Self-effort or Divine Power.

[aiki]

Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. ​

The Bible is full of commands to Christians to do things, to take action as followers of Jesus, forsaking sin, challenging evil, serving as ambassadors for Christ in the World, preaching and teaching God's truth to the sin-sick and spiritually-ignorant. There are so many "do's" and "do not's" in Scripture that new believers, in particular, feel the need to rush forward into Christian living, by their own power working as hard as they can to do for God what He has commanded.

Some feel this pressure to act so keenly that they take up a rather militant, fearful motivation for obedience to God, threatening themselves and others with the prospect of an angry God casting the disobedient believer out of His kingdom into hell in an attempt to keep the fire of Christian living well-stoked.

Others are so used to making things happen, so habituated to self-effort in the accomplishment of nearly everything in their lives, that they resort to this reflex in their walk with God, too. It seems obvious to them that God intends they should exert themselves in pursuit of a godly life. They must work hard, try, labor, determine, resolve, commit to the Christian life.

Still others easily and quickly acknowledge divine power as the ultimate Source of their ability to serve God properly but in practice act almost entirely from their own human resources. They give lip-service to the need for God's strength in serving Him, but then focus tightly upon what they must do to succeed spiritually. Yes, God does it all but they must pray, they must study His word, they must live holy lives, they must be dedicated and persevering, they must have faith, and so on.

The apostle Paul, though, made it crystal clear on what basis the Christian functions as a successful disciple of Jesus. The born-again believer can only work out what God has first worked in. The Christian is merely a conduit of the life of the Holy Spirit, a reflection of the glory of the Lord, a branch enlarged and fruitful as a natural result of its connection to the Vine and the life-giving sap it imparts to the branch. (2 Timothy 2:21; John 15:5; 2 Corinthians 3:18)

God really does do it all. He moved toward us when we were lost in darkness and sin, doing what only He could do to draw us to Himself, enabling us to understand the Gospel, through Christ atoning and cleansing us from our sin, and then in the Person of the Holy Spirit fills us with Himself, empowering us for Christian living. (John 6:44; John 16:8; John 14:26; 2 Timothy 2:25; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 8:9-13; Titus 3:5-8)

When the believer loses sight of this, in their own power attempting to manufacture the life of the Spirit, spiritual exhaustion, failure and frustration are sure to follow. These things are always indicators of a believer working from the flesh, from Self, rather than in the power of the Spirit.

How does one remain under the flow of the power of the Spirit? Submission (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:6). Yielding (Romans 6:13-22). Surrender (Romans 12:1). We can only be in one of two states relative to God: submission or rebellion. There is no middle ground between these states. If one is not under God's control, they are in rebellion to Him. And so long as one is not submitted to God's will and way, however unwittingly straying into self-will and self-effort, they cut themselves off from the free flow of God's transforming divine filling. But the moment this is acknowledged (1 John 1:9) and the believer places him/herself under God's control once again, immediately the flow of the Spirit's power resumes, subtly, imperceptibly but profoundly changing and empowering the Christian, making them "little Christs" in their practical living, not just in their spiritual position in Christ.

What about you? Is your experience of God actually just an experience of your effort to obey Him? Or is your experience of His power at work in you, changing your desires, enabling you to do His will joyfully and freely?

 

[Trusting in Him]

There is a degree of comfort to those who trust in Him fully and know that without Him that they can do nothing! When you have come to such a low level of weakness, you know beyond any doubt, that without Him you truely can do nothing and that trying to do things in you own strength, is a very quick way of discovering that you're own strength has limits and over exertion only brings you to even greater weakness.

Praise Him who knows that we are, but dust and still involves us in His mighty plans! He uses the weak and foolish things of this world, to comfound those who think that they are strong, or wise!

 

[Trusting in Him]

It can take a long time for us to realise this, but since sripture tells us that without Him we can do nothing, it is not only pointless to think that we can please God by trying to do anything for God in our own self effort, but also this is open rebellion against Him to try to do anything for Him in our own self effort.

As we wait on Him, we start to see things that He is doing in situations that we find ourselves connected to. If we trust Him, we will not make haste. Show me where it is in the bible, that God is ever in a hurry? God is waiting for the fullness of His timing. His timing is not only perfect, but that's the time when His will and purpose becomes unstoppable.

Miracles can happen where there is faith. This is why He who believeth shall not make haste. To build anything without it being on God's foundation is not to understand that He is that foundation and to act in presumption without waiting for Him is not building on His foundation at all. He is that foundation!

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. (Isaiah 28:16)

Do will think that we know what God is doing and think that we can help His will along? How foolish is that. The foundation must be His and it is He that will have all the glory.

