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LifeWork
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TranscriptIntroduction
I’m your host AMBrewster, and today we’re trying to apply everything we learned last time. So, if you didn’t catch that session, please listen to episode 643 before continuing today.
And—if you are returning—I hope your family is with you, you all have a copy of the LifeWork, and that you’ll take advantage of the related resources linked in the description as you and your family pursue spiritual maturity. Here’s our first practical application for the day. If we’re going to humbly confess our sin, then it will be easy to humbly pursue repentance through real change. That means we’ll have to continue learning, understanding, and making the necessary changes to the glory of God. The additional resources linked in the description are there for you to continue that study. So, let’s get started. Topic
Some of you might remember from previous studies that the best application is unique to you. It’s not good enough to say, “I need to love God and love my family today.” Though that may be true, it lacks actionable steps.
Loving God will involve obeying His will for your life, and loving your family will involve wanting and working toward God’s best interest for their lives. But even that isn’t enough detail. What is God’s will for you three hours from now? What’s in God’s best interest for your dad, sister, or child tomorrow? When you answer those questions as specifically as possible, you’ll have practical steps you can take to walk in obedience to God. So, the application we make on this show will be general—because I don’t know you and your family as well as I’d like. But if we were meeting in family counseling, I would help you make the most specific application possible. But since we’re not meeting in person, you’re going to need to help each other with this. Dad and mom, you—in particular—need to help everyone in the family be as careful in their application as possible. Of course, I’ll try to remind you of this as we progress. But before we get any further into today’s topic, I’m going to humbly invite you to partner with us as we seek to glorify God by serving families all over the world. We desperately need your financial donations in order to continue this ministry. We’re getting dangerously close to having to shut our doors, but with a monthly donation from your family for 5, 10, 50, or $100, we can continue producing this free content, writing books, speaking at conferences, and counseling families. Please visit TruthLoveParent.com/donate or click the link in the description to give. And now, Part 2 of Humility in Confession. As we learned last time, David wrote Psalm 51 as a public demonstration of his confession and repentance. And the Lord wants to use this Psalm to help us better understand the heart and actions of a person who genuinely, humbly recognizes their sin and wants to change. In order to help us do this, I encourage you to actually pray the words of this Psalm directly to God. The key is, of course, to be specific. Therefore, instead of reading the Psalm word for word, you’re going to replace some of the words with information that’s specific to you. On your LifeWork, you can see that I’ve included all of Psalm 51 with blanks provided. Each of those blanks replaces a general word David used for our sin—words like transgression, iniquity, and sin. So, what you’re going to do is insert nine of your own personal and specific sin struggles in the blanks provided. Of course, there isn’t time to do that now. I suggest that this be something each of you do either immediately when this session is over or some time later this week. I also encourage you parents to keep your kids accountable to complete this task and help them as they encounter difficulties. I also believe it’s best for everyone in your family (including the parents) to share their final lists with each other. Now, before I give you a sample of what this should look like, I want to remind us that we all sin many times every day. You definitely sin more than 9 times, but here’s what we don’t want to do. Don’t put the same sin in every blank. If you disobey your parents a lot, you can include that in one of the blanks, but you’ll need to search your heart and life for 8 other sin habits for the other blanks. This may prove to be challenging. If that happens, that doesn’t mean that you’re a really good person who rarely does anything wrong, it means that you don’t see yourself the way God does. Ask for help if you need it, but don’t give up because you don’t see your sin the way God does. If you need help, you could read the verses I’m about to share. These biblical passages outline various sins and righteous behavior. If you do any of these sins with regularity, you can include them. If you don’t live righteously as God commands, you can notate that. You should discover that you commit more sins per week than will fit onto these 9 blanks. When that happens, you can fill out the Psalm again with 9 more. And if you find even more, you can keep going. Every day you pray this prayer, you could insert 9 new sins. The key is, don’t pray empty words. Mean each one or risk the consequences that come from lying to God. If you need some help better understanding what God calls sin, consider the following. By the way, these passages will be included in the transcript linked for you in the description of this episode. Matthew 5, Romans 1:18-22, Romans 12, I Corinthians 6:9-10, I Corinthians 13, II Corinthians 12:20–21, Galatians 5:19–23, Galatians 6, Ephesians 4, Ephesians 5:3–7, Philippians 4:8, Colossians 3:5–17, II Timothy 3:1–5, James 3-4, II Peter 1:5–7, I John, and so many more. Some have suggested that the Bible identifies over 600 unique sins including sins of commission and omission. Okay, so here’s a personal example of how I might pray through this Psalm. Follow along in your LifeWork to see where I inserted my own personal sins. “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my