Lifetime Guarantee (32 page)

(See Chapter 9)

A Christian whom I greatly respect commented concerning the use of the illustration, “This example of cooking eggs seems so trivial. How about an example of struggling with some habitual sin? Your example may produce a lot of guilt such as, ‘You mean every little detail of my life is a spiritual test? Good grief! Don’t I ever get to relax?’”

Dear people, independent living is what sin is all about. An independent lifestyle is trusting in the arm of the flesh. Jesus never struck off on His own as if He needed a breather from intimacy with the Father. We, too, were created for intimate union and are being conformed to His image, lovingly drawn into the net of living “in vital union with Him” (Colossians 2:6b
TLB
).

The Christian who feels he needs daily spiritual coffee breaks is experiencing religion, not relationship. Religion is a chore; relationship is a wellspring of living water within.

(See Chapter 9)

There is
one
thing all believers can do equally well as we begin each day. That is to offer all that we are to Christ to express His life through us, to use us to do
His
will. Our ability to do this is not related to how many spiritual gifts we have or our talent, IQ, appearance, wealth, charisma, wisdom, or circumstances. True, we’re stewards of all these, but we begin each day having an equal opportunity with all believers, including those with the highest and the lowest exposure in the church.

The believer who suffers great trial due to political persecution, marital stress, and so on finds that God simply makes greater grace available to him to allow Christ to handle it through him.

Believing you have no worthwhile opportunity because you have a low profile when compared to world-renowned Christians is a lie. You can perhaps gain more rewards than the world’s highest-profile Christian leader. The ground is level at the beginning of each day.

The housewife who yields herself to Christ to develop a happy home, husband, and children will receive the “Well done” not because the
results
are perfect, but because the
method
was perfect. The work will be identical to the Foundation: Christ’s life as she collaborated with Him.

(See Chapter 12)

God
is
God, and He runs the universe, which in one sense is simply a big laboratory. He is carefully controlling all the variables here, and they’re designed to bring people to salvation and conform them to Christ’s image. Even the devil has a role in this process. It was no shock to God when Lucifer rebelled. He didn’t say, “Oh, My soul! How did
that
happen.” When God finishes using Satan as a part of the whole refining process for Christians, He’ll end his activity in a split second.

Look at Job 1. The Lord and Satan were having one of their daily conversations when
God
brought up the subject of Job. If He’d never mentioned Job’s situation, the book of Job would never have occurred. God did not
cause
Job’s misery, as He is not the instigator of evil. But He surely gave His permission for it to happen, and its purpose was to conform Job to the image of Christ.

The Father began by saying, “Have you considered My servant Job?” (paraphrasing). “What a fine man he is! I wish I had a whole world full of people like him! He loves Me and submits to My authority over him.”

Whereupon Satan responded (Just as God knew he would), “Well, the only reason Job responds to Your authority over him is that it pays off for him. You’ve got a hedge [protective angels] built around him so nothing bad can happen to him. But You let it stop paying dividends and watch how fast he stops praising and submitting.
Job has You on a performance-based acceptance;
so long as You keep performing the way
he
wants, he’ll ‘pay You off’ with praise.
He
is in control of
You,
not vice versa. You give me permission to wipe out what You’ve done for him and watch how fast he stops praising You.”

God said, “Okay, you can do thus and so to him, but you can’t do this and that.” Note that God still maintained control. He simply moved the limits Satan could not transgress. He didn’t let Satan touch Job.

God was about to do something beautiful in Job. He was bringing Job to the end of himself—of
his
rights, of
self-justification,
of milking his acceptance out of the community, and of self-esteem based on his ability. It would be a painful experience for Job, but when you get to talk to him about it one day, he will assure you that he wouldn’t take anything for having gone through it.

Once given the opportunity, Satan utterly wiped out Job’s family and possessions. (Note that he could have killed his wife, too, as she was not included in God’s “exclusions,” but he didn’t because he desired to use her later on. He knew he could control her when the time was ripe.)

Chapter 1 ends by stating that Job praised the Lord through it all. He came through like gangbusters. Even though praising the Lord was not “paying dividends” as before, he continued to submit.

You’d think the Lord would have rested His case, but in the second chapter He did it again. “Well, what do you think of Job now?” He might have said. “There’s no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who reveres Me and turns away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although
you
incited Me against him, to ruin him without cause.”

The devil replied, “Yes, but You didn’t let me touch his
body.
Put Your hand out and touch his bone and his flesh, and I’ll bet he’s soon cursing You.” Note that in all this time, Satan never said, “
I’ll
do thus and so,” because he is helpless to act outside of God’s authority. He knows that,
which is saying a lot more for him than one can say about some Christians.
Again God gave him permission to carry out the dirty work, but He established more limits beyond which Satan could not transgress (he was told he couldn’t kill Job). God’s goal is to attack the flesh, the old ways to which the Christian clings. The believer must be brought to the point of releasing those things, no matter how darling they may be to him. So, for forty more chapters, Satan attacked Job’s flesh in which he trusted.

Beware of falling into the trap of heeding the Evil One’s accusations against God when it looks as though He is allowing circumstances that aren’t for your best interests. Never forget that the hand holding the key to the hedge has a great scar in its palm, put there for you. He has proved His commitment to you. I may not fully understand every trial in my life, but one thing I know: My Father is using this to conform me to the image of Jesus. I cannot only live with that, but I can even find rest in it.

