When David says “The Lord is my shepherd” in Psalm 23, he’s referring to the fact that I belong to him. If God is my shepherd, he owns me. He has the right to demand certain things from me:

• Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand — Matt. 4:17
• If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it — Matt. 16:24-25
• Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind — Matt. 22:37

Having God as my shepherd means he directs me. But it also means he’s committed to provide for me, because a shepherd’s main job is to find food and water and safety for his flock:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. — Psalm 23:1

The literal translation of David’s Hebrew would be something like, “The Lord is my shepherd, I do not lack.” In other words, if the Lord is my shepherd, I won’t need anything more than what he gives me.

But still, if I’m honest with myself, there are plenty of times when I really do want more than he’s given me. I’ve found that the times I struggle with wanting things worst are when I see other people who have them. I’m a lot like a sheep.

According to Phillip Keller, sheep are very jealous animals. When they see another sheep who has a nice big green patch of grass all to himself, they’ll go over and butt him so they can take it over. When they see another sheep who’s found a nice quiet little shady spot under a bush to rest, they’ll go butt him too, try to kick him out!

If you have kids who are toddler-age, you know this behavior well.  Your kid will be totally uninterested in a toy… until another kid picks it up and starts playing with it. Suddenly it’s the coolest toy on the planet, and your kid will throw a tantrum until he can get his hands on it. And most adults are no different, it’s just that we hide it better. Most of the time we want things, it’s just because we see other people who have them.

But if we truly allow God to be our shepherd, David says we won’t want anything else in this world, and here’s why:

He makes me lie down in green pastures. — Psalm 23:2

The Israelites who read this Psalm when David wrote it 1000 years before Christ would have known from experience how hard it is to get a sheep to lie down. Sheep are absolutely defenseless. If a wolf or a lion comes in, they can’t do anything but run. And even then, they can’t run very fast. Their bodies are like watermelons with four toothpicks sticking out the bottom, so they mostly waddle.

That’s why sheep sleep standing up most of the time. They want to get as much of a headstart as possible when danger comes. If a sheep is going to lie down, he needs to feel absolutely secure. He also needs a full stomach, or else he’ll be constantly on the move, looking for food.

Here, David says that God will provide everything we need – like a green pasture that will provide plenty of food, and then he’ll give us such an overwhelming sense of safety and security that we have no choice but to lie down.

As David says, sometimes God really does make us lie down.

I know one busy mom who had to go on bedrest for two months when she was pregnant with her second child. She had to set aside her work, her relationships, even her normal mothering. It was excruciating at the time, but now she realizes that God sovereignly made her lie down in a hospital bed for a few months and take a break from her busy schedule just so He could show her how he would provide for her, and how he would keep her safe along with the little girl in her womb.

We’re busy people, even here in the third-happiest city in the United States. I see it every day in my neighborhood. Sometimes my family takes walks around our neighborhood in the evening so we can get to know our neighbors. The first time we tried it, we loaded the kids into a wagon at 5:30 and started walking, but there was no one around. All the driveways were still empty because everyone was still at work! The next night, we tried 6:00. Same thing. The night after that we tried 6:30, even though it was already getting dark, and there was still nobody home! Our neighbors take off for work at 6am, and some of them don’t get home until 7pm or 8pm… some of them even 9pm every night.

Sometimes God needs to take overcommitted, overextended people like us and make us lie down. The next time you get sick, and you’re zonked out on your bed for 3 days, ask God if there’s a special reason why he’s making you lie down. The next time you take your car to get fixed for something that should take half an hour, but you’re still in the waiting area 6 hours later… ask God if he’s making you lie down. Then ask him what he wants to show you about his provision and protection.

Every Christian is a shepherd, to one degree or another. Husbands shepherd wives, parents shepherd their kids, community-group leaders shepherd their groups, and prayer-partners shepherd each other. There are many places to go to find practical instructions for shepherds (such as Paul’s message to the elders in Ephesus in Acts 20), but the best way to learn how to shepherd is to live under the Good Shepherd himself.

