Righteousness that Protects

It took me a while to realize righteousness is a gift that protects. When I first heard about God's righteousness, as a child, I was both fascinated and terrified. I was fascinated because I wanted desperately to be good. As soon as I learned to talk, I talked nonstop to anyone who listened. Needless to say, my mouth got me into trouble when I used it to argue with siblings, to talk back to my parents, and to repeat things I had overheard that were none of my business and not mine to share. In fact, I got in trouble so often I'd stay awake at night, trying to remember if I had lied, exaggerated a story, repeated something I overheard, showed disrespect to my parents, or said unkind things to siblings or friends. I often regretted the things that came out of my mouth.

It was because of that regret that God's holiness fascinated me. It was hard for the little girl I was to wrap her mind around the concept of God who was, who is, and who will always be perfect. It meant God never failed to do the right thing at the right time. It meant God never chose to do evil. It meant every word that flowed from His mouth was perfectly true, perfectly stated for the situations. and perfectly timed. It meant God's silences were born out of His goodness and served holy purposes. It meant God had never had to reflect on His actions or His words. Nor, had He ever felt the sting of regret I had in realizing I wounded others through actions, inaction,  words, or silence. It meant His words were never spoken in haste, never filled with half truths. or sprinkled with lies to cover sinful tracks. It meant His words were never biting, spoken in rage, or vengeful.

Early on, I knew I wanted to be like Him, but the harder I tried, the more I failed. That is where the terror came in. I wanted to be right with God and I wanted my words to reflect His heart. Sometimes I calmed the terror by comparing myself to others. If I sinned less than someone, I felt better, but then I would run into someone whose righteousness outshined mine. For years I lived with anxiety, trying to live the Christian life. I believed in eternal security, but was plagued with doubt about my faith.

When God planted us in a Bible-teaching church, I came to understand things that changed my perspective. Every week I heard the gospel given clearly and heard the Bible taught verse by verse, chapter by chapter, and book by book. I grew confident in my faith and learned not to compare myself to others as Jesus was God's standard--a standard of which we all fell short. I grew more comfortable with the fact that His perfection would always expose my imperfection. I learned a about imputation, which meant that by faith I was given Jesus' righteousness and it is His righteousness that protects me from the wrath of God I deserve for sin. What a powerful concept! If I had understood imputation as a child, I would have spent less time marinating in guilt and shame and more time resting and rejoicing in God's grace.

Righteousness not only protects us from God's wrath, it protects our hearts and our relationship with the Lord. We are told in Proverbs 4:23 to guard our hearts for they are the source of life. Just like Roman Soldiers had to protect their physical hearts, we must protect our hearts, our inner being) in a spiritual sense. The righteousness Jesus imputed to us becomes the Breastplate of Righteousness that we can wear to protect our hearts--the place our thoughts, emotions, will, and moral conscience dwell. We must keep in mind that just as physical breastplates are heavy and must be supported or undergirded by a belt, our spiritual breastplate is supported by the Belt of Truth.

The Enemy we battle knows our passions, our weaknesses, our past sins, and the stories we have lived often come with great pain. He studies us so much he predicts with great accuracy what we will think about in given situations and how we will react or respond. He knows what will cause us to doubt God's goodness and knows what will distract us from living the life to which God called us. He is doing his best to destroy us, our testimonies, our ministries, and our relationships with God and each other. The Breastplate of Righteousness undergirded with the Belt of Truth and the Helmet of Salvation protect us from the Enemy's attacks. God gave us those things because we believed! If we face life believing we are possess those pieces of Armor, we can live in a way that defeats the Enemy.

In her book, The Armor of God, Priscilla Shirer points out that our hearts can be attacked in four areas. First, He will attack our minds by distorting our thoughts with his lies and half truths. He will use half truths to draw us in because they sound true and then he feeds us overt lies about God, His Word, and our identity, causing us to not mistrust Him and our relationship with Him. Second, He will attack our will by drawing us away from that which is eternal and godly towards that which is  temporal and ungodly, preventing us from fulfilling His purposes. Third, he will attack our emotions by stirring up unbridled feelings and piggybacking them  with secondary emotions like anger, discouragement, hopelessness, bitterness, and unforgiveness. Fourth, He will attack our morals by convincing us God's Word is outdated and designed to deprives us rather than protect us.

