I don’t know how stressed you are feeling at the moment. Lockdown has been strange. For some of you it may actually be less stressful to work at home than have to go into an office. For others the last year has felt like a nightmare of home-schooling and not having the support of being able to sit down with someone for a coffee. I have no doubt that the pandemic will have strained many relationships and left some feeling totally isolated.
So, at this time of
increased stress is your faith making you feel more stressed and less happy or
less stressed and more happy?
I am going to suggest
that if our church makes its members feel more stressed and less happy rather
than less stressed are more happy then maybe we are misrepresenting that
Christian life. I am going to suggest that
if being a Christian makes you feel more stressed and less happy rather than
less stressed and more happy it may be that you have misunderstood the massage
of Jesus.
Afterall Jesus says, ‘Come to me, all who labour and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. For my
yoke is easy, and my burden is light’ (Matthew 11:28-29).
Religious
leaders will always be tempted to make you busy
The author Arian Plass
puts it like this, ‘some Christians make people feel miserable and guilty and
they regularly check that their victims don’t backslide into happiness.’ I must admit that I laughed when I heard
that! That is just like the Pharisees of
Jesus’ day! As if there were not enough
laws in the Old Testament they added their own, and they questioned the faith
of anyone who couldn’t keep up with their proud sense of outward righteousness.
Why did they do
that? Well partly because they had no
compassion for people, but mostly because it made them feel good about
themselves. There are few things that
make us feel more superior to people than working harder than them. It is all about the congratulation that we
can receive as we show ourselves to be labouring and heavy laden.
This is actually a
damager for us in Limerick Baptist Church.
For example, myself and the elders are making a concerted effort at the
moment to encourage as many people as possible to join small groups. The reason for this is that we feel that
small groups have a unique way of connecting people and can be the focus for pastoral
care. But supposing you are currently
working twelve hours a day or have exhausting family commitments. You might feel that being asked to join a
small group is being placed with another heavy burden. The most spiritual thing for you to do may be
to say ‘no’ and to refuse to feel guilty for having said ‘no’.
Perhaps the most tempting
area for a church to use rules and guilt is in the area of financial giving. In the Old Testament there was a system of
tithes that was connected with the sacrifices and temple. The Pharisees loved to think about the rules
for tithing. They even tithed their
garden herbs. What was Jesus’ verdict of
their giving? ‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill
and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and
mercy and faithfulness. These you ought
to have done without neglecting the others’ (Matthew 23:23). The New Testament teaching on giving is not to
present you with a percentage of your income but to give you an inclination of
the heart: ‘Each one must give as he has
decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a
cheerful giver’ (2 Corinthians 9:7).
Never listen to anyone’s criticism or applause of what you give, for it
is entirely between you and God!
So many good ideas can
end up crushing us if we are not careful.
I’m currently doing something that I should have done before—I am working
through the Bible in a year. It is
really blessing me. I find that the more
you study the Bible the more fuel you take onboard in which to enjoy praising
God. But can you see how such a plan
could turn into a dead obligation? Can
you see how doing something like that could become a source of boasting,
superiority and pride? The devil will be
happy for you to spend all you hours studying the Bible if it serves to make
you arrogant. This is one of the reasons
why I avoid telling people how long they should spend praying a day, and yet I
believe that there will be nothing that will refresh and grow your soul like
the discipline of prayer!
I am not saying that we
should never do anything that is hard or inconvenient. But I think we misrepresent the beauty of the
New Covenant if we simply focus on obligations and outward performance. I do think that a disciplined Christian life
will bless us, but it will also tempt us to the sin of pride.
If you want to be happy
in your faith ask God to help you live it from the inside out.
A physiatrist in America
examined a number of studies and discovered people who said that they believed
in God but did not put their faith into practice had higher stress levels than
the general population. Whereas those
who say that they believe in God put their faith into practice had lower stress
levels than the general population. Part
of Shalom and rest is found in action.
Jesus
wants us to pursue our joy
Sacrifice and discipline
are good, but that have no value if they are not done in love and in the
pursuit of joy.
The reason I am labouring
this point is because our attitude to work and rest reflects our understanding
of the heart of Jesus. The burden-giving
Pharisees were harsh and proud. In
direct contrast Jesus is gentle and lowly.
The Pharisees simply wanted to make you busy. In Jesus you will find rest for your
soul. Their religion focused on what we
do for God. Jesus spoke primarily of
what he would do for us. The Pharisees
were simply about doing. Jesus is more
concerned about being. Think of this in
terms of the cross. As an old song puts
it: ‘Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling.’ As a new song puts it: ‘Jesus paid it all.’
We all know that what we believe
affects what we do. What is less known
is that the Bible teaches that what we do affects what we believe. ‘If anyone’s will is to do God’s will [doing],
he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my
own authority [knowing]’ (John 17:7).
If our Christian life
just makes us busy, then we will continue to believe that Jesus is a hard task
master. But if we pursue joy, then we
will know that Jesus has our back. Maybe
you need to repent of labouring too hard, and as a result having hard thoughts
about Jesus!
I am not saying that
discipline and sacrifice do not matter.