That’s what Psalm 23 is all about. It starts out with this simple but powerful declaration: “The Lord is my shepherd.”

That says a lot about God, but it also says a lot about us: if God is a shepherd, that makes us sheep. Most of us haven’t spent a whole lot of time around sheep, but a pastor and former shepherd in East Africa named Philip Keller says we’re a lot like them.

Just like sheep, we tend to have a mass mind (in his words, “mob instincts”). We tend to have lots of fears. We can be stubborn and stupid. We easily pick up self-destructive habits.

And just like a herd of sheep, unless we have a shepherd, we’re going to wander through the wilderness just barely surviving. We’ll be finding little tufts of dead grass to eat because we’re starving. We’ll be slurping up muddy, disease-ridden water because we’re so thirsty, instead of allowing our shepherd to guide us to the best feeding grounds and the purest rivers.

I’ve seen this tendency in myself. When I go on a vacation, I like to (literally) wander like a sheep. I want to go somewhere, and just find a hotel once we get there. Wake up every morning and decide on the spur of the moment what we’ll do that day. This has worked well for us… once. Cyndi and I flew into Beijing, and when we landed at the airport I got us a room at the hotel where president Clinton stayed… for 50 bucks. Somehow I got us hooked up with the communist party VIP tour of the Great Wall. We cruised around all day with party officials on a luxury bus… for free!

But most other times, it hasn’t worked out so great. For our first anniversary, I took Cyndi to San Francisco. We flew in, and I found us a hotel called the Pickwick Manor. We got all our luggage onto the bus, and rode downtown. We checked in, and went up to our room. I opened the door, but it would only open about 12 inches. I poked my head in, and saw why: the room was about 7 feet by 9 feet. The door couldn’t open all the way because it was bumping into the bed!

Cyndi gave me one of those looks, but it was too late. We got into bed, and that’s when we realized that we were right next to the elevator. That thing grunted like a sumo wrestler all night long. Then we started hearing a plastic bag crinkling in our luggage. I got out, opened it up, and there were 3 rats going for her M&M’s. Most of the trips I’ve planned have been something like that, because I’m stubborn and refuse to find a tour-guide shepherd to guide us.

We’re sheep who need a shepherd. And one of the reasons why this Psalm is so popular is because it’s so clear that not only is God a shepherd, he’s my shepherd! We can rest in the fact that God is leading each one of us personally in an individual relationship.

But in our individualistic culture, it’s easy to go overboard with this idea, and start to assume that if God is my shepherd, that means he belongs to me, and he’s there to serve my needs, whatever I define them to be.

Pretty soon, God becomes nothing more than my own personal butler. My own personal therapist. My own personal cheering squad. Kind of like this classic commercial:

You’ve got to admit – it would be pretty epic to have your own 80’s glam rock band following you around to pep you up. And that’s how some of us view God – someone who’s mostly around to cheer us up when we’re feeling down.

But when David says that the Lord is my shepherd, he doesn’t mean that God belongs to me, he means that I belong to him. Since he is my shepherd, he owns me.

He purchased me with his blood (Acts 20:28), and that means he has the first and final say over what I do in my life, like a shepherd guides his sheep wherever he wants them to go.

If I’m going to effectively shepherd others, I first need to be under the sovereign control of the Good Shepherd.

As we discovered in Sunday’s message, being part of God’s kingdom means facing opposition. If we bring the gospel to family and friends like Jesus did, we might be rejected like he was. If we’re as bold as John the Baptist was, we’ll probably take some hits like him too.

The early church faced this kind of opposition. Acts 4 describes their response:

They lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit,

“‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers were gathered together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed’

For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.

This is a great model of prayer for when we’re afraid of scorn from family, ridicule at work, or rejection by friends. It reminds us of three things:

1. People are opposed to Jesus, not us: “The rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Anointed.”
2. God is in control of the whole situation: “Do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”
3. God will give us extraordinary boldness: “Grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.”

