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| Share Agape for the week of June 23, 2003 |
| The Golden Rule James 4:2�10 �You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives� You adulterous people, don�t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God�That is why Scripture says: �God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.� Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.� If someone asked me: �What�s the most difficult part about being a Christian?� I�d probably answer: �Submission.� When you hear the word submission bantered about, it�s usually in a debate about whether or not wives should submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:24). But when you look more closely at the issue of submission, you�ll find it doesn�t only affect women. We�re all commanded to be submissive to each other�and to the Lord. (That�s what the real �Golden Rule� [Luke 10:27] is all about: loving God so much that we totally give ourselves over to Him.) (Now, some of you may be thinking, �Ack! She�s gonna write about submission?! I think I�ll skip this issue!� Please don�t. Although submission is a very difficult topic, applying it to your life is richly rewarding. I promise. Better yet, God promises.) So many Christians are seeking God�s will and feeling as though they aren�t finding it. So many Christians think their prayers go unanswered. But they completely loose track of this vital fact: Only by submitting to God will you truly discover God�s will. Since I�m an easy target, I�ll use myself as an example. For at least five years, I�ve felt promptings to write a Bible study or devotional and send it out via email. And for at last five years, I put that feeling aside, making excuses about why I couldn�t or shouldn�t. In the meantime, I felt like I didn�t really know God�s will for my life. I didn�t feel like I was doing much for Him, although I certainly felt I had a close relationship with Him. I studied the Bible daily, read what experts had to say about it, and prayed regularly�but something was slightly amiss and I couldn�t quite put my finger on it. When I finally realized that God wanted me to put together an email Bible study, and that if I wanted to obey Him I needed to stop making excuses and just do it, I realized that unless I submitted to God�handing over to Him all my fears and all my pride�I was going to feel �stuck� for a long, long time. If you�re uncomfortable with the topic of submission, you�re not alone. When I first started to think about Biblical submission, my desires battled within me (Ja. 4:1). My ideas about equality and what I *perceived* to be submission couldn�t live comfortably side�by�side. There are several specific things that prevented me from submitting, and I think they�re pretty common among us all�whether we�re male and female. First, there�s the whole issue of pride. Merriam�Webster says the definition of submission is the �condition of being submissive, humble, or compliant.� Humans are prideful by nature, and I don�t think any of us like the idea of being humbled. Yet pride isn�t something that God wants from us (1 Pet. 5:6, Eph. 4:1); it�s a worldly attribute, and �friendship with the world is hatred toward God,� as James says (v.4). The Bible tells us that in order to submit to God, we must first humble ourselves (v.6). Then we�ll find it easier to submit to and be compliant to His will. Once we accomplish this, loving and submitting to each other comes more naturally. Many of us also avoid submission because we tend to equate it with bondage or �being a slave� to someone. Submission does not mean bondage. In fact, submission is really the opposite: When we submit, God empowers us. Fear is another reason I believe we don�t like to think about submission. We tend to worry: �If I totally submit myself to God, maybe He�ll ask me to visit some remote jungle and be a missionary. Or maybe He�ll want me to go work in the city�s mission and be around a bunch of drug addicts. Or maybe He�ll ask me to permanently move across the country, away from me friends and relatives. Or�� We�re so good at coming up with �or�s. While fear is part of the human condition, it�s another one of those worldly things that God wants to conquer for us. (According to my own count, the Bible tells us not to be afraid at least 108 times. I think God is trying to tell us something!) I also believe a lot of people fear that if they practice submission, they�ll suddenly not be their true selves, or that they�ll become doormats, or that they�ll be taken advantage in some way. Worry never comes from God (Mat. 6:25�31), and these worries are no exception. Jesus Christ told us the greatest commandment is The Golden Rule: to love (agapao) God and each other (Mat. 22:37�39). Remember that agapao means to totally give yourself over to something. If we do as God commands, then God MORE ~~> |
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