IMPATIENCE TOWARD MY FAMILY. Wash me thoroughly from my ANXIETY WHEN THINGS ARE OUT OF MY CONTROL and cleanse me from my ANGER WHEN I DON’T GET MY WAY. For I know my LAZINESS, and my DISCONTENTMENT is ever before me. Against You, You only, I have SINNED BY EATING TOO MANY UNHEALTHY FOODS and done EVIL BY WORSHIPPING MYSELF in Your sight, so that You are justified when You speak and blameless when You judge.” I’m going to skip down to the next sentence with a blank. “Hide Your face from my UNKIND WORDS and blot out all my SELFISHNESS.” Now, I could have been much more specific, but I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or share anything about my family that would have been unnecessary. Here’s a made-up example of how specific I should have been if I were doing this for my own LifeWork: “Blot out my impatience toward my son when he leaves his dirty clothes all over the house.” Now, as a reminder, this is not designed to make us feel bad about ourselves. This is a Christ-honoring response when we rightly already feel bad about our sin. When we have experienced good shame and are convicted about our wrong choices—as Matthew 5 says—when we’re already grieved over our sin, that’s when we need to confess it to God. Of course, too many of us are arrogant in that we don’t see our sin or we’re prideful in that our sin doesn’t bother us. That’s why need to be more humble. So, even if you’re prideful and arrogant (two great sins to include on your Psalm 51 list), working through this assignment will hopefully open your eyes to your need. Lastly, before we move on, I know how it may seem strange to pray someone else’s words. Listen, you don’t have to pray the Psalm, but here’re a couple good reasons for it. 1. Many of us don’t know how to pray well and don’t have a good prayer life. Praying God’s Word back to Him helps teach us how to pray better. 2. The Lord likes it when we pray His Word back to Him. This is exemplified in various prayers throughout the Scriptures. You can of course, simply confess your sins to the Lord using your own words; that would be fine as well. Lastly, if any of the sins on your list were a sin against someone else in your family, be sure to ask that person to forgive you for that sin too. In fact, the biblical example we see in Scriptures is that God wants us to be reconciled to others before we offer our worship to Him. It would be best to ask your brother or mother to forgive you before praying this to God. If you don’t know how to apologize to someone, we have a couple resources linked for you in the description. But, it doesn’t mean anything if we confess our sins to God and others if we’re not going to actually change. So, the last portion of your LifeWork gives you spaces to carefully think through the precise ways you need to start believing, thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting in order to change into the likeness of Christ. After confessing your sin to God and asking for His forgiveness, the second part of repentance is to “turn around” in your behavior and live in accordance with Who God is. Use the list from Psalm 51 which we discussed last week to guide your beliefs about God. Your beliefs about God will then guide how you should live. If I believe that God is worthy of my obedience, I’ll want to obey Him, and then I will obey Him. That means that if I’m disobeying Him, I didn’t want to do right, and I didn’t want to do right because I believed that doing what I wanted was better. This is one beautiful reason that David explains so much of God’s character in his psalms. It’s what we believe about God that’s the foundation of our entire lives. With that said, I strongly encourage your family to work through the Merest Christianity Series. That study is one of the most important biblical truths you can ever learn. It’s the very core of our relationship with God. That study will also be linked for you in the description. Okay, so here’s where we need to be super practical and specific. I’ll provide some specific examples from my own life to help illustrate how specific you need to be in your own application. Of course, you may find the blanks aren’t long enough for the necessary specificity, so feel free to use another sheet of paper for this or type it out on a computer. 1. Because God is gracious, I should . . . It would be super simple to write something like “be gracious.” And—again—that’s not inaccurate. But what does it need to look like for you to be gracious? Who is the one person in your family with whom you need to be more gracious? When are you tempted to be the least gracious? First we should make sure we understand what it is to be biblically gracious. Generally speaking, grace is underserved favor. Someone may “deserve” unkindness, but God calls us to be gracious by not being unkind. We may think that someone deserves silent treatment, but it’s in those moments that God doesn’t want us giving them what they deserve. Here’s a hypothetical example for me, “Because God is gracious, I should be gracious to Ivy if she forgets to take out the garbage on Tuesday morning. I need to remember that I too am a sinner who forgets to do things, so when I approach her about her forgetfulness, I need to lovingly and patiently show her from God’s Word how she can be more obedient in this regard. If she requires consequences, I need to give her ones that are appropriate to her sin and that will help her be successful in this area in the future.” Do you see how that application is so specific to me that it probably doesn’t apply in your life? Now, I could have even thought more carefully about a specific consequence in order to make my application even more focused. Of course, you might be thinking, “I though grace was not giving someone what they deserve. Doesn’t that mean you shouldn’t give her a consequence?” Not necessarily. Sometimes grace may permit me to forgo a consequence, but often times its the consequences that are truly gracious. Our sin deserves destruction and pain. But God’s consequences are designed to help us become more