What happens when you treasure Christ? In his new book, Gospel Wakefulness, Jared Wilson says that a deep appreciation of Christ will give us a unique blend of boldness and humility, assurance and brokenness:

There is something that Jesus does on our behalf, that when it truly grabs hold of a Christian, it creates an empowering sense of identity and approval that makes one feel qualified and covered for any trial, temptation, or test. The gospel-wakened Christian often feels in over his head, but he knows instinctually that Jesus stands secure above him with a hand extended. When the Christian finally understands that God is by his side, it changes everything. The confidence of Christ inside broken sinners sets our operating system to enduring peace. John Piper puts it this way: “Heartfelt confidence that, because of Christ, our all-controlling God is 100 percent for us, is the key to indomitable joy.”

The wakefulness of the gospel produces “boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him” (Eph. 3:12). At the same time that gospel wakefulness produces boldness, it produces humility. The recipe for these two ostensibly paradoxical qualities is right there in the recipe for gospel wakefulness: assurance and brokenness. The profound brokenness necessary for wakefulness to the gospel embeds in us permanently the reality that we have earned, achieved, or accomplished nothing, that our redeemed status before God is purely the free gift of grace. This is deeply humbling. The approval of God in Christ declared in the gospel at our moment of absolute brokenness then sets us free to a stronger confidence than we could muster up in and of ourselves; it is rooted in the eternal, supreme, preeminent King of kings who has stooped to say, “I am yours, and you are mine.”

Tim Keller explains the humble confidence (or confident humility) wrought by the proclamation of God’s love for us in Jesus this way: “The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself.” (The Reason for God)

In Sunday’s message, I challenged us all to pray through Psalm 23 this week, asking God to turn the coffee-mug sentimentality many of us assume it is into heartfelt gratitude for the treasure we’ve received in the shepherding of God.

Maybe praying through the Psalms is something you’ve never tried before. Almost 1700 years ago, early church father Athanasius wrote this encouragement in his Letter to Marcellinus:

Son, all the books of Scripture, both Old Testament and New, are inspired by God and useful for instruction, as the apostle says; but to those who really study it the Psalter yields especial treasure. Within it are represented and portrayed in all their great variety the movements of the human soul. It is like a picture, in which you see yourself portrayed and, seeing, may understand and consequently form yourself upon the pattern given.

In the Psalter you learn about yourself. You find depicted in it all the movements of your soul, all its changes, its ups and downs, its failures and recoveries. Moreover, whatever your particular need or trouble, from this same book you can select a form of words to fit it, so that you do not merely hear and then pass on, but learn the way to remedy your ill. Prohibitions of evildoing are plentiful in Scripture, but only the Psalter tells you how to obey these orders and refrain from sin.

The parable of the treasure in Matthew 13:44 reminds us that God is a greater treasure than anything else we could ever possess. That’s something you know well if you’ve experienced God’s all-encompassing sufficiency, like David expressed it in Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.

Many people unfortunately assume that Psalm 23 is just for those who are sick, suffering, and dying, but it’s meant to be a picture of everyday life lived under God’s sovereign and compassionate care. Many people (even some who would call themselves Christians) have never experienced God’s sufficiency in that way. According to Christian counselor (and Kailua boy) David Powlison, they may be living in Anti-Psalm 23:

I’m on my own.
No one looks out for me or protects me.
I experience a continual sense of need. Nothing’s quite right.
I’m always restless. I’m easily frustrated and often disappointed.
It’s a jungle—I feel overwhelmed. It’s a desert—I’m thirsty.
My soul feels broken, twisted, and stuck. I can’t fix myself.
I stumble down some dark paths.
Still, I insist: I want to do what I want, when I want, how I want.
But life’s confusing. Why don’t things ever really work out?
I’m haunted by emptiness and futility—shadows of death.
I fear the big hurt and final loss.
Death is waiting for me at the end of every road,
but I’d rather not think about that.
I spend my life protecting myself. Bad things can happen.
I find no lasting comfort.
I’m alone… facing everything that could hurt me.

Which one sounds better to you?

Jesus says his kingdom is a treasure so valuable that we would joyfully give up everything else in life to gain it (Matt. 13:44).

