Re: About motivations -- and a little rant about hypocrisy

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: : : "Always do right. This will gratify some and astonish the rest. " : : : -Mark Twain- : : : What is right? Living in obedience to God? I heard a preacher on the radio ask if Jesus was Lord of my life. If I am not living in obedience to God on a minute by minute basis. Not really. I recently had several opportunities to be obedient to God and follow his leading. Was I obedient? Not all the time. So Jesus is only Lord of my life when I want him to be. When I relinquish my will. When I am comfortable with it. I know this is a growing up process, if you will. Just thought I'd share. : : : What happens when I really do give up my will? I pray I find out before I get much older! : : * * * * * * * * * : : We should bring this up on Thursday for the open forum discussion. :-) : : Saying Jesus is only your Lord when you flawlessly carry out his commands (according to whom?) is often used as: : : (1) a shame tactic to motivate repentance, : : (2) a fear tactic to motivate obedience, or : : (3) a standard to separate the elite believers from the quasi-failures : : (and all of these are according to the teacher's imposed understanding of Christ's will). : : I'm sure shame can motivate those who have been happy to sin and feeling nothing about it, but for those of us who constantly feel the weight of our inconsistency, shame is usually not the most positive or productive motivator. : : I know fear can positively motivate people in some cases, like coming to grips with the imminence of one's death, for instance. But when our sincere attempts to follow Jesus are ever infused with fear of failure (fear of not really making Him my Lord successfully, experiencing the shame yet again), our attempts to follow can grow more despondent and defeatist. : : The worst part of the shame and fear motivations are that they often translate into a wrong view of God's attitude toward us--that He considers us half-children of whom he is not proud. This brings us to motivation #3... : : It can sometimes be about attaining some prestigious mark as a Christian. We feel the need to see (and display) evidence that we have accomplished something. Trusting in grace is difficult, and being equal with a believer who has believed much less time and worked much less hard is just not fair. However, grace is not fair--see Matthew 20:1-16. Many leaders (and many who think they should be) are always making known some way that they are more mature than those around them. The most "righteous" way to do this is to preach about how God wants people to be, thus inferring that the speaker is like this to a great degree. But you all know that denial and dishonesty just rile me up. I am sick of those who tacitly imply their holiness by preaching lordship without disclosure of their own struggles -- and gratuitous general acquiescence to all people being sinners doesn't qualify as disclosure! We have all seen this kind of hypocrisy too often (most recently at the Church of the Lost Ethics). : : All these cautions duly noted, we SHOULD constantly be striving to make Jesus the Lord of our lives, especially in areas where we have not yet really trusted or obeyed Him. I am only questioning the motivational techniques of some of the lordship salvationists who don't seem honest or genuinely human to me. I think they are often subconsciously preaching to themselves, because they cannot admit how displeased they are with their own unfaithfulness. : : (The speaker Kat heard may not fit into any of these categories--I do not know--but far too many do!) : I don't think he does, although I could be wrong about that. At least I didn't feel guilty. His questions about Lordship just made me really think about it. I truly don't feel guilty. : I should add that I listen to this speaker frequently and I think he is a sound teacher. : I have heard him teach with compassion and also disclosure of his own struggles. : Just remember that this was taken out of context so no one here heard the whole message. You can tell me what you think of him Sunday, and I promise you I will listen. : -kat

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