Spurring One Another On.....

My husband and I recently started a journey together focused on bringing our marriage and our roles in our marriage into more obedience to God’s word.  As part of this process we have been engaged in counseling with a NANC counselor.  This form of counseling deals with the biblical perspective about our life challenges.  Worldly psychological theories are excluded as we try to understand our situation from God’s perspective.  One of our first assignments was to read a little booklet called “Christ in Your Problems by Jay Adams.”  I must say I was greatly challenged by the booklet to really embrace and surrender to the FULL truth of God’s word; not my own modification of His word and my attempts to make it more comfortable for me.  I want to share the opening paragraphs of the booklet with you.  If you find it helpful you may want to obtain your own copy to complete the reading.  You won’t regret it.  And, I would love to hear what impact it has on your life.  And, I will continue to share my journey with you as well.

Exerpt taken from “Christ and Your Problems by Jay Adams”

Excuse Me, Please

“But if you had to live with a wife like mine….””Listen, pastor – no one has ever had to face anything comparable to this at work before.” “But the other kids’ parents don’t make rules like mine do.” “Well, you’d have done it too, if he had said that to you?”

These and a hundred and one similar protests are heard daily by Christian counselors.  Boiled down, they all say one thing: “Please excuse me from my responsibility to live like a Christian on the grounds that my problem is unique”

But is it?  Does God ever allow a Christian to face a test that is unique?  Even if He does, would that be an adequate excuse?

In an unmistakably clear reply, Paul says, “No! You cannot evade your responsibility to think and act like a Christian by pleading that your case is unique.”  As a matter of fact, he shows that no case is unique.  Listen to his words in 1 Corinthians 10:13:  “There is no trial that has overtaken you but such as is common to man.”

To begin with, let’s nail down one thing:  1 Corinthians 10:13 allows for no exceptions of the sort that many of us are inclined to make for ourselves.  Our sin simply cannot be excused.

The reason why Paul declares that there are no exceptions is that at bottom all men in all times face the same basic problems.  There are no special cases.  This is why in this chapter Paul can appeal to the history of God’s dealings with the Jews in the days of Moses when  writing to a gentile church in Corinth that, outwardly at least, seemed to be facing quite different cultural problems.  Looking beneath the surface of time, geography, language, and culture, Paul said, “These things happened to the Jews, but they are “examples to you upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” Of course he says the same to you and me today.

God has not changed; His commandments have not been altered; and sinful man below his modern sophisticated exterior is still the same.  Men today stand in the same relationship to God and to one another as they did in biblical times.  Therefore, the message of the Bible is as fresh today as when Paul’s scroll was first unrolled and read in Corinth.  “There is no trial that has overtaken you but such as is common to man.”