Row, Row, Row Your Boat....Together

As our pastor is preaching through the book of Exodus, it has been amazing to me how much application there has been to church discipleship! I will list six of these applications that I heard Sunday:   

• In the OT, God revealed Himself to mankind in an unfolding, progressive kind of way. But now He has fully revealed Himself in His Son, Jesus Christ, who is the Living Word of God, through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us  (Heb. 1:1-4). The extent to which we know Him, believe Him, and trust Him, is the extent to which we will worship, fear, love, and obey Him. 
• God's revelation through the Son and the written Word of God gives us the true measure of ourselves - a measure that falls woefully short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). We need deliverance on a daily basis from the grip of indwelling sin! (Rom. 7:21-25).
• Hebrews 3 calls us to listen to and hear Him today (not a passive hearing, but an active one) and don't harden our hearts against Him, but to exhort one another daily as long as it is called today so we are not hardened by sin's deceitfulness. That implies that sin can harden our hearts in even one day! (Heb. 3:7-13). I believe that also implies some sort of daily interaction with those in the body of Christ in our local church; the first person being our spouse if we have one, and children if we have those; then at least one other person in our local congregation.
• God's holiness always exposes our sin, so the basis of local church discipleship is helping us fight our sin, together, as we rely on the goodness and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ to forgive and cleanse us from our sin (1 John 1:7-10).  If our interactions with one another in the body of Christ do not help us fight our sin and run to Christ in true biblical repentance according to the truth of God's Word, in reliance on His Spirit, then it is not truly discipleship. True biblical discipleship will stir up one another to love and good works as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12-13), together, as a body, in dependence upon the grace and blessing of God in Christ through the power of the resurrection gospel (Heb. 10:24; 2 Peter 1:13, 3:1).
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Heb. 10:23-27

• We get to be workers together in God's Kingdom - we are His building (1 Cor. 3:6-9) as we bring the goodness and grace of Jesus Christ to one another in all the contexts of our lives - and God always prepares others to come alongside us in our weakness and lack of gifting - because none of us is the whole church; we each are only one tiny body part. Thus, we don't get to be prideful about our gifts nor do we get to compare ourselves with others either favorably or unfavorably, because God the wise master builder is building up His kingdom using weak people, so that He gets all the glory! (2 Cor. 12:9). 

I like the boat analogy to illustrate this: The boat that we sit in is structure in which we can all work safely; the oars that we each pick up are made specifically for us by God and in essence have our name on them, so we must pick up our own oar with which to roe, rather than picking up someone else's - know and stay in our lanes, Ladies! Then we sit by someone else whose companionship will help us, and we don't get to look around and wish we were sitting by someone we like or feel more comfortable with - there is absolutely zero place within the body of Christ for cliques or snobbishness or elitism or envy or jealousy; and then we are all called to row together, which means there have to be team leaders of good character who lead this rowing in some way by prayer and study of God's Word and being willing to help the rowers work out their difficulties together; and those leaders must be behind the One True Leader who is steering the whole boat - the Lord Jesus Christ.

• Moses had many objections as to why he couldn't do what God called him to do which led him to finally beg God to send someone else to do the work God was calling him to do. These are often our objections as well, and as Pastor Rob pointed out, all of these objections have a huge "I at the center: "Who am I?"; "I don't have content"; "I am not eloquent".  God answered all of Moses' objections with self-replacements: "I AM who I AM; In essence, "I Be" (YHWH) and, "You be able in Me to do all I have called you to be, and out of your being, to do."  God also gave Moses content - His Words, which we have today in the completed canon of Scripture. That means as disciple-makers in God's church today, we must read, study, know, obey faithfully, and be growing in our ability to use God's Word in a skilled and practical way if we are to be effective disciple-makers (2 Tim. 2:15; 3:15-17; Heb. 4:12-13) and this requires intentional equipping and training. 

And where do we get the wherewithal to do all this? There are only two sources: ourselves, or the Holy Spirit of God. We know that self-reliance is sin and leads to all kinds of traps:

The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips. Ps. 16:4

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. Luke 18:9-14

But being Spirit-reliant, leads to life and peace: 

For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Rom. 8:6

Joyfully being able to do exactly what God calls us to do alongside others for whom He is doing the same thing!

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence... 2 Peter 1:3

So, how do we know if we are being self-reliant or Holy-Spirit-reliant? The extent to which we pray and cry out to God for help, strength, enabling, power, repentance and the ability to fight our sin, growth in godly character, and help in all the conflicts that will arise as we seek to be faithful biblical disciple-makers in God's church, alongside others whom God is raising up to do the same! God does not zap us into doing His will - He calls us to get equipped and become skilled as laborers together as we build His building - because He wants to share Himself with us as our beloved Immanuel - God with us! What a privilege it is to be one of God's co-laborers alongside other co-laborers, as we together do the work He has planned for us to do!

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 1 Cor. 1:2

Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. 2 Cor. 6:1

In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Eph. 2:22

from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Eph. 4:16

So today, Ladies, as you do your jobs, change diapers, do dishes, cook, mop your floors, engage in the discipleship of your husbands and children - you must make it priority to lay your eyes on God's Word, and be in continual prayer to the Holy Spirit to help you and come alongside you in your weakness, and asking other people to help you hold up your weak hands and strengthen your feeble knees as you fight your sin (Heb. 12:12-16) and seek to obey God as you walk in the Spirit and do not fulfill the desires of your flesh; and praying for other godly people to help get you out of traps at times (Gal. 6:1-2), and to help you be the one to do this for others when they need it. That requires a schedule that is not jam-packed to the point of having no time to be in God's Word: intentional time-management with its aim to be pleasing to God (2 Cor. 5:9)

Perhaps you can group up with a couple of other women who also want to do the same and text one another daily early in the day to get you up and in God's Word; send a text to a friend when you need prayer and ask others to do the same with you; check in with others, get together to talk about life and how the gospel applies to your anxieties and worries and fears and anger and marriage and parenting and singleness. A young gal and I did this for two months together this summer, and it was life-transforming for me and I believe her as well. And I'd encourage you to use this GroupMe app to post your prayer requests, to share how the Lord answers those prayers; to engage one another as you homemake, parent, do marriage, exercise, read and study the Bible; and to read and be encouraged by the various blog posts and LifeOverCoffee articles that will help equip and train you. Let's be women together this very day who are helping one another make it our aim to be pleasing to the Lord.