Is that the way you feel about God’s sovereign reign over your life and gracious mercy poured out every day? If not, it’s probably because there are other things in life that you treasure more. Idols that steal your affection away from Christ.

Maybe you’re not even aware what those are. In the Bookends of the Christian Life (available to read for free on Google Books), Jerry Bridges offers twelve questions to help identify the things you treasure more than Christ:

I am preoccupied with ________.
If only ________, then I would be happy.
I get my sense of significance from ________.
I would protect and preserve ________ at any cost.
I fear losing ________.
The thing that gives me greatest pleasure is ________.
When I lose ________, I get angry, resentful, frustrated, anxious, or depressed.
For me, life depends on ________.
The thing I value more than anything in the world is ________.
When I daydream, my mind goes to________.
The best thing I can think of is ________.
The thing that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning is ________.

Gospel-driven compassion is required for us to have Christ-like influence in the world, but there are habits and attitudes that drain compassion from our hearts. Darrin Patrick lists a few of them:

Busyness
When I first went into ministry, I had an overwhelming sensation that I was alive for the first time. I was utterly consumed with teaching, shepherding, leading, and counseling, to the point that I neglected other responsibilities in order to do more ministry. I could not imagine not enjoying ministry. Over the years I have realized that the joys of ministering to people are often crowded out by the demanding schedule of ministry. I find that I can get so immersed in the busyness of ministry that I lose the pleasure of ministry.

When the needs of people consistently make you angry, when you avoid people because you’re afraid they might need something from you, when you frequently tune out during conversations, you need to know that you are no longer caring for people.

Hurriedness
There is a difference between simply being busy and being hurried. Being busy is about the things you have to do. Being hurried is the spiritual, mental, and emotional state that you are in when trying to do the things you have to do. You can be busy without being hurried.

As a new pastor I could not even understand a journal entry like this: “I’m tired, Lord. Bone weary from the inside out. I’m tired of a con- stantly cluttered desk and an overcrowded calendar. I’m tired of problems I can’t solve, and hurts I can’t heal. I’m tired of deadlines and decisions—duties done without any pleasure. I can’t remember the last time I walked barefoot outside or took time to smell the air after the rain. I can’t recall the last time I smelled coffee and paused to enjoy it. I want to feel. I want to laugh. I want to cry. I want to live life to the fullest. I want to love, and be loved.” (Richard Exley)

Self-righteousness
There is a vertical aspect to self-righteousness (I am trying to gain right standing with God with my good work instead of Christ’s). But there is also a horizontal aspect to self-righteousness (I am trying to be right before God because I compare my sin with others’). The horizontal form of self-righteousness is one of the main reasons people don’t forgive people close to them, much less be compassionate toward people not close to them.

Self-protection
One of the hardest things to overcome in loving hurting people is absorbing their hurt, rejection, and shame without pulling back emotionally. The root of the word compassion in English means “to be together [com] with someone’s pain [passion].” So to demonstrate compassion toward someone is to agree at that moment to enter into suffering with them, to choose to enter their reality—hopes, dreams, sins, and rebellion. If your heart is clogged up with protecting yourself, you are unable to enter into the loves of other people because all your energies will be consumed with avoiding their pain. Compassion is the only way not to focus on your own comfort. Compassion is the God-given emotion that enables us to be distracted from our own wants and focused on others’ needs.

Compassion, most assuredly, is deep within us as followers of Christ. We know this because the same Spirit who moved Jesus with compassion lives in us, and that same Spirit yearns to move us toward compassion just as he moves preachers to preach and leaders to lead. Just as we need the Spirit’s guidance to reveal truth to us in Scripture, so do we need the guidance of the Spirit to birth compassion in us regularly. God, when he revealed himself to Moses, described himself as compassionate.14 Ultimately, not tapping into this well of compassion is an issue to be taken up with the Lord himself.

The parables of the mustard seed and yeast in Matthew 13:31-33 remind us that God’s kingdom is continually expanding in influence. And Jesus wants us to join him in his mission to the world.