I am saying that the purpose of discipline and sacrifice is so that we
might experience happiness in Jesus. The
greatest act of sacrifice that the world has ever seen was motivated by
unparalleled love and from a desire to
experience joy. ‘Therefore, since we are
surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that
hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the
race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the
pioneer and perfecter of faith. Who for the joy set before him
endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand
of the throne of God’ (Hebrews:12:1-2).
It brings great glory to Jesus when we seek to be happy in him! Are you pursuing the sort of Christianity
that will bring you pleasure or are you simply going through the motions
because you are fearful of how other Christians will judge you?
Jesus needs nothing from us. He doesn’t need our work, our time or our
money. He doesn’t call us to make
sacrifices in order to make us miserable.
He calls us to make sacrifices so that we can be filled with gladness. He is not seeking to add a burden to our
already stressed lives. In fact, our
sacrifices are less than rubbish if they are done without love and in the
pursuit of our own joy. I am not saying
there isn’t an obligation on us—how can someone hear if no one preaches the
message to them (Romans 10:14)? We
insult him if we do not let him make us happy.
Financial giving is something that we are to do to make us
cheerful. Even suffering can be joyful
as we remember that God is using it to make us more like Jesus. I am not saying that if you find teaching
Sunday School frustrating you automatically pack it in—ask God to help you
enjoy it, ask him to help rejoice in the privilege of being frustrated for the
sake of these precious children and, if you conclude that this is not actually
your calling, ask him to send other harvesters into this field. Sharing your faith with your work-mates,
family, neighbours and friends may terrify you, but I am certain the happiest
Christians are those who do this regularly. Even
rejection for the gospel gives us the thrill of following a noble path of those
in the past who have been despised for their faith. Prayer is to be pursued so that we can
delight in fellowship with God. Church
is designed for our encouragement. God’s
people are to be our joy. The Bible is a
book that uniquely changes us as we listen to it.
If you are kept busy by the need to please people
then you have a heavy burden on your shoulders.
In particular you must not live to please those who are critical of
you. But Jesus is gentle and lowly in
heart. He takes our imperfect attempts
to follow him and makes them beautiful through grace. He is readily pleased with us. He is not reluctant to say, ‘well done, my
good and faithful servant.’
There was a certain businessman by the name of Mr.
Abercrombie. He was a successful man,
who attended church and even had a weekly business lunch where he would invite
his friends and have a Christian speaker.
On one occasion he invited a well-known Christian
who worked mostly with prisoners. This
speaker opened his Bible and talked about the fact that we have a problem with
sin. Some of the businessmen began to
shuffle uncomfortably in their seats.
The very first questions that was asked after the
talk was: ‘You don’t really think that we are sinners, do you?’ To which the speaker replied, ‘I believe that
we are all desperately sinful. What is
inside of us is ugly. We deserve hell,
and we would get it but for the sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins.’
Mr. Abercrombie lost it: ‘Well, I don’t know
about that. I am a good person. I have been good all my life. I go to church. I get exhausted spending all my time doing
good works.’
You could have heard a pin drop. All eyes were on the speaker, who said, ‘if
you believe that Mr Abercrombie, and I hate to say this because you’ll
certainly never have me back to speak again, you are for all your good works
further away from the kingdom of God than the people I work with in prison who
are aware of their sins’ There was a
long embarrassed silence, until someone politely changed the conversation.
But that was not the end of the story. As they were leaving Abercrombie grabbed the
speaker by the arm and brought him into his study. ‘I don’t have what you have,’ said Abercrombie. ‘I know’, replied the speaker, ‘but you can.’ Soon both men were on their knees as Mr.
Abercrombie handed his life over to Jesus and found the rest that he
needed. No longer would he exhaust
himself trying to prove his goodness for all to see, but he would joyfully give
himself for others because Christ had joyfully given his life for him.
Conclusion
This is so important
because it has everything to do with who we think Jesus is.
If our church makes its
members feel more stressed and less happy, rather than less stressed are more
happy then maybe we are misrepresenting that Christian life. If being a Christian makes you feel more
stressed and less happy rather than less stressed and more happy then it may be
that you have misunderstood the massage of Jesus.
The great
nineteenth-century Baptist pastor, Charles Spurgeon, tells a story that
illustrates this:
One day another minister
in his church went to the house of an elderly widow with some money from the
poor relief fund. He knocked and knocked
on the door and yet no one answered.
Later he found that the widow had been inside but had not come to the
door. When he asked her why she had not
come to the door she replied, ‘I heard the knocking alright, but I hid. I thought it was the rent man coming around
to evict me for my rent arrears.’
Maybe that is why we are
slow to listen to Jesus. He comes and
knocks on the door of our hearts, but we pretend to be deaf because we think he
is like the rent man coming to make us pay the debt of all our moral
failings. Maybe we think that if Jesus
had the opportunity to sit down face to face with us all he would do is remind
us how useless we are and simply tell us to try harder. But he wants us to open the door because he
has blessings to share with us. He knows
that we are sinful, but he died that we might be forgiven. On the cross he said ‘it is finished’ and
therefore there is no debt left to pay. We are poor and in need, and he is rich and
generous. He comes not to take but to
give. He comes in love and with grace. Jesus says, ‘Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn
from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my
burden is light’ (Matthew 11:28-29).
No comments:
Post a Comment