When we live in rebellion, we leave our hearts unprotected. On the other hand, if we start each day acknowledging the truth of our salvation and Christ's imputed righteousness, our lives will line up with that truth. We can live knowing we have already been translated from the kingdom of darkness into Christ's Kingdom of light, that we have been given a new life, and that we have a new benevolent master and no longer have to serve the old.

In a practical sense we can choose moment by moment to put off past things that were corrupted by our evil desires and be renewed by taking our thoughts captive to God's truth. We can put on our new selves by choosing to act out of God's righteousness. That means we can put away lies and speak truth. We choose to deal with anger in non-sinful ways. We choose not to steal but to work so we can give to others. We choose to refrain from corrupt talk and use words that build up. We let go of bitterness, wrath, anger, slander, and malice and choose to be kind. We take off sexual immorality and covetousness and develop godly relationships. And when we blow it, we humbly confess sin, allowing us to stay in fellowship with God who empowers us to live out His righteousness.

Living out practical righteousness is protective on many levels. First, it is protective because our new life is driven by love, which promotes righteousness that protects relationships instead of tearing them down. It protects relationships as we choose to take off old behaviors and put on new ones characterized by selfless behavior. It protects by helping us build trust as we speak truth and resolve conflict in ways that are godly and preserves the dignity and the hearts of those involved.

Second, it protects our hearts from the needless pain caused by selfish ambitions and unreasonable expectations that leave us frustrated and bitter. It teaches us to let God fill the void we have in our hearts so we can give out of the overflow of His love.

Third, practical righteousness protects our hearts from deep pain because sexual purity keeps a marriage bed undefiled, allowing the act of sex within marriage to bond a man and women for life. Our hearts were not made for serial marriages or sex with multiple partners any more than they were designed to worship multiple gods. It also protects us from the physical pain of sexually transmitted diseases. How often we mistakenly believe the consequences we face for our sin is God's punishment. But the truth is the boundaries God established for us is His loving protection from the pain sin causes. In Eden, the righteous obedience to God's command protected Adam and Eve in their relationship with Him and with each other. When they failed, they were thrown into a world of hurt. Couldn't practicing righteousness that God outlines in His Word protect us as well?  

The Power of a Decision

I recently attended a workshop on marriage taught by Ted Cunningham. He stated that there is power in making a decision. He was talking about unmarried couples who come into his office for counseling. He said they often tell him they never made a specific decision to live together. They just slid into it. They went on a few dates, then began to go back to one of their apartments after their dates. Before long, they began to have sex and for convenience sake, they began to spend the night occasionally. Then, they started bringing over a few things at a time. It happened more and more often until one had completely moved in. Next they bought a dog or had a baby and were in a relationship with joint ownership of a child or a pet with no commitment. These couples then come to see Ted when one feels convicted and wants to marry and one doesn't. He often asks them if they had purposefully made decisions along the way if they think they would still be together. Many of them say, "no."

As I was listening to him talk about the power of a decision, I realized how many areas of life we tend to slide through. When we do that we end up in situations that violate our consciences, which result in our sinning against God, which result in our doing things that are detrimental to our health,  or destroy our  relationships.

The first time I became aware of this concept was when one of our kids was hanging out with some friends whose parents' rules were stricter than ours. We had tried to convey to him to respect all parents' rules. One night I gave my son permission to go with his friends somewhere, not knowing the other parents told their kids, "no." They went, but when the kids dropped off our son, their parents were waiting in their car outside of our house. The next day I could tell our son was struggling and took him to lunch to ask about the night before. He said they went where they had permission to go and ended up through a series of little choices doing things the boys didn't have permission to do. He said they didn't overtly make the decision to disobey, that one thing led to another. He said he had felt convicted at one point and knew they shouldn't be there. He didn't encourage the boys to disobey, but did not say, "no" either. He apologized to the parents, but sadly, they believed our son betrayed their trust and didn't let him hang out with their kids anymore. All of them were great kids and usually responsible and respectful as a group. They just slid, not realizing they needed to be making decisions to do good and right on a daily, hourly, and moment by moment basis.