I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images. (Isaiah 42:81)

 

[Cute Peonies]

I'm the opposite of what you wrote. I struggle with being obedient sometimes. It actually depends on what God wants me to do. I tend to avoid uncomfortable situations. Not sure if it's laziness or procrastination.

....

Still working on being obedient and not delaying the things I need to do.

Anyways thank you for this!

 

[Trusting in Him]

I'm the opposite of what you wrote. I struggle with being obedient sometimes. It actually depends on what God wants me to do. I tend to avoid uncomfortable situations. Not sure if it's laziness or procrastination.

....

Still working on being obedient and not delaying the things I need to do.

Anyways thank you for this!

What makes you think, that I don't struggle with that too! I think that there are times when we all struggle with that a bit!

 

[aiki]

Bump.

 

[Hoping]

I'm sorry to have misunderstood. I'm removing my comments. I will think about it some more.

 

[aiki]

Thank you for the bump (God, was that you?). I started looking for old posts about my problem before starting a new thread, and here it is.

I've been having dwindling-faith problems and have taken up regular Bible reading, prayers, and what contact I can find in the COVID age with strong believers.

Why has your faith been dwindling? In what has it been grounded?

2. Trust God to accept what I'm doing and give me more faith or belief when He wants to. When I've done my daily reading and prayers and had some Christian contact, get back to my daily life.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and especially after reading some of the thoughts here, I think it should be the second option.

You've misunderstood my OP, if this is your conclusion. Trusting God to accept what you're doing is not living in submission to Him. And He has already made you able to believe, to have faith (in all sorts of things, actually), but it is up to you in what, and to what degree, you will do so. Also, there is no daily life separate from your spiritual life. God intends every part of your life to revolve around Him. He's God, after all, not some pagan deity to whom you can offer some incense and the occasional bit of fruit, or whatever brief religious ritual you think will satisfy. God is your Maker and Sustainer, the vital Hub of the universe - and of your life, too. And so, your daily life is not something you go back to after a short spiritual moment or two acknowledging Him but ought to be always lived within a spiritual context, shaped and ordered by it, whether you're driving your car, or singing a hymn of praise.

I might look for some more reasons to believe, maybe as a special thing on Sundays, but I've seen on here that some people get really obsessed with religion and that doesn't seem to do any good.

Religion does little good at all - which is why God calls us to a relationship with Himself, instead. Don't get me wrong: Christianity is a religion but it is much more, offering to you and I personal and constant communion with God. About God, we would do well to be always mightily obsessed. He is the Ground of All Reality, the Source of All Truth, and one day we'll stand before Him as His child to receive a reward or as a sinful rebel receiving eternal punishment. God made us, He sustains us moment-by-moment, and He waits for us at the end of our earthly lives as it Final Ultimate Goal. How, then, can we not be obsessed with Him?

If I just carry on as I am and God comes to meet me, that will be far better than wondering if I've brainwashed myself.

No, if you won't draw near to God, He won't draw near to you (James 4:6-10). He's not going to force Himself upon you; He wants a love-relationship with you which such compulsion would prevent (Matthew 22:36-38).

Funny that I find it easier to trust God than to totally believe in Him. Someone was asking how you do that. I think most of you are so confident in your belief that you don't even understand the question, about either belief or trust.

There is no going deep with God without a trial of faith. No trust in God is any greater than the testing that has tried it. A truly mature believer has been in the crucible with God many times. (1 Peter 1:6-7; James 1:2, 12)

Here's how I'm going to trust, as much as I can without solid belief: I'll tell myself that I want to let it go and give God a chance to take care of it for me.

How about submitting yourself to Him all day every day, yielding to His will and way, to His control, rather than merely "let it go"?

Trusting God is not submitting to Him; trusting is related to submission, there is overlap of the two things, but they are not synonymous. God doesn't want to help you only in situations where you feel like trusting Him, but to rule you, to conform you more and more to His will and way, making you a vessel through whom He communicates Himself. It's what you were made for.

Rather than feeling weird or dishonest, this feels GREAT!

Relief usually feels like this. But we can feel relief while doing terrible things: the addict feels relief when he stops resisting his addiction and yields to it; the serial killer feels relief when he finally satisfies the compulsion to kill somebody; the angry person feels relief when they blow their stack and rage unconstrained at the person who has angered them; the Christian man struggling to grow spiritually and stand firm in the faith feels relief when he throws in the towel and is swept away in the current of sin that he was resisting. And so on. But relief and how good it feels does not indicate the rightness of the act or choice that produced the relief. And the good feeling never lasts. Though relieved - temporarily - the addict is brought deeper into his addiction and its destructive power; the serial killer has destroyed another human life and yielded again to deep depravity and evil, darkening and binding himself irretrievably; the angry person has powerfully wounded and alienated the other person - perhaps someone they profess to love; the Christian man relieved though he is has fractured his fellowship with God and sown seeds of sin in his life that God has promised always bear a harvest of corruption and death.

