Week
3 Obey and Partake
What
Do We Want Most?
You
cannot satisfy your soul’s craving with half a Christ…he who would have Christ
must have the whole of Christ—not only Christ as your Substitute, but Christ as
your King! Not merely Christ to trust, but Christ to obey!
Charles Spurgeon[i]
~~~
G
|
rowing up in the Lord requires partaking of Him, and
partaking grants us the Holy Spirit fueled energy we need to obey. It is desire
for God that spurs us to His table, but if we continue to feed our desires for
other things ahead of the Lord, we remain immature. This kind of immaturity was
the reason Paul spoke so firmly to believers in Corinth, chastising them for
their status as babies who refuse to grow up.[ii]
They should have been ready for meat, but instead Paul was forced to provide
them food fit only for infants.
How do we grow up in
Christ? How do we become spiritual adults, able to partake of solid nourishment
from our Lord? We are in need of a strengthening diet, sustenance that will
fuel our ability to obey God, but what prevents us from being able to stomach
the truth that frees us from bondage to sin?
Are we still struggling with
jealousy? Do we compare ourselves to others? Are we contentious and rude to
people we ought to treat with God’s love and acceptance? According to 1
Corinthians 3:1-3, these are indicators that we are walking according to the
ways of the flesh and not the Spirit.
Our human desires are
the culprit; wrong longings pull us away from finding satisfaction in the
Lord’s provision. It is very easy to worry more about what our fellow human
beings think of us than what the Lord thinks. We fret about how things look,
but the Lord’s concern is for how things truly are, and we must trust His
vision of spiritual realities our physical eyes can’t see. This is what it
means to walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. By an act
of will we place our trust in the truth as God reveals it through Scripture and
to our hearts via the Holy Spirit. These are not things that can be seen, so we
live by faith and not by sight.
We are so afraid of
not belonging, and indeed, Scripture refers to us as foreigners here, strangers
who can expect rejection from people who walk according to the world’s ways.[iii]
But when our focus shifts to the astounding promises of Scripture, we find a
better belonging in Christ. Through Him we are… a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for his own possession[iv]…
fellow citizens with
the saints and members of the household of God.[v]
We can pray to desire
the Lord above all else, and then we must act as if it is so. Appetites don’t change until the diet
changes. As we discipline ourselves to put Jesus first, our desires will not
initially be in line with the change of habit and direction. We will long for the old ways just as the
Israelite slaves longed for Egypt even as Moses led them to the Promised Land.[vi] But when we set our hearts and minds upon
Him, our desires change so that we conform more closely to His pattern; we are
transformed into people who walk by the Spirit and not the flesh.
Pray: Lord, make me
into a person who wants You most of all. Help me to set my hopes upon the
future You have promised in Your Holy Word. Change all of my wants into desire
for You. Help me as I discipline my
flesh for Your sake. Help me to walk according to the Spirit and not the flesh.
In Jesus’ Name, amen.
~~~
…
You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove
you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like the people of
the world?
1 Corinthians 3:3 NLT
…be transformed by
the renewal of your mind…
Romans 12:2b
[i]
From Sermon 2727, Bitter Herbs,
delivered by C.H. Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, on
Lord’s-Day Evening, July 25, 1880. Available online at http://www.spurgeongems.org/vols46-48/chs2727.pdf.
Charles Spurgeon’s works are in the public domain.
[ii] 1
Corinthians 3:2
[iii]
Hebrews 11:13, 1 Peter 1:17, 1 Peter 2:11
[iv] 1
Peter 2:9
[v]
Ephesians 2:19
[vi]
Exodus 16:3
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