John McReynolds - Sunday, November 8, 2009 5:20 - 1 Comment

Basics 05 – Letting God Handle It

BASIC BIBLE DOCTRINE

Essential Tools for Christian Growth

Lesson Five

Relaxing and Letting God Handle It

by John McReynolds

We’re grateful, Heavenly Father for another opportunity in grace to take in your marvelous Word. We pray that the Holy Spirit will take these things and make them a source of blessing and growth in our lives that we might be built up and that Christ might be glorified—for we ask it in His holy name, amen.

In last week’s lesson we looked at two tools in the believer’s tool belt that will help to strengthen us as believers, exercise self-discipline in the Christian life, and recover when we have stumbled. This week’s lesson (which is really just a continuation of last week’s) is going to deal with two more tools—the Relaxed Mental Attitude and Unconditional Love. Actually these are both just aspects of the same spiritual discipline, but their applications are different enough to distinguish between them.

Relaxed Mental Attitude and Unconditional Love

There is another tool new Christians need to begin using pretty quickly in their lives, or they will find their spiritual growth derailed. The Relaxed Mental Attitude (RMA) is an outgrowth of claiming God’s promises (CGP) and resting in faith (RIF), but like resting in faith it must be consciously applied to situations, so we are treating it as one of the tools in the new Christian’s spiritual tool belt.

A relaxed mental attitude (RMA) is the believer’s response to the circumstances of life that he encounters on a daily basis. It develops naturally in the Christian as he matures in the faith by the daily process of taking in the Word of God, metabolizing it spiritually (more on that soon in a future lesson), and applying it in his life. But like RIF the RMA does not just emerge full grown in the Christian—it is developed gradually.

Now the RMA manifests itself differently depending on the situation. If we are facing a difficult situation—financial situations, pressures on the job, etc.—the relaxed mental attitude keeps us from hitting panic buttons and getting all stressed out. We just do what we can and should, and then relax and trust God for the rest.

When the problem is another person—as it often is—we still adopt an RMA, but our application is such that we don’t react in hostility toward the other person. This requires a definite choice on our part to treat someone who has just offended us with dignity, courtesy, and respect—as difficult as that may be! This is called Unconditional Love (UL), and it is a whole subject unto itself, which we will get into in a later study.

For believers the biggest obstacle to maintaining an RMA in the face of difficult situations or people is our own tendency toward sin. When we are spiritual—filled with the Holy Spirit (FHS)—we are said to be in fellowship with God. Any sin we commit causes us to lose the filling of the Holy Spirit (FHS). Now, we are said to be out of fellowship. But as we discovered back in Lesson One, God has provided us a way to regain the FHS—thus to get back in fellowship. That way is by confession to God of all known sins.

Suppose we have a believer who has recognized that he is out of fellowship and has just confessed his known sins and been restored to fellowship (RTF). Now God has not changed any of the believer’s circumstances—all that has happened is that the believer has been RTF. So the same circumstances that initiated the chain of wrong choices that resulted in the sin that got him out of fellowship are probably still right there! So how does the believer keep from bouncing right back into sin?

The answer is for him to immediately begin claiming the promises of God. The promises of God assure the believer that He—God—is in control of all circumstances, and that He will sustain and protect the believer from all attacks from Satan’s cosmic system (more on Satan and the cosmic system in a future lesson). Not only that, but He can protect the believer from sin! Look at these promises from the Book of Romans:

Rom 6:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

Rom 6:11 Likewise reckon also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Rom 6:14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for you are not under the law, but under grace.

Rom 6:22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

And more promises concerning the safety and security of the believer:

Psa 55:22. Cast your burden upon the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

Psa 121:2, 3 My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; He who keeps you will not slumber.

Psa 121:5-8 The LORD is your keeper; The LORD is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not smite you by day, Nor the moon by night. The LORD will protect you from all evil; He will keep your soul. The LORD will guard your going out and your coming in From this time forth and forever.

Nahum 1:7 The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows those who take refuge in Him.

Psa 34:22 The LORD redeems the soul of His servants, And none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.

Believing God’s promises and resting in faith causes the believer’s subjective, reactionary, tense mental attitude to be replaced by a relaxed mental attitude. The believer who cultivates the habit of resting in faith will develop a RMA that will enable him to be able to think objectively under pressure. It will also enable him to replace anger, jealousy, bitterness, and other mental sins directed toward others with unconditional love.

So what exactly do we mean by “unconditional love”? Well, the short answer is that it is love that does not depend on the qualities—or lack of qualities—of the person being loved. We have another term for it that some of you may be more familiar with: impersonal love. I prefer the term “unconditional” because that reflects the fact that God’s love for mankind truly does not depend on any merit or worth inherent in mankind. When we express impersonal or unconditional love we place no conditions on the person being loved—all the motivation for our love comes from within ourselves. We tend to use the term “unconditional love” more with family members that are less than loveable, but as we will see now and in later studies, it has a more universal application.

Basics of Christian Love

Many believers today are very frustrated in their Christian walk because they know that they are supposed to “love the brethren,” but they don’t have the wherewithal to do it. They have gotten the idea that Christian love is emotionally based, and so if they don’t have warm fuzzy feelings toward everyone they’ve somehow missed the spirituality boat.

The problem is no one has ever taught them about the different kinds of love, and they constantly misunderstand what kind of love they’re supposed to have toward other people. So let’s get into some love basics here. Now I am going to show you some Greek words as they appear in Greek. You don’t have to do anything with these words, this is just so you can start getting used to how the language looks.

