Study 68
D.I.Y.
Do It Yourself? Surely that’s the direct opposite of grace. Isn’t the whole point of grace rooted in the fact that I can’t do it myself? Don’t I need grace to help me?
Keep yourselves
If you’re confused, Jude 21 is a verse that’s very special to people who enjoy God’s grace: ‘Keep yourselves in God’s love’. As wave after wave rolls upon the beach, so grace is always flowing to you. From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another’ (John 1:16). Your responsibility is simply to keep yourself in God’s love. Don’t wander from it, take it for granted or walk in the shadows when you could be in the sunshine. Don’t wander into uncertainty, vulnerability and condemnation when you could be enjoying the privileges of grace and expressing continual appreciation to God for his amazing favour.
Don’t question or doubt God’s love or constantly ask him to prove it by repeated ‘Gideon’s fleeces’ (Judges 6:36-40). Take responsibility for keeping yourself in God’s love. Plunge into its depths and soar into its heights. Explore its breadth and contemplate its everlasting length. God has loved you with an everlasting love. He has always loved you and will never stop loving you. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. Since these promises are certain, keep yourself in the conscious awareness of being in the love of God.
Build yourselves up
In an earlier verse Jude adds a little more D.I.Y. advice: ‘But you, dear friends, build yourselves up in your most holy faith and pray in the Holy Spirit’ (Jude 20). Bodybuilding has become a popular hobby. God wants us to build ourselves up, not through press-ups but by praying in the Holy Spirit who has come to fortify and encourage us. We don’t really know how to pray as we should, but the Holy Spirit comes alongside and inspires us (see Rom. 8:26). Praying in the Holy Spirit helps us to build ourselves up.
Paul made a case for private rather than public tongue-speaking, saying, ‘He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself’ (1 Cor. 14:4). Then he added that in private, ‘I speak in tongues more than all of you’ (1 Cor. 14:18). As we pray ‘with my spirit’ we can be involved in further D.I.Y. as we resist the temptation to drift into complacency and build ourselves up instead. Paul determined not only to ‘pray with my spirit’ but also to ‘sing with my spirit’ (1 Cor. 14:15). He engaged in Spirit-inspired activity, deliberately enjoying God’s empowering presence in his personal life on a regular basis. He knew that his body was the temple of the Holy Spirit where Spirit-inspired temple worship could regularly take place.
John says, ‘We know and rely on the love God has for us’ (1 John 4:16). Do you know the love that God has for you? Are you relying on it? Sadly, many Christians can’t say with the Psalmist, ‘This I know, that God is for me’ (Ps. 56:9 RSV). Some not only question God’s love; they even wonder if he’s disposed to be against them. Like the ‘one talent’ servant in the parable, they see their master as ‘a hard man’ (Matt. 25:24) trying to reap where he hasn’t even sown seed. He asks too much. He’s impossible to please. Being a Christian is too difficult! Who can keep God happy? What a tragic, perverted idea. The fact is, God is for me. ‘The Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20). ‘In all things God works for the good of those who love him’ (Rom. 8:28). ‘He always lives to intercede’ for me (Heb. 7:25). God couldn’t be more ‘for me’ if he tried! This is breathtakingly true, so keep yourself in the love of God.
To Meditate On
God is delighted with you.
‘The Lord takes delight in his people’ (Ps. 149:4).
‘The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love’ (Ps. 147:11).
‘I will take delight in my people’ (Is.65:19).
‘The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing’ (Zeph. 3:17).
Food For Thought
Read the following verses and note what the Bible encourages us to ‘keep’ doing:
Acts 24:16; Rom. 12:11; 1 Cor. 10:6; Eph. 4:3; 6:18; 2 Thess. 3:6; 1 Tim. 5:22; 2 Tim. 4:5; Heb. 13:1,5; Jas. 1:27; 3:2; 1Pet. 3:10; 1 John 5:21.
To Read
‘Here we commemorate the greatest and deepest demonstration of true love the world has ever known. For God looked down upon sorrowing, struggling, sinning humanity and was moved with compassion for the contrary, sheep-like creatures he had made. In spite of the tremendous personal cost it would entail to himself to deliver them from their dilemma he chose deliberately to descend and live amongst them that He might deliver them. This meant laying aside his splendor, his position, his prerogatives as the perfect and faultless One. He knew he would be exposed to terrible privation, to ridicule, to false accusations, to rumor, gossip and malicious charges that branded him as a glutton, drunkard, friend of sinners and even an imposter. It entailed losing his reputation. It would involve physical suffering, mental anguish and spiritual agony. In short, his coming to earth as the Christ, as Jesus of Nazareth, was a straightforward case of utter self-sacrifice that culminated in the cross of Calvary. The laid-down life, the poured-out blood were the supreme symbols of total selflessness. This was love. This was God. This was divinity in action, delivering men from their own utter selfishness, their own stupidity, their own suicidal instincts as lost sheep unable to help themselves.’
Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, Zondervan, 1970, pp.107, 108.
To Be Inspired
‘Is it a small thing in your eyes to be loved by God – to be the son, the spouse, the love, the delight of the King of glory? Christian, believe this, and think about it: you will be eternally embraced in the arms of the love which was from everlasting, and will extend to everlasting – of the love which brought the Son of God's love from heaven to earth, from earth to the cross, from the cross to the grave, from the grave to glory – that love which was weary, hungry, tempted, scorned, scourged, buffeted, spat upon, crucified, pierced – which fasted, prayed, taught, healed, wept, sweated, bled, died. That love will eternally embrace you.’
Richard Baxter |
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