And regardless of which title you chose to pursue and find yourself in, one would hope that you do it because you have a genuine love for these people you’ve been given responsibility for.
I think we also understand that part of this role in training, is laying down expectations that you have for those under you, be it your child, student, player or new recruit.
With maybe an exception to the parenting role, what coach or teacher or drill sergeant does not spell out on the first day of class or practice the goals and visions and expectations they have for you. With the parenting role, those expectations are laid out over the years as the child grows and develops for obvious reasons.
I cannot imagine my daughter staring intently into the eyes of my two new twin grandsons and explaining all the rules of life and goals she has for them and why they need to listen to and obey her and their daddy. I mean, she could but all she will get in response are gurgling noises, some drool, a grunt or two and then as it seems to happen frequently, a full diaper that will need to be changed.
Do you have any memories of being on the other side of that ‘desk’ and hearing those expectations made clear to you…and you began to experience anxiety, fearing you may not ‘have what it takes’ to meet those goals and expectations?
It can be a daunting feeling sitting there with fear and doubt filling your mind as you ask yourself: ‘What have I gotten myself in to?....there’s no way I can do this!”
Allow me to state here that you would have to be a psychopath to look over all those young faces and set a bar so high that it would be obvious to everyone in the class that you were all doomed for failure.
No person who has half a heart would want to set anyone up for failure.
Yet…how many scarred individuals are out there today, wounded and damaged, by an overly demanding parent, perhaps, who they could never please or satisfy. Unfortunately far too many of those kinds of parents have always been around. And most likely, they were damaged and demanding on their kids, because their parents were on them. Funny…how those ‘sins’ can be passed down from one generation to the next.
Which leads me to God, His Word, His Law, and His expectations.
And on the surface, you might see why some, (well many, actually) would accuse Him of being that ‘psychopath’. How could any ‘loving’ or ‘compassionate’ God make such ridiculous demands on a wayward group of people like us?
And those demands and expectations are woven throughout the bible…
“You will be holy as I am holy”… “be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect”…”go, and sin no more” …”be holy in ALL your conduct” …”love others as I have loved you”…”whoever is born of God does not sin nor can he sin for God’s seed remains in him”… and “whoever abides in Him does not sin”.
Or what about this one…this always used to get me as Jesus appears on the scene and seems to reinforce the notion that God’s laws are to be obeyed but then goes a step further and seemingly ‘raises the bar’ when He said in Matt 5:26: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
I will never forget hearing that for the first time as a 15 year old, ‘hormone’ filled young man, who was curious to know where that ‘line of morality’ was and then being told I was going to hell for just thinking about ‘doing it’.
And that was it. I was left hanging.
Looking back now, I can see where I was sensing something that Paul wrote about himself when he saw the ‘law’ and exclaimed ‘O wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ (Rom 7:24)
My problem back then was no one told me that I could be delivered ‘from this body of death’ and overcome through Christ. So I walked out of class that day thinking to myself…”If I’m going to hell for just thinking about it…I may as well just go do it.”
Sigh
Yet, God is NOT a psychopath.
Nor is He evil or overly demanding. And He meant Every. Single. Word. …that He gave us.
When our ‘flesh’ hears His law and His expectations, it does grow anxious and fearful and downright hostile because everything that resides in our flesh nature is opposed to the law of God and will not, nor can it submit to His Law. (Rom 8:6-8)
We should respond like Paul did and exclaim ‘O wretched man that I am…’ or utter words similar to those of Isaiah when he saw a glimpse of the holiness of God and cried out ‘Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips’.
And here is where the gospel got ‘hijacked’ by doctrines of demons and ‘other gospels and another Jesus’ led astray by ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ who were in effect fallen angels/demons ‘masquerading as ministers of righteousness’ ( 2 Cor 11)
We were told (in effect) that God knew full well that nobody could ever obey His laws and demands so He sent Jesus to do it for us. And since He was the only perfect one to ‘finish the course’ with a perfect score, that all we had to do was align ourselves with Him by saying we believe on Him and ‘accept’ what He did was for us and then just try to clean up our act some, try to do better, join a good church and fall in line with the status quo until He comes back to take us out of here before He punishes all those evil sinners for not joining our church as well.
I cannot yell it loud enough: “WE. HAVE. BEEN. DECEIVED. AND. ASLEEP.!!!”
Jesus came not only to fulfill the law Himself, but the plan was for Him to then lead us to follow him and He would fulfill the law in us.
And it would not be by positive thinking or mental agreement; on the contrary, the plan was for us to take up our own cross and die to self so that the righteous requirements of the law would be fully met in us. (Rom 8:4) The end result of putting to death this old nature would be saints who were ‘perfected in love’ and have His divine nature within us.
And the fruit produced would be test. Period.
This is NOT ‘poetic language’ that we sing about or gather around and nod our heads in agreement with. It was Not something to analyze in theory, but to DO.
You see…the only thing that stood between us and fully obeying the law was/is our old carnal sinful flesh nature, a.k.a. ‘the old man’. (Rom 6:6)
And the ONLY way we could ‘meet the goal’ of being ‘perfect like our Father in heaven’ (Matt 5:48) would be to do something with this ‘old man’. He would need to ‘die’. And that is all Jesus asks of us to do. He does the rest. We don’t produce the ‘fruit’, He does. We just have to abide in Him. (John 15:4)
That is what is driving these messages I post daily about.
This has nothing to do with superficial religious activity where we walk in a form of godliness but never reach the goal or standard that God set for us.
We are talking about the creator of the universe who came to reside within us…to make us a ‘new creation’ by a supernatural empowerment of his Holy Spirit. That is why Paul admonished us to ‘test yourselves to see if Christ is in you”
There is no mistaking what God laid out in His word for anyone…who would believe on Him and turn to Him. Problem is, for multiple reasons, this message often falls on deaf ears. Or angry ones.
Remember when God told the Israelites His plan to go in and possess the land and what all He was going to do for, in, and through His people? The majority got mad and said ‘No way can this happen’. Then they looked for rocks to stone the two who said they thought this was totally doable. (Numbers 14:10)
We were not going to meet these standards by our own power or ability or self-discipline. Jesus came to set us free, to lead us to die so that we might live. He was going to do the work In us.
But sadly, many will and have refused His invite.
“He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God….and for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, THESE are the sons of God.” (John 1:11-12; Rom 8:14)
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