immediate death of a loved one, or the announcement that so-and-so has cancer, or a child that's been born with a profound disability).

There are situations where the reality has landed with such force that what's needed first is support, before explanation. And you need to come in alongside with a lot of simple affirmations that "I am here." Like Job's friends, seven days and not a word. Those were good days for Job. Good days for Job. It's when they opened their stupid mouths and began offering inadequate explanations which put Job in the guilty seat that they became false comforters.

So to be there physically and offer a lot of touch, prayer, support, and common burden bearing (like providing meals, cleaning the house, and doing the practical things that need to be done when you're at the hospital all day long)—those kinds of things communicate the love of God in a very powerful way.

And then we try to discern when they are ready to hear more biblical truth. You probably should start with the massive truth "God is for you. Believe him." They may not feel like believing him, but you just keep saying the truth, "God is for you. Christ died for you. 'He who did not spare his own Son ... how will he not with him graciously give us all things?' (Romans 8:32)" And then, as they perhaps press you over time for why this has happened, then you can move towards truths that feel, at the beginning, more difficult.

I mentioned some time ago during a recording that there are a couple families in our church right now that are beautiful testimonies of the fact that it does take time to come to rest in the sovereignty of God in the midst of great crisis. So I want to give people time.

I've got this phrase that I learned from the book of Job that talks about "words for the wind" (Job 6:26). And I think it means that sometimes you say things in the midst of a crisis that nobody should take seriously. They should be words for the wind.

Say you're sitting and listening to somebody and they say something like, "I don't think God can love me and do this." Well if you know that person, and they've walked with God a long time, instead of letting that word go in your ear, lodge down, and produce doubts in you about their faith, you should just let the wind blow that word away. You should tell yourself, "That didn't come from their heart. That's a word for the wind. Just let it go." Because they're going to regret saying that, and they didn't really mean it. It's just that they don't have words right now to express their pain, and that seemed like one that would work.

I like to bring people along far enough so that they don't ever say things like that, but as a pastor I don't have the luxury of dictating what my people say. I just want to be patient and helpful.

If a person is finding no comfort in believing that God is involved even in our catastrophes, I think it helps to point to the opposite, to see whether the opposite of God's involvement is more comforting to them than his involvement. I think what people might need to hear at a point like that is, "If God is not powerful enough to stop that accident, what help can he be to you now?"

In other words, get people to think just a little beyond the immediate statement of theological problem that they're raising, so that the consequences of rejecting a sovereign God are felt to be as awesome, ominous, and terrible as they are. And how precious it is that we have a God on our side right now in our crisis who can, in his sovereignty, work everything together for our good, which we wouldn't have if he were the kind of God who couldn't have stopped that accident.

We should be patient with folks and not assume that their windy words are the last word.

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