Job lost everything, including the respect of the community, his friends, and his wife. For forty chapters he kept maintaining that it was a bum rap, ultimately enticing God to debate him. He felt he deserved better treatment than he was getting. If
he
were God, he would never treat such a good person so poorly. He epitomized the epitaph on an old tombstone:

Finally, Job came to his senses when God straightened out his perspective in chapters 38–41. He saw that he had been trying to justify himself before God due to his yeoman performance, and he said in 42:6: “I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes.”

When Job acknowledged the sinfulness of his self-justification and turned from it, God said, “Enough!” The goal was accomplished. The flesh’s hold on Job was broken. Satan was rebuked (the hedge was repaired), Job was comforted, and his possessions were restored to him double. He was even given ten more children to go with the ten he already had in heaven! Job had attained a point of brokenness, never to be the same again.

Peter’s experience is another example of this breaking process. He was a “hoss,” as we’d call him in Oklahoma. All the guys admired his courage. He was the kid in the fourth grade who was a head taller than the rest of us, remember? He carried the bat outside every recess and took “first bats.” Sometimes he’d take four strikes, and we were powerless to stop him.

Through all this success at getting his needs met, Peter developed great confidence in
his
strength. Part of his personal code by which he maintained self-esteem was never to chicken out in a tough spot. Not only could he get his own chestnuts out of any fire, but often those of others as well. He felt he couldn’t always trust others, but he could always count on himself. He would never let himself down. He would die first!

“Lord, You can count on me! I’ll never let you down,” Peter said. “They might try to take You, but it’ll be over my dead body!” His motto was, “Better dead than Rhode Island Red!”

“Peter, you’re going to deny you even know Me before daylight,” Jesus answered. “You’re going to turn state’s witness to save your hide.” And here comes a powerful revelation: “Satan has
obtained by asking permission
to sift you [plural] like wheat; but I have prayed for you [singular], that your [singular] faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31,32, emphasis added; see nasb margin).

This statement was the outgrowth of another of those daily conversations God has with the devil in which He discusses His children and says how proud He is of them. His purpose is to instigate Satan into accusing them. The devil then accuses the believer in his most vulnerable fleshly pattern that correlates with the situation, hoping to prove God wrong. God grants the permission, but He limits Satan to attack
only the flesh from which He wishes to free
the Christian.

I used to put Peter down as a blowhard. But one day I was reading John’s account of Jesus’ arrest. The text said that Judas “received the Roman cohort” (John 18:3). Not knowing what a cohort was (I didn’t even know what a “hort” was), I looked it up. Judas brought six hundred soldiers with him to arrest Jesus! I had always thought it was just a few old men in sheets and a couple of soldiers. The Sunday school quarterly even had a picture of them.

Here they came through the bushes with swords, torches, and armor. I don’t know about you, but I’d have counted those odds and headed south! Not Peter. He
did exactly what he bragged he would do.
He pulled his sword, ignored the odds, and waded in, one against six hundred. That dear brother committed suicide for Jesus Christ!

Jesus, however, knowing the plan, told Peter to sheath his sword, then picked up the ear Peter had cut off and put it back on the slave’s head. The soldiers led Jesus away, with Peter “following from afar.” He was a very confused follower. He was about to get enlightened.

The scene switches to the patio of the high priest. The Matthew 26:69-75 account says that Peter’s denial statements were made when he was confronted by women and by unarmed bystanders. Could this be the same man who threw his body at the Roman army? That doesn’t make sense. Oh, but it makes glorious sense when we understand what God was up to in Peter’s life. He had set out to free Peter from his personal strength.

God and Satan had their daily visit (see Revelation 12:10). I will take the liberty of generalizing from the Job account—that the Father had been telling Satan the disciples were a pretty neat group. “Just look at how well they’re coming along,” He may have said. “I’m so proud of them. See how loyal they are to Me?”

Whereupon the accuser may have said, “Why wouldn’t they serve You? You’ve provided an exciting life for them with future reward. They travel with Your Son performing miracles. They get three square meals a day with lots of prestige. You’ve got Your hedge around them so nothing bad can happen. But You let me touch that ‘darling spot’ in their lives, that thing they can’t possibly live without, and I’ll show You what they’re made of. The only reason they’re praising You is for what they can get out of it. You let me take Your Son out of the picture and see how long they stay hitched! Let me touch that darling thing in each of them, and they’ll bail out on You.”

That’s exactly the response the Father had set Satan up to make. So God said, “All right, you may attack their flesh. You may even murder My Son. But you may not kill the eleven.” And Satan sifted them when the permission was granted.

Thus, all of a sudden, as Peter was standing in the patio warming his hands, the Evil One supernaturally removed his spine and installed a yellow substitute. Peter’s courage evaporated! That thing by which he maintained self-acceptance and pride in himself—to maintain control in each situation—gone. He was proved a coward in the most humiliating way imaginable, by two women and the local “Spit and Whittle Club.”

That is the place, however, where all must arrive who would enter into God’s rest as spoken of in Hebrews. Peter came to the end of
his
resources,
his
self-justification,
his
self-acceptance,
his
integrity,
his
self-confidence, and
his
rights, all of which had been generated, choreographed, and maintained from years of becoming worldly-wise at getting his needs met. God was lovingly bringing him to a better kind of security.

After Peter responded properly to this experience of brokenness, God removed the yellow spine, gave him back his own, filled him with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and then said to him, “Now, your boldness will be My Spirit through you. It will be loving and gentle, not brazen and self-serving as it was. People are going to see Christ in you, and you will bring great glory and honor to My name” (see Romans 12:1,2).

Preston H. Gillham, M.S.