like Him. If you think it’s your responsibility to punish your kids, you don’t understand God’s role for you or what grace is. However, biblical consequences—though they’re designed to produce temporary pain—are also designed to protect us from the life-altering pain of continuing in our sin. You can listen to our Consequences Series to better understand God’s plan for consequences. The point is, if my daughter—God forbid—were to forget to take out the trash this Tuesday, I have already carefully considered how I need to biblically respond in order to love my daughter and obey God. So, what’s the biggest area in your family where you need to be more gracious because God is gracious with you? 2. Because God is loving, I should . . . Again, we need to start by making sure that we understand what it is to be biblically loving. We have a series all about Family Love that can help everyone in your home get on the same page about love. The most basic idea is that we need to be wanting and working toward God’s best interest in someone’s life. This can include playing kindly with each other, giving biblical consequences, reproving, serving, and countless other expressions of love. I Corinthians 13 provides an amazing list of what it is to be loving if you need some practical examples. Who in your family do you struggle to love the most? When is it hardest to love them? What do you need to do differently to love them in a Christ-honoring way? By the way, I’m sure you can tell that in order to do this part of the LifeWork well, you probably need to wait to fill out these blanks. Don’t do it now as we’re talking unless you just want to jot down some ideas to expand later. We want to make sure we’re understanding the assignment and then give our full attention to it later. This will definitely take some time, but that’s the point. If we’re humbly acknowledging our sin, we’re going to want to change, and each of these characteristics of God needs to inform how we live. 3. Because God is compassionate, I should . . . Biblical compassion has to do with feeling for someone the way we should. It’s appropriate to feel sad for someone when they’re in a difficult situation. It’s glorifying to God to rejoice with someone who’s experiencing a high moment in their lives. Romans 2:15-16 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep, 16 by being of the same mind toward one another, not being haughty in mind, but associating with the humble.” This will obviously require humility. We need to prefer others above ourselves. We’ll never be compassionate with others when we’re consumed with our own selfish feelings. With whom do you need to be more compassionate? When are you most tempted to not be compassionate? What does that compassion need to look like? By the way, it might be easy for us to make up a situation that will never happen. Instead, we should consider the past situations in which you were not compassionate—especially if they’ve happened many times. For example, maybe when your sibling wins a game, you get angry while they’re happy. Or perhaps, when your sibling does something they shouldn’t, and they get hurt, but you don’t have compassion for their physical pain. Now, it’s very likely you can imagine a bunch of legitimate, real-world ways your siblings might get hurt because of their sin. And it would be a good idea to have a plan for how you can be compassionate in those moments, but this is not a time to expect that your sibling absolutely will sin in this way. You should actually hope and pray that they don’t. You should lovingly be helping them not to fail in that way in the future, but in the event they do, you also have a pan for how you can respond correctly. 4. Because God is forgiving, I should . . . The easy answer to this one is “forgive the people in your life who have sinned against you.” But we must not follow the world’s understanding of forgiveness. We also need to be careful of the unbiblical ideas of forgiveness that we see in the church. For example, you cannot forgive a person who doesn’t want to be forgiven. You also can’t forgive yourself. We have a number of resources about this linked for you in the description. Just make sure your understanding of forgiveness is biblical. 5. Because God is powerful, I should . . . Now, some of these might be difficult to apply directly to your family. You might say something like, “Because God is powerful, I should help my little sister clean her room.” And that’s not the end of the world, but that’s also not the best application of this truth. How about something like this: “Because God is powerful, I should trust Him when my parents don’t seem to listen to me or my child is being disobedient”? How about, “Because God is powerful, I should stop acting like I can’t obey Him. He promises to give me all the power I need through the Holy Spirit to keep His commands”? It’s amazing how often we excuse our sin because we’re not perfect. But God says, “Be holy as I am holy.” The standard is high, but He also graciously gives us the divine power we need to do right and a way to escape every temptation. 6. Because God is the recipient of all sin, I should . . . A good application for this point might sound like this, “Because God is the recipient of all sin, I should not be angry and mean when people sin against me. Ultimately, their sin against God is far worse than their sin against me, and God is still gracious and loving with them.” Of course, a specific application for you would be to list out a time when someone in your family sins against you. Try to pick the family member with whom you fail to respond correctly when they sin against you. Think of a specific time that will likely happen in the near future . . . not because you’re expecting or hoping them to fail, but because it’s likely that will be the moment that you are tempted to fail. You might say, “The next time my brother selfishly takes the last cookie, I won’t be selfishly upset because I realize his selfishness is a problem because it’s a sin against God . . . not because I don’t like it.” Now, we can’t take the time to be super specific about the rest, but I hope the comments I’ve made so far will guide how you think about the next ones. I am going to read them and say a couple short things, but we’re coming close to the end. 7. Because God is righteous, I should . . . What’s the biggest area in which you need to be more righteous? What specific heart attitude, word, feeling, or action do you need to make a regular part of your life? 8. Because God is blameless, I should . . . All of us should stop blaming God for the difficult things in our family. We should also not allow ourselves to complain about it or be discontent. All of that suggests that God’s responsible for the sin or is unfair or is acting inappropriately by allowing it to happen. 