How Not to Slap People (W.o.W. Rewind)

 Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

James 1:19-20

Do you ever just want to smack somebody? Lately, I have found myself wanting to do that more and more. And the sad part is they really don't deserve it. I'm getting more frustrated with people than normal and I don't know why. My temper is short. My patience shorter. Mostly, this all occurs in my mind. I don't think the people around me have noticed it much yet, but they soon will if I don't get it under control. But how?

What I am really mad about often isn't the minor annoyance that just occurred. It's the fact that it or something like it has happened five times this week! In other words, I've been keeping a record. Not so much a record of wrongs as a record of annoyances. Pet peeves. Things that kinda tick me off. I don't actively think about it, but all of that frustration is building up just below the surface of my life. So much so that I can be completely happy one minute, but as soon as something frustrates me all of that old built up frustration surges to the surface and I'm ready to explode. The amount of frustration I feel is all out of proportion to the situation. I am convinced that Christians ought not live this way, that we ought to discipline ourselves to deal with our frustration in a better way so that we can be "slow to anger." I knew I had to find a better way.

It occurred to me that I needed to find a way to vent my frustrations. I could yell at the people that are frustrating me, kick the cat, take it out on my family, or force my wife to listen to me complain for the third time this week OR I could take it to the Lord in prayer. I've decided that venting my frustrations in prayer is far superior to the other options. For a while now I have been utilizing the A.C.T.S. prayer model which stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. I'm going to change it to the F.A.C.T.S. prayer model and add in frustrations.

For me this is a two part strategy. First, in my extended prayer time I need to focus some time on praying over all the things that are frustrating me. If I can vent all of that to the Lord and let it go, then I can start my day at a frustration level of zero instead of 100. But secondly, and maybe even more importantly, prayer must become my first response when I sense frustration starting to build. When someone cuts me off in traffic or does something else that drives me nuts I need to pray about it right that second. 

So take a minute to pray over all the things people do that make you want to lose your cool, all the things that you sense building up inside you. And throughout the day as things irritate you, take it immediately to God in prayer and let it go. Hopefully, by doing this you and I can both keep ourselves from actually slapping anyone.

Will You Believe?

Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Genesis 15:6

And then verse six says simply, that standing there looking at the stars, “Abram believed God.” He decided to trust God to keep His promises. He was certain, confident that God would give him a son. Romans 4:18 puts it this way. It says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed...” It would have been easier for Abram to believe what seemed certain, that he and his barren wife would never have a child. But Abram made the decision to hope against hope. He chose to believe that God is faithful. He chose to believe that He would keep His word.

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And the second half of verse 6 tells us that God credited this to Abram as righteousness. Abram wasn’t righteous mind you. If you read his story in detail, Genesis presents him as a flawed man. When he went down to Egypt he was so afraid of Pharaoh that he hid the fact that Sarai was his wife. He knew Sarai was beautiful and he was afraid they would kill him to marry her, so he let his wife be taken into Pharaoh’s bed to save his own skin. This was a despicable sin against God and Sarai. Then, years later, Abram did the same thing again with the King of Gerar, a man named Abimelech, only God intervened this time before Sarai was taken into the king’s bed. So, Abram wasn’t righteous. He wasn’t perfect. But he believed God. He had faith and God credited that faith to him as righteousness. In other words, because of his faith, God regarded him as righteous even though he wasn’t.

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This verse, Genesis 15:6, is picked up in Romans 4:23-24 and applied to us. It says, “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”

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You see, just like Abram, you aren’t righteous and you can’t be righteous on your own. But has chosen to credit righteousness to the accounts of those who believe. For Abram it was belief in the promise. For us it is belief in Jesus and the promises surrounding Him. Do you believe?

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Do you believe that Jesus is more than just a man, that He is the eternal Son of God? Do you believe that He lived a sinless life so He could become the perfect, atoning sacrifice for your sins? Do you belief that Jesus died on the cross to pay the punishment for your sins? Do you believe He was raised from the dead on the third day? Do you believe He ascended to Heaven where He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty? Do you believe that He can save even you? Do you believe that He can set you free from sin and make you a new creation. Do you believe that one day He will raise all who believe back from the dead to live eternally with Him on a new heavens and a new earth where He will wipe away every tear and where there will be no more crying, death or pain? Do you believe that? These are all promises that God has made to those who believe. But you have to believe to receive this reward. You have to believe to be considered righteous.

Will you believe in Jesus? Will you trust God to keep Him promises?

So Abram Went

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.

Genesis 12:4–5

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The Bible often phrases things so simply and yet so powerfully. God has asked Abram to leave his country and any land he might have owned behind. God asked him to leave his people and his extended family behind. Basically, God asks Abram to leave everything and follow Him. And Scripture simply says “So Abram went.” Amazingly, Abram seems to have made this giant step of faith and sacrifice without pause. Presumably, Abram was willing to make these sacrifices to obey God’s call because he reasoned that the blessings of obedience would outweigh the sacrifices that God asked of him.

Following God’s call on your life will always  require sacrifice. What are you willing to leave behind to follow God? What is He asking you to sacrifice? Money? Friendships? Time? Your plans for your life? No matter how much sacrifice it requires to follow God’s call, I assure you that you will be happier living inside God’s will than you will be living outside of it. So, I urge you to trust God and willingly make any sacrifices He asks of you.

One other thing I should point out is that when Abram obeyed God’s call, he didn’t even really know where he was going. God didn’t tell him the whole plan. He made some specific promises to Abram and He told him that He would show him the land, but that was about it. Hebrews 11:8 puts it well when it says that Abram “obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”

Often that is exactly what following God’s call in your life feels like. You have no idea where you’re going. You don’t fully know where He is leading you. God seems to only tell us what we need to know to be able to obey. Perhaps that is because He wants us to obey based on faith instead of knowledge. It could also be because He knows we couldn’t handle knowing the whole plan. Either way, you don’t have to know the whole plan to obey. Just step out in faith and obey what He has revealed to you and trust that He will show you the rest along the way. That’s what Abram did.