Many Christians say to themselves, “That’s absolutely right. I should be influencing my neighbors and coworkers with the gospel.” But that’s as far as they take it. Their missional engagement never rises above a motivation of guilt-driven duty. They invite some neighbors over for dinner, or buy lunch for a coworker. They make quick mention of their involvement in church (“You ought to come sometime!”), then sigh with relief when their missional duty is done.

See if you can spot a different motive behind Jesus’ mission:

• Matthew 9:20–22: “And behold, a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment, for she said to herself, ‘If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.’ Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.’ And instantly the woman was made well.”
• Matthew 9:35–36: “And Jesus went throughout all the cities and vil- lages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
• Matthew 14:14: “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”
• Matthew 15:30: “And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put them at his feet, and he healed them.”
• Matthew 15:32: “Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.’”
• Mark 1:40–41: “And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneel- ing said to him, ‘If you will, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.’”
• Mark 10:20–21: “And he said to him, ‘Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.’ And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.’”

The common thread? Compassion. Darrin Patrick responds to passages like these with this challenge:

Being on mission means having open eyes that are looking for the hurting—the married couple living next door struggling with fertility, the frat boy who disguises his alcoholism with the statement, “Hey, this is what college is all about,” the single mother who waits on you at the restaurant even though she has no idea how she and her child will eat tomorrow after her tips buy food tonight.

To open your eyes is to risk losing your life and living with a broken heart for the sake of the lost. As C. S. Lewis reminds us, the alternative to a compassionate heart is a dead heart: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

The motive for mission is compassion. We join Jesus on his mission not because we want to grow our church or because we like to dispense apologetic insights to skeptics or even because we like to hang out with unbelievers. We go on the mission of the Savior because we share the compassionate heart of the one who sees people as sheep without a shepherd.

JD Greear, author of the new book Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary, recommends this four-part daily prayer:

1. “In Christ, there is nothing I could do that would make you love me more, and nothing I have done that makes you love me less.”
   Pray about this “gift righteousness” of the gospel (2 Cor. 5:21) and go to war against the incipient works-righteousness hardwired into our hearts.
2. “Your presence and approval are all I need today for everlasting joy.”
   Pray about this value of God’s presence in our lives. It’s one thing to know that Jesus is your possession; it’s another for that approval to have such weightiness in our hearts that our captivity to other idols is snapped.
3. “As you have been to me, so I will be to others.”
   Pray about and consider the extravagant generosity of God toward us. His generosity toward us leads us to radical generosity toward others.
4. “As I pray, I’ll measure your compassion by the cross and your power by the resurrection.” 
   Pray that God would help you view the world through the lens of the gospel. Seeing the compassion and power of God revealed in the gospel produces bold, audacious faith in our hearts.

(via)

I’m in Southeast Asia this week, training church planters and pastors. I heard about Steve Jobs’ death yesterday in an email from a friend. I was reading it on a MacBook Pro, sitting in a house-church in a foreign city that I had navigated to using my iPhone.

I’ve been using Macs since they were first introduced in 1984, when I was 11 years old. Needless to say, my life has been influenced by Steve Jobs (and so has yours, even if you have a Windows PC and an Android phone). I was sad to hear the news of his death, knowing we wouldn’t have his God-given gifts around anymore.

I was even more sad as I contemplated where he is right now. The Zen simplicity that guided his vision for technology also seemed to prevent him from embracing anything as scandalous and nonsensical as the cross.

Or did it? I was reminded of the sovereignty of God over every human heart by this thoughtful post by Lutheran scholar Paul McCain:

Unlike some of my fellow Lutherans and other fellow Christians, who felt a need at Jobs’ passing to begin making pronouncements about his eternal destiny, I am not rushing to judgment. I can’t help but recall Abraham Lincoln’s quip, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt.” Can we learn from Steve Jobs’ errors and mistakes in life? Of course, and we should. Every bit as much as we must learn from our own. But must we, on the news of his passing, be so quick to condemn him and focus only on his faults and failings? No.

One more thing . . .

