September 30, 2014
Divine Restraint
“All things are lawful,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things
are lawful,” but not all things build up.
1 Corinthians 10:23
(NRSV)
The Bible teaches us to practice
self-restraint. The Apostle Paul even includes self-restraint as one of the
fruits of the Holy Spirit. Both James and Peter urge their congregations to
practice self-restraint or self-control. Most often, when we think of
self-control, we are focusing on all the things we are not supposed to do as Jesus’
disciples. That is easy to understand because the phrase ‘do not’ appears
almost 175 times in just the first five books of the Bible.
While the Bible is most assuredly
concerned that we exercise self-control over the sinful desires of the flesh,
the Bible is also very interested in our responding to our higher calling by
practicing divine restraint. Several times in the Gospels, Jesus used the
phrase, “I must,” such as, “I must preach
the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other towns, too, because that is why I
was sent” (Luke 4:43). The Apostle Paul also was driven by divine restraint
when “he said, “I must go on to Rome!”
(Acts 19:21). In both these examples, Jesus and Paul were responding to the
imperative God placed on their lives. They exercised self-control by not doing
other things, not going other places, so that they could fully respond to God’s
leading in their lives.
As the followers of Jesus, we too
have an imperative from God. God wants to use our lives for the glory of His
Kingdom. As disciples, we are called to exercise divine restraint in our lives
so that we can offer all that we are, and all that we have, for God to use at
His discretion. What does that look like; how do we do this?
Paul follows the passage quoted
above (1 Corinthians 10:23) with this instruction: “Don’t be concerned for your own good but for the good of others” (1
Corinthians 10:24). This is very similar to what Paul wrote to the Philippians:
“Let each of you look not to your own
interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4 NRSV). In both
instances, Paul is encouraging us to exercise divine restraint in how we use
all of our assets, so that we can use them in God-honoring ways, and not just
for our own self-interest. Perhaps you
can easily afford a Lexus, but what if instead of spending $45,000 on a luxury
car, you only spent $30,000? Do you think God can show you how to invest the $15,000
savings in the Kingdom of God for the benefit of the least of our brothers and
sisters? To do so, would be exercising divine restraint.
Sē’lah
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(Selah is a word that appears in the
Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my
correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about
these things.)
These
meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his
way of life. The meditations are
published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/
and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may
subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by
subscription.
Publications by Alex M. Knight:
·
Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New
Testament and Psalms has been
published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.
·
The second
edition of First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.
·
Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus
Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.
Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible,
New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.