 

[Hoping]

It's possible you have misunderstood some of my post too. I live a Christian life, challenging myself daily to be more loving, to give more, etc. I am undergoing a struggle and I wish I could have expressed it better and maybe have gotten some support.

 

[Trusting in Him]

I don't know about everyone else, but There are times when I find myself much more living in His presence, but also there are other times when I am less so. I am thinking that we go through seasons in our lives where we are living as we should be and there are other times where we know that something is not quite the same. Putting these things into words, is often beyond what we can ever know, or understand.

Reading the bible, feeds me and causes me to rest in Him and just wait on Him. Understanding how some bible translation use a particular word, or phrase in place of something elsechanges my understanding about seeking to live for him. In the old testament of the King James bible, the word presence very often means face. For example we sometimes read about being before His presence, when looking it up in the hebrew, we find it is before His face.

His face brings it into the personal, it's not something abstract. It helps me so much to know that I am to live my life in the knowedge that I am to be aware that at all times, He is near me and I am before His face. Fellowship with Him means that we are face to face. God is not far away, He is always nearer than we can know. Realising this and speaking to Him in our thoughts in normal everyday life, with the awareness than we are before His face with change us so much.

There are different depths to our relationship with Him. We need to know this and sense this that we will understand how much we need Him all the time. Believe me, there are stages in how we develop in fellowship with Him. I don't find the word relationship as helpful to me as the word fellowship. We can often be in relationship with other human beings, but we can't always be with them all the time, but fellowship with God is not like that. We can be with Him when we choose to be aware of Him, it's as simple as that!

 

[aiki]

It's possible you have misunderstood some of my post too. I live a Christian life, challenging myself daily to be more loving, to give more, etc. I am undergoing a struggle and I wish I could have expressed it better and maybe have gotten some support.

Can you explain where I've misunderstood your post?

What is a "Christian life"? I've encountered many different definitions of what it is - many of them not at all biblical. What's yours? Does it line up with God's word?

As I had hoped to make clear in my OP, we can't be who God wants us to be in-and-of ourselves. We can challenge ourselves to be better, or, at least, different than we are and strive and strain to be so, but at the end of our effort we only know more of ourselves, of our determination and strength, not God. And the effort is an...effort; changing ourselves is exhausting and frustrating. When God bends His power to alter the surrendered believer, however, they go from strength to strength, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. There is, then, no need for challenging yourself when God is transforming you. He doesn't need you to do so, only to stay yielded to Him, agreeing at every turn to His control of you. And as He is in control of you, ruling you as your Lord and King, the Spirit moves in you, by his power making you more and more like Christ.

I think I understand your struggle, having endured something like it myself when I was younger. I offer my comments solely with the intent of helping you as a sister in Christ. It might not feel like support but it is. My support is practical, focused on truth rather than feeling, however, which can make it seem like my support lacks sympathy. But rest assured it is sympathy that provokes my remarks to you and a desire to see you enjoying God deeply.

 

[aiki]

Reading the bible, feeds me and causes me to rest in Him and just wait on Him. Understanding how some bible translation use a particular word, or phrase in place of something elsechanges my understanding about seeking to live for him. In the old testament of the King James bible, the word presence very often means face. For example we sometimes read about being before His presence, when looking it up in the hebrew, we find it is before His face.

And if a believer finds himself thoroughly disinterested in God's word? What then?

His face brings it into the personal, it's not something abstract. It helps me so much to know that I am to live my life in the knowedge that I am to be aware that at all times, He is near me and I am before His face. Fellowship with Him means that we are face to face. God is not far away, He is always nearer than we can know. Realising this and speaking to Him in our thoughts in normal everyday life, with the awareness than we are before His face with change us so much.

Amen. But I would add that never being apart from God's presence has little practical value to the believer who is not living before God as a yielded bond-servant. God does not fill rebels with Himself; He does not fellowship with those who are out from under His rule and control; He does not transform those who are steering their own course through life. So, yes, never forget you are "before His face"; but remember also that His face is the face of God Almighty, Ruler of Heaven and Earth who commands us to submit to His will and way.

There are different depths to our relationship with Him. We need to know this and sense this that we will understand how much we need Him all the time. Believe me, there are stages in how we develop in fellowship with Him.

Yes, our walk with God involves a process of growth and change, of deepening in our knowledge and communion with Him. Amen. But knowing this does not make it happen, right? Our joy in God is a by-product of a holy, submitted life, acting in love toward the God who first loved us.