9. Because God is the only Judge, I should . . . For this one, we need to consider the moments that we’re sinfully tempted to be the judge, jury, and executioner against others in our family. This is definitely a big temptation for the parents. Going back to our previous comments about consequences and punishment—we need to realize that God is the ultimate judge, and though we do need to judge rightly by being wise and discerning, it is not our place to pass final judgment on a person and—especially—give up on them. 10. Because God is truth, I should . . . This truth should motivate us to tell the truth and not lie. Are there people in our home against whom you’ve lied? But this should also motivate us to reconsider our beliefs about this life. Quite often we’re living lies by believing things we shouldn’t. I can’t tell you how many professing Christians believe it’s okay to “follow your heart” or get revenge against people who hurt you or be sexually active and on and on and on. 11. Because God is wise, I should . . . Praise the Lord that He promises to share His wisdom with us! For this application, think of at least one area in your life where you’ve been foolish, and then consider a biblically wise response. Another good application would be to pursue maturity by studying the Bible more. 12. Because God is pure, I should . . . Purity refers to being without contaminant. What is the biggest sin issue in your life? Where are your thoughts impure because they’re filled with selfish, self-worshipping thoughts? Which of your actions and desires and words and feelings are the most impure? 13. Because God is steadfast, I should . . . For this application, consider what you would have to do to become a more consistent and faithful child of God. Thankfully, the Bible has the answer. Bible meditation, prayer, assembling with God’s people, discipleship, and the like are all part of the process of becoming more steadfast and consistent. 14. Because God is relational, I should . . . Think about the people in your family with whom you hate to spend time. Imagine how you could better love God and them by relating to them as family should. 15. Because God is the source of joy, I should . . . Obviously, we need to be more joyful in our families . . . even with that strife-causer in the room. But we should also be a source of joy for others. Instead of causing strife, consider how you can better be a source of joy. 16. Because God is sustaining, I should . . . First of all, we need to trust Him. Second, this is another good opportunity to think about how we need to serve, help, benefit, uphold, and bless the people in our family in the same ways that God sustains us. 17. Because God is the Savior, I should . . . I hope—if you’re not born again—this truth drives you to Christ to become a born again believer. If you’re already a Christian, I pray this causes you to praise Him, but a really necessary, practical application of this truth would be to consider the people in your family who might not be born again. You need to pray for them. You need to share the Gospel with them. 18. Because God is praiseworthy, I should . . . Do you praise God? Do your family members hear and see you praise God? Do you invite your family to praise God even when things are difficult? And . . . 19. Because God is good, I should . . . Yes, you need to be good. I need to be good. But we also need to understand what biblical goodness actually looks like. It’s very different from the cultural ideas about goodness. Are you a good influence in your family? Is it good to have you around? With whom do you need to be more good? To whom do you need to exhibit more goodness? In what specific ways do you need to start being good? Conclusion
Now, I know, that was a lot of information, and we’re going long today, but please remember that this is not supposed to be the end of this discussion. If you’re truly serious about humbly confessing your sin and actually changing by the power of God to the glory of the Father, then you have some work you’re going to have to do.
You will need to carefully take a lot of time to think through each of these truths about God . . . to know them, understand them, and be able to see how they need to change your life. But you also need to start making those changes. It’s not good enough to continue in the sin . . . we need to change. And—honestly—you could do and redo this assignment for the rest of your life. This is not the end of your maturity; this is merely a step. Continued sanctification and maturity will require more humility, confession, and repentance. The Christian life is a perpetual cycle of grieving our sin, confessing it to God, renewing our minds, putting off our sin, putting on Christ’s righteousness, and rejoicing in the love and grace of God. Regardless of how difficult your current family situation has been (or may still be), rejoice in this . . . if you’ve genuinely confessed, you’re genuinely forgiven! Please share this two-part episode, and email us at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if we can serve your family by helping you with these applications. And join us next time as we start a short three-part series called “Sleep & Your Family.” I’ll see you then.
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