Flesh Versus ... Service?

Disobedience yesterday breeds self-centeredness today without a gospel reorientation. Disobedience breeds contempt, hatred, and apathy with such virility that I find it almost impossible to serve others when I am living in any type of perpetual sin. This verse in I Timothy helps to explain it, “But she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.” Though it’s written about widows in particular, I think that it points to the grave temptation to self-indulgence that those of us who live alone (or who tend to be introverts) will face. I find this to be one of the primary ways that I am rendered useless in serving the body. Galatians 5:13-14 says, "For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Paul Tripp writes, "The passage is particularly helpful because it tells us that the opposite of serving in love is not a lack of love and a lack of service, but an active indulging of the sinful nature! Either I am living as a servant of the Lord and accepting His call to serve those around me or I am living to gratify the cravings of the sinful nature and expecting others to satisfy those cravings as well" (“Speaking Redemptively” The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Vol. 16:3).

I am spending some time praying through where I am indulging the flesh, though some of these areas require little illumination. I don't just want victory over my sin so that my life will run more smoothly. I want a victory that enables me to live and to serve as a testimony to Christ's power over sin and death. I don't want a victory that improves me; I want a victory that transforms me.

But this means that I must be...transformed (which sounds painful). Father, enable me to recieve with meekness the implanted word which is able to save my soul" (James 1:21). Teach me what it means to look not only to my own interests but also to the interests of others. I don't do it naturally, even with the people I love the most, and I can't do it on my own. Help me to walk tomorrow in obedience and service--all to your glory. Amen.

Hi, My Name is Michele.

Over the past year, I've found it hard to meet people. Though I've never considered myself an extrovert, I always enjoyed those initial interactions. It was a chance to make a careful and controlled presentation of myself—the Michele that is gilded with southern charm. That simple, "My name is Michele" has always been a confident assertion for me.

In my heart, I stopped extending my hand to strangers about a year ago. Sure, I’ve met dozens if not hundreds of people since then. The smile, the handshake, the pleasantries were all in place, but the self—the heart—went into hiding. Though it was never a conscious decision, I seem to have embargoed all new relationships until the return of the old health and confidence.

I look around my office, my church, and my life, and I see swarms of people who intrigue or inspire me—people to whom I would have reached out a year ago. But I slink away from them now, dragging a heart full of fear behind me. They don't know why I limp down the hallway and wear these ridiculous shoes; they likely wouldn't guess the path that these feet are walking. I don't want to just unload my story on them, but my pride cannot bear the thought that they would assume that this is just how I am.

I liked to think of my three-inch heels as an extension of myself, as a part of what made me “Michele.” But I now see that I was sowing lies. I was training myself to believe that my value—both real and perceived—lay in a pleasing presentation of myself. It seemed harmless, but lies never are. Have I, as a human being, changed fundamentally over the past year? Of course not! Why, then, this sudden reticence to love, to serve, to move boldly away from myself and into the lives of others? Let's call it what it is--it's just plain, old-fashioned pride. And that's just plain, old-fashioned sin.

If I suddenly find myself to be boast-less, then it is fair to ask what I was boasting in to begin with. Jeremiah 9:24 says, “Let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me.” The truth is that, over the course of the past year, I have come to know and to love the Lord more. Should I not therefore enter into his world with more confidence and humility instead of less confidence and humiliation? Yes, I should. But I am confessing to you that I have not.

In John 8:32-33, Jesus says to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” If I abide in God’s word, I am not a slave to the deceitfulness of sin. If, on the other hand, I abide in my "harmless" lies, then I will never be free—free to love, to serve, to live in the freedom of the glory of the children of God. And that is what I am! I am a child of God, and I have not "received the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear" but have instead "received the Spirit of adoption" (Rom 8:15-17). When I extend my hand, then, I can "kick off my shoes" and do so in the name of my Father--confident in him as my unfaltering righteousness and my immutable worth.