Steve Jobs was baptized and instructed in the Christian faith, so we can do a bit more than talk about “common grace,” we can also hope that God, in His own ways, at times and places of His choosing, may have worked in Steve’s life, at the last, a remembrance of the gifts from Christ He had received in His life. Unless you have been with a person in their last days, you have no idea what goes on in a person’s heart and mind in the closing days and moments of life. Let us pray God brought back to Steve the remembrance of what he had been taught as a young man in a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod confirmation class, taught by my friend Rev. Dr. Martin Taddey, now deceased.

So, let’s leave the judgment to God, and leave the judgmentalism to those who have no hope. We who have hope in Christ know that for all mankind the One who suffered, died and rose again as the victor over our greatest enemies: sin, death and the devil, has called us to be His very own. We hold out hope that, in His mercy, He once more reached into Steve Jobs’ heart and mind at the end. And that is the “one more thing” that would be better than anything Steve ever announced and told us about.

Amen.

Many of us, like the rebellious prodigal son, have been rescued from ourselves by our gracious and compassionate heavenly father. We’ve seen the depth of our sin and the consequences of our sin, and we’ve accepted God’s grace poured out through his son Jesus on the cross. But still, when we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we still have tendencies one way or the other.

Maybe you’re still an outward rebel, and you still try to avoid God by ignoring all the rules. You don’t really take God very seriously.

Or maybe you’re still a self-righteous rebel, and you still try to avoid God by FOLLOWING all the rules.  You take yourself way too seriously. Or maybe you’re both, depending on the situation.

Here’s the thing: God didn’t rescue us just to let us keep living our lives the same way we always have, secure in the knowledge that we have a ticket into heaven. He rescued us so he could change everything about our lives right now.

The father in this story didn’t waste a single second planning the feast for his rescued son. He said, “Get the fattened calf now!  It’s time to start our new life together right now!”

Being rescued means everything in life changes. Everything! It means you see God differently. You see yourself differently. You see life differently.  And through that, God gives you the power to overcome the rebel inside, or the self-righteous person inside.

When you come to church…  The rebel inside will try to make you casual and flippant in your worship, since God isn’t too far above you anyway. Or the self-righteous person inside will try to make you deadly serious in your worship, to make sure you worship our holy God in complete holiness, and earn his favor. But if you know you’ve been rescued, you’ll know exactly how sinful you are, and how holy God is, and you’ll worship out of sheer joy for the grace he’s lavished on you.

When you’re going through a really tough time in life… The rebel inside will try to tell you that it’s OK to do whatever it takes to get out of the tough time: lie, cheat, steal, whatever. God won’t mind. Or the self-righteous person inside will try to tell you that you don’t deserve this suffering because you’ve been faithful to God, so you end up mad at God. But if you’re one of the rescued, you’ll see God’s glory and you’ll see your sin, and you’ll see how God is using the tough time to make you more like him.

When you’re dealing with conflict in your family…  The rebel inside will make you want to look out for your own interests above all else.  You’ll only love your wife, husband, brother or sister as long as they’re meeting your needs.Or the self-righteous person inside will convince you that it’s all the other person’s fault.  You’ll keep blaming them for everything that’s wrong in the relationship. But if you know you’re rescued, you can love someone whether or not they meet your needs, because you know God has already met all your needs! You can confront other people out of love and a desire to see them become more like Jesus, not out of blame and anger and frustration.

When you meet a homeless guy on the street…  The self-righteous person inside will try to tell you that he’s getting what he deserves, since he obviously hasn’t been as faithful, and responsible, and hard-working as you have. Or the rebel inside will try to tell you that he’s a victim of society, and he just needs a handout. He doesn’t need religion pushed on him. But if know you’ve been rescued, you’ll know you’re just as spiritually poor as he is. You’re both in need of God’s grace, so you won’t have any problem giving him what he needs, physically and spiritually.

That’s one of the biggest things about being rescued: you start developing a strong passion to see other people rescued too. Once you understand just what God has saved you from, you just want to see other people experience the same thing.

Being rescued changes everything!