In my own life I identify "the sliding" in all sorts of areas. My husband and I can slide into laziness in our marriage. We can fail to be proactive about loving each other well and fail to nurture our marriage. We never decide to not express love, nor do we make a conscience decision to neglect our marriage; we just slide into patterns during busy seasons and don't regroup. When we do that we hurt each other and fail to love the way God wants us to love. We don't intentionally decide to neglect our marriage, we just skip doing those little things and big things that strengthen our marriage and make it one that reflects Christ's love for His church. We have to decide daily to be proactive, not just slide along. We must choose to love well, to pray for one another, to be fully committed to each other, to guard our hearts and our minds, and to seek counseling when we get stuck. Even more importantly, in the process of conflict resolution, we must continuously decide to not fight each other, but to passionately fight for our marriage.

I have also seen the sliding pattern in my struggle with a long term eating disorder. I never made the decision to have an eating disorder, it started in high school with a fad diet when I wanted to lose a few pounds. Then after a traumatic event, it slid slowly into unhealthy compulsions to over-exercise and not heed my body's signals of hunger. It grew worse as I found I could avoid emotional pain by focusing on the numbers on the scale or the numbers on a dress label. It continued for some time because I felt powerful and a false sense of being spiritual as I didn't "need" food and had such great self-control. Then periods of dieting followed by periods of binge eating, both of which became a way of coping were so automatic, that if I was making decisions, they were at a subconscious level. When I entered counseling, I had to work hard to relearn to make those daily, hourly, and even moment-by-moment choices to feel, to choose health over starving, compulsive eating, and exercise. I had to consciously acknowledge God by eating what He provided. I still choose to decide to guard my heart by not reading about diets and weight management and refuse to look at magazines with airbrushed photo's that trigger my unhealthy thinking. I decide to process feelings that trigger the desire to starve or binge. I decide to proactively take every thought captive to Christ's truth or this hot mess will be sliding back into self-contemptuous thoughts and self destructive behaviors.

It is also easy for us all to slide in our commitment to the church. Some slide into the habit of not attending church regularly. It begins with one Sunday and then it becomes a couple of weeks in a row and then before we know it, we haven't been in months. Then pride sometimes makes it difficult for us to go back. Some slide into the habit of not using their gifts to serve the body. It could be a busy season in life or just that they took a needed break and just never made the decision to plug back in. Some slide into holding grudges by not working quickly through conflicts that happen when believers rub shoulders. Maybe someone got angry and wanted to process it before they dealt with it and before they knew it, so much time passed, it seemed inappropriate to resolve it. Sometimes churches let overt sin slide, causing many to get wounded. Some slide into disconnected states in which they do not care for or receive care from others in the body. It can start with business. We may even think about calling someone and just let it slide. We may be disconnected because we are going through difficult times emotionally and just let it slide instead of resolving pain that keeps us from wanting to attend church.

I had five children in eight years and I look back and realize we often slid into business. In retrospect, had we not slid through much of life, we could have made conscious decisions that would have been better for my kids, us as a couple, and helped us to really use the gifts God gave us, rather than living a frantic pace to which God never called us. We slid into business to the point we didn't see and attend to some of the needs our growing family had. As a Christian woman, that business kept me from things I needed to be a healthy mom--things like building relationships with other moms who loved the Lord and desired to grow as believers, as wives, as moms, and as daughters trying to navigate complicated extended family relationships.

We can all slip into sinful patterns. Seldom do we choose to become addicted to porn, alcohol, and drugs. Seldom do we wake up first thing in the morning and plan to destroy another's heart with gossip. Seldom do we wake up and plan to destroy our family through adultery, through drug addictions, or through illegal activity. The list could go on and on.

I had a friend who was encouraging me to make a needed change and I was being very indecisive about it. The friend gently pointed out that no decision was in itself a decision and that there was more power in making an actual decision. I thought about it and realized they were right. Living with lots of indecision was a way that I could avoid taking responsibility for my choices. The avoidance came out of fear--fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of hurting others, the fear of disappointing someone, and the fear of God being unhappy with me. I have since learned a lot about living in grace and truth and am realizing that I can live life honoring God when I choose to make daily, hourly, and moment by moment decisions to honor Him. When I put on the armor of God daily and ask God to mold me and to live through me and trust Him to do so. When I make and own my choices, I know I sin less, manage the eating disorder better, have more joy, and give more attention to my relationships. My relationships are more godly when I consciously make decisions daily to honor Jesus, to live out of self respect, and love others well. Finally, powerlessness--that emotion that can so easily trip me up is minimized when I am proactively making decisions to honor God.