In English we have just one word for love—“love”! But the ancient Greeks had four different words for love: philos (φίλος, pronounced phil-os) or rapport love; eros (ἔρος, pronounced air-os)—romantic or physical love; storge (στόργη, pronounced stor-gay) affection or family love; and agape (ἀγάπη, pronounced ah-gah-pay) or unconditional love. Since the New Testament was originally written in Greek, we find all of these words there except eros.

Now the first three types of love are all aspects of personal love; that is they focus on the object of love. But agape love is impersonal, because it focuses on the subject of love—the one loving, not the one loved. It is unconditional in that it does not require that the person being loved fulfill any requirements in order to obtain that love.  It is also sacrificial in that frequently the person doing the loving will give of himself or herself unreservedly, even when the person being loved does not deserve it. Most commentators will tell you that agape love is the highest form of love—and that is a true statement, especially when it is applied to Christian love. The reason that is true is because true agape love is a human impossibility. It requires us to consistently treat totally unlovable people with kindness, respect, consideration, and dignity when they do not deserve it. That is an example of the sacrificial aspect of agape love.

This is what 1 John 3:14 means when it says, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death.” The Greek word translated “love” is agape. What John is saying here is that only believers can truly love the brethren because only believers can have the filling of the Holy Spirit, and loving (agape) the brethren is only possible in the FHS.

Applying Unconditional Love

What does unconditional love look like? It looks like not running down an obnoxious co-worker with other co-workers after they said something mean or ugly about you. It looks like not cursing out an aggressive driver or sending a rude gesture his way after he cut you off in traffic. It looks like putting a hot meal in front of your grumpy, inattentive  husband and washing his dirty clothes. It looks like listening attentively and sympathetically to what seems like an unending litany of complaints from your wife and spending time with her after you’ve had a rough day at work.

Impersonal or unconditional love is a particularly important part of the marriage relationship, especially Christian marriage. Today we see over half of all marriages ending in divorce—a statistic that would have been unbelievable to my parents’ and grandparents’ generations. The reason we do is that in today’s marriageable generation, there aren’t nearly as many persons who have divine integrity and virtue in their souls as in the previous generations that honored God and His principles.

For the believer divine integrity and virtue is the Word of God resident in the believer’s soul and applied in his or her Christian life. For the unbeliever, Divine virtue is respect for and application of the Laws of Divine Establishment. We’ll have much more to say about these Divine laws in a later lesson. But basically they are Divine laws that God ordained to govern and order societies, and they apply to believers and unbelievers alike. The marriages of many unbelievers of past generations were sound and lasted 50-60-70 years because they were based on strong divine establishment principles.

But as we have said for the Christian there are tools available that are not available to unbelievers. And when you are having pressures and difficulties in life related to your marriage, you approach them the same way you would any other problem. When your spouse starts acting like a jerk, then your best option is to make sure you’re in fellowship—and confess your sins if you aren’t—and then just to fall back on the promises of God, and treat him or her with all courtesy, respect, and honor. Often that will by itself stimulate them into remembering their own responsibilities in maintaining the relationship, and cause them to be RTF and put the relationship back on equal footing.

There is much, much more that we will say about the basic tools for living the Christian life, but for now we’ve covered all we need to, so let’s summarize what we’ve looked at in the last lesson and this one:

1. What we have covered during these two lessons we can call the basic Christian walk. This is where we practice functional discipline, where the basic doctrines of the faith and the essential tools for the Christian walk are learned and drilled until they are second nature.
   
2. The Filling of the Holy Spirit (FHS), is necessary to provide the power and ability we need to Claim God’s Promises (CGP), to Rest in Faith (RIF), to maintain a Relaxed Mental Attitude (RMA) toward situations and circumstances, and to practice Impersonal or Unconditional Love (UL) toward others. When sin derails our Christian lives restoration to fellowship (RTF, or confession of sin) must be used to regain the FHS and to get us back on track.
   
3. RIF must be practiced to provide the believer with the emotional stability and objectivity required for the Christian life. This is accomplished by CGP, and then trusting God to follow through on His promises.
   
4. The RMA provides mental and emotional stability when circumstances and situations threaten our well being. UL (agape love)provides a basis for dealing with difficult people that ensures the believer’s continued emotional stability and objectivity, and to reduce the risk of falling into mental attitude sins.

So the basic Christian walk, objectivity, and functional discipline serve as the initial stabilizer in the Christian life. The tools of the basic Christian walk serve as “basic training” for the new believer. The new believer gets oriented to the Christian life and learns how to replace emotional thinking with objective thinking and how to maintain mental, emotional, and spiritual stability. He learns how to claim God’s promises. He learns how to relax and let God handle the situation instead of getting all tied up in knots trying to handle it himself. And he learns to treat everyone around him with courtesy, dignity, respect, and poise—unconditional love. And as the believer grows and becomes spiritually mature in the Word of God he will continue to use these tools, and continue to practice these basic Christian virtues for the rest of his earthly life.

In the next lesson we will see how practicing and developing the habit of humility will make a person teachable, and will greatly accelerate Christian growth.

Gracious Heavenly Father, thank You for having provided us with the means to achieve stability and the capability for rational thought under the pressures of the devil’s world. Help us to consistently apply the truths that we have learned here so that we can keep our focus on our objective to grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ all the way to the point of spiritual maturity and beyond, for we ask it in His name—amen.

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