Connections Message from 5/29/11
The Fight – Round Three from RSBC Media on Vimeo.
Every Sunday during the message, we provide a text number on the screens for people to ask questions about the message. We try to answer one or two questions live at the end of each service and the rest on this blog. The following are the questions that came in this past Sunday.
Is it possible to fight back and still show God in our lives, because by fighting back won’t it show the other person we have no self-control and that God cannot calm us? So how are we to show God in our fighting back? 11:48
It is definitely possible to fight back and still show God in our lives. It is really all about how you fight back and what fighting back looks like. Self-control is one thing that is needed to fight back properly. We should ask God to help us with that. We can show God in our fighting back by deciding to fight back when it directly puts God out front. If our fighting back only leaves us as the winner, and not God, then we are probably in a bad fight.
Check out Acts 23:1-3. Paul fought back when he was being wronged. He even called the man in charge a bad name. “2And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. 3Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall!”” He did this quoting Scripture to explain his response. He called him a whitewashed wall because the man seemed clean on the outside, but was really dirty within. Paul felt that the guy was good at following some religious rules, but missed the heart of it. This story is not a subscription, rather a description of what happened. This does not mean that we need to mouth off at anyone doing us wrong, but sometimes, it is alright to push back.
Check out the rest of the story that we began in Mark 14 and 15. Watch how Jesus responded to the different attacks while he was on trial. Jesus clearly shows us that there is a time to push back and a time to not.
You will show God in your fighting, if you really have God as your number one desire for the win.
The cups are more confusing than helpful- mainly because there are to many, 4 is the limit, otherwise it’s to cluttered 11:28 AM
Thank you for the observation. The huge amount of cups was really to show just how much conflict that our desires or wants can create. I really wanted to use around a hundred. We have thousands of desires that wage war within us. When we get around others that have thousands of desires in them, we now have the makings of what can really become a mess. ‘Cluttered’ is a great word for it. We have to determine a way to “prioritize” our wants so that we can keep God out front. I’m sorry that you were confused. Be encouraged that many people told me that the visual of the cups helped it to make sense to them in their own situations.
Can bad fights ever lead to good fights? 11:24 AM
I believe they can. By “bad fight”, I define it as a fight where I have only myself as the goal for winning. The “good fight” is defined as the number one goal to have God as the winner. I have been in bad fights that had me as the central goal that ended in unexpected ways. Most of the time, the good fight comes when I lose the bad fight that I should not have been fighting in the first place. In those moments, I am humbled enough to recognize God more. It seems like my highest times with God have come out of a lost fight. The good fight then comes as I keep God out front in my new awareness of Him. I think about Paul on the road to Damascus. He was in a bad fight. God used that very fight to help him to see God in a whole new way. From that point on, Paul was in the good fight.