We can be with Him when we choose to be aware of Him, it's as simple as that!

What do you mean by "with Him"? Is it possible not to be with an omnipresent God? Also, what do you mean by "fellowship"?

 

[Trusting in Him]

Fellowship is a two way things we reach out to him and He responds to that. He draws us into that fellowship and we need to seek for more as time goes on. Fellowship is not a once and for all things, it needs working at and is needs to be taken seriously. It a living thing!

 

[Soyeong]

Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. ​

The Bible is full of commands to Christians to do things, to take action as followers of Jesus, forsaking sin, challenging evil, serving as ambassadors for Christ in the World, preaching and teaching God's truth to the sin-sick and spiritually-ignorant. There are so many "do's" and "do not's" in Scripture that new believers, in particular, feel the need to rush forward into Christian living, by their own power working as hard as they can to do for God what He has commanded.

Some feel this pressure to act so keenly that they take up a rather militant, fearful motivation for obedience to God, threatening themselves and others with the prospect of an angry God casting the disobedient believer out of His kingdom into hell in an attempt to keep the fire of Christian living well-stoked.

Others are so used to making things happen, so habituated to self-effort in the accomplishment of nearly everything in their lives, that they resort to this reflex in their walk with God, too. It seems obvious to them that God intends they should exert themselves in pursuit of a godly life. They must work hard, try, labor, determine, resolve, commit to the Christian life.

Still others easily and quickly acknowledge divine power as the ultimate Source of their ability to serve God properly but in practice act almost entirely from their own human resources. They give lip-service to the need for God's strength in serving Him, but then focus tightly upon what they must do to succeed spiritually. Yes, God does it all but they must pray, they must study His word, they must live holy lives, they must be dedicated and persevering, they must have faith, and so on.

The apostle Paul, though, made it crystal clear on what basis the Christian functions as a successful disciple of Jesus. The born-again believer can only work out what God has first worked in. The Christian is merely a conduit of the life of the Holy Spirit, a reflection of the glory of the Lord, a branch enlarged and fruitful as a natural result of its connection to the Vine and the life-giving sap it imparts to the branch. (2 Timothy 2:21; John 15:5; 2 Corinthians 3:18)

God really does do it all. He moved toward us when we were lost in darkness and sin, doing what only He could do to draw us to Himself, enabling us to understand the Gospel, through Christ atoning and cleansing us from our sin, and then in the Person of the Holy Spirit fills us with Himself, empowering us for Christian living. (John 6:44; John 16:8; John 14:26; 2 Timothy 2:25; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Romans 8:9-13; Titus 3:5-8)

When the believer loses sight of this, in their own power attempting to manufacture the life of the Spirit, spiritual exhaustion, failure and frustration are sure to follow. These things are always indicators of a believer working from the flesh, from Self, rather than in the power of the Spirit.

How does one remain under the flow of the power of the Spirit? Submission (James 4:7; 1 Peter 5:6). Yielding (Romans 6:13-22). Surrender (Romans 12:1). We can only be in one of two states relative to God: submission or rebellion. There is no middle ground between these states. If one is not under God's control, they are in rebellion to Him. And so long as one is not submitted to God's will and way, however unwittingly straying into self-will and self-effort, they cut themselves off from the free flow of God's transforming divine filling. But the moment this is acknowledged (1 John 1:9) and the believer places him/herself under God's control once again, immediately the flow of the Spirit's power resumes, subtly, imperceptibly but profoundly changing and empowering the Christian, making them "little Christs" in their practical living, not just in their spiritual position in Christ.

What about you? Is your experience of God actually just an experience of your effort to obey Him? Or is your experience of His power at work in you, changing your desires, enabling you to do His will joyfully and freely?

God is trustworthy, therefore His instructions are also trustworthy (Psalms 19:7), so to rely on God's instructions is to rely on God, and thinking that relying on God's instructions is about self-effort is not giving credit where it is due.

 

[Hoping]

I feel that I currently not enough of a Christian to be posting on the Christian-only part of the board. I'll move my questions down to the non-Christian part of the board. @aiki, if you want to continue the conversation, you can send me a message, or reply to the thread I may start in the non-Christian area.

I will say something from when I was a totally confident Christian, or at least thought I was.

God did not seem very stern and demanding to me. He loved me, and I easily and naturally loved him. The thing I felt the most led to do was to be kinder to other people and be more giving. "Take care of my sheep" kept coming to mind. It was easy in those wonderful days and still is most of the time.

Anyway, if I continue to have belief problems, I'll try to change my faith as listed here to agnostic, but the only way I see to do it now is to contact board administration. I hope that this is a temporary condition (trouble believing) and putting them to that trouble won't be necessary.