Pastor Tim Posey has been a teaching elder for most of his adult life. A native Tennessean, Pastor Tim has pastored three churches and planted two churches. He started Spring Meadows Church in Las Vegas in 1988 and has prayed for the physical and spiritual growth of his congregation ever since.
Quote for the week:
You might be wondering why it is so important to hear what Jesus has already done.After all, haven’t we heard that message before?Why would we need to hear it again?We need to hear it again because if we have forgotten His work on our behalf, it will skew the way we think of Him, the way we think of ourselves, and the way we think of others.
How We Think of HimIf we forget God’s generous, overwhelming grace in forgiving us, we will think of Him as a “hard man, reaping where [he] did not sow, and gathering where [he] scattered no seed” (Matthew 25:24).We ill have low thoughts of Him.We will see Him as a harsh taskmaster, exacting rigorous, impossible obedience from us and being disappointed and angry with us when we (predictably) fail to meet His expectations.We will assume that God continues to hold our sins against us and that He is tallying up all the ways in which we fail.When we fail to savor His astonishing mercy, He will morph into a satanic caricature in our minds, a Pharaoh, demanding that we make bricks without straw.In response, we will be bound to hide our talent in the ground for fear of greater failure or harsher rebuke and then grudgingly return it to Him when we have to (Matthew 25:25).
How We Think of OurselvesIf we forget that we are forgiven by God because of His Son’s sacrifice, we will see ourselves as slaves trying to earn His goodwill and make up for past miscues rather than as forgiven children.We will be afraid to try to obey because we know we are bound to fail.If God is like Pharaoh, He won’t be touched by our halting efforts at obedience.We will be afraid to persevere because we’ll know that we are doomed from the start.Why bother trying?We will be void of the love for Him that is meant to motivate and fuel all our attempts at obedience.We will become lazy, unbelieving servants (Matthew 25:26).
How We Think of OthersIf in our sight God becomes a caricature of Pharaoh, then our brothers and sisters in Christ are nothing more than fellow slaves who had better pull their weight.If God seems harsh and demanding, unforgiving and exacting, then that is exactly how we will treat others.Forgive them for sinning against us?Well, maybe, but only after we’ve gotten our pound of flesh, and they have proven that they are really sorry and have really changed.Why would we be generous toward them when God has been so demanding of us?
Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and Dennis E. Johnson, Counsel from the Cross
