In the last posting we looked at the third point on the
faith matrix, submission. Submission is the necessary surrendering of ourselves
to our central point of faith, which for a Christian is God. It is the essence of all worship and all
moral action.
Submission is necessary in any society. When the doctor gives us a prescription, it
is usually up to us to take it. When a
policeman tells us to stop, we stop.
When we read in a peer reviewed journal that global warming is a fact or
that cigarettes cause cancer, we accept this because we have faith in their
authority. For us, the argument is ended, and we accept. That is
submission.
For a Christian, God is our final word. If we submit to God,
and we believe the the Bible is the Word of God, when whatever the Word of God
says is fact to us. End of story. If the
Bible tells us that it is a sin to steal, then we do not steal. If the Bible
tells us to love our neighbor, then we love our neighbor. Submission is the acceptance without proof of
a previously accepted authority.
This is not as easy as it sounds. Our struggles with
morality attests to this. If everyone who believed that cigarettes were bad for
you stopped smoking, the tobacco industry would go out of business. Both the weight loss and fast food industries
are based on the idea that just being told overeating is bad for us won’t stop
us from overeating. Submission is
something we must work at daily.
Paul writes in Romans 12: “1 appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies
of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to
God, which is your spiritual worship.”
It is hard to give a dead sacrifice to God, but our bodies
are a living sacrifice. That means that no matter how often we give our bodies
to God, they still tend to crawl off the altar.
We need to daily submit ourselves to God. Jesus says in Matthew 16: 24 “If anyone would come after me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross and
follow me.” Taking up the cross is a
daily act of submission, a willingness to sacrifice ourselves over and over to
the object of our faith. This is much
more challenging than a single, dramatic conversion experience. It is a habit
of submission that challenges us daily.
The way we accomplish daily
submission is thought practicing the disciplines of submission. These
include silence and solitude, fasting, Sabbath, percentage giving, and
chastity, along with others. Let’s talk
about these individually.
Solitude and silence. The first command a dog learns in obedience
training is “sit.” Dog trainers do this
because they understand that dogs must first get still to hear and obey their
masters. When a dog is distracted, they
cannot hear our voices. Excessive action
blinds us to the voice of God. An
overactive, agitated, or worried mind cannot hear God’s voice. If we are
fretting over our circumstances or attempting to multitask our spirituality, we
cannot hear God’s voice. That is why we
need to follow Jesus’ example and find places to withdraw and meditate.
I am an overactive person.
Those who know me best have suggested that I may have attention deficit
disorder, though it has never been formally diagnosed. I do know that there
have been times in my life when anxiety and hyperactivity have gotten the
better of me. In one such time, a
counselor asked me to sit still and think of nothing for five minutes. It was
the longest five minutes of my life! Silencing my brain for even three minutes
was too much for me. Since then, I have
learned the value of meditation and centering prayer, which helps my overactive
mind to be still, in order that I might hear God’s voice.
Fasting. Fasting is fully or partially refraining from
something that I regard as necessary to my life or wellbeing.
Much has been written about fasting is either magical or legalistic. Sometimes
people advocate fasting as a means of forcing God’s hand in our favor—a hunger
strike against God. Others teach it as a requirement or law. It is
neither. Fasting is a regular spiritual
activity aimed at learning self-mastery and submission.
As anyone who has ever gone on a diet can testify, sugary
foods and carb-loaded delicacies are addictive. So is caffeine, nicotine, many
other substance. When asked to give them up even for a short time, our bodies
go into rebellion.
Fasting gives us a means to gain victory over our addictions.
Once our appetites are mastered, the greatest barrier to soul liberation is
gone.
Addictions to television, games, texting, and web surfing may
be more helpful today as fasting from food. We all are addicted to something.
Fasting is the key to self-discovery.
you never know how much you are enslaved to something until you give it
up for a time. When we voluntarily deny ourselves food, or any other needful
thing, we are choosing instead to trust God.
Sabbath. Sabbath is taking on day—one twenty-four
hour period—for rest and recreation. Its
origins go back to Genesis 2, where God rested after six days of labor creating
the universe. The purpose of God’s rest was not because He was tired, but to
allow his creation to grow on its own without His interference.
Our reasons for keeping a Sabbath are much the same. It
teaches us that the universe is capable of running without us. If we think our job cannot run without our
constant upkeep, then we are probably
doing them wrong. Sabbaths give times
for the works we do to grow.
Sabbaths also give us time to enjoy God and His works. Recreation is not idle amusement, but it
provides us an opportunity to step back from ordinary things and see how it all
relates to God.
Unlike God, we do
get tired. We need to rest. Constant
effort warps our perspective and interferes with our ability to work at peak effectiveness.
Without Sabbaths, we work more but get less accomplished. Sabbaths are
necessary to effectively keep working.
Peter Scazzero likens the Sabbath to snow days when we were
children. When it snowed so hard that people could not get to work, they stayed
home and relaxed, drank hot chocolate, and built snowmen. Sabbaths are like getting snow days once a
week. It refreshes the mind, body, and spirit.
Percentage giving
(tithing). Tithing is the discipline of submission in money. Tithing refers to a tenth of our income. The percentage of giving, however is not as
important as the priority. Tithing is giving from the top¸ that is, the
first part of our income, not the last. Tithing is the commitment of our first
resources to God. Finances are one of
the places where most of us have the greatest struggles making God our ultimate
concern. That is why it is important to
make giving to God’s work the highest priority.
Christians talk of trusting God, but they are often the most
anxious people on earth. We worry about
money, health, our children—just about everything Rather
than seeing it as lack of trust, we have almost made a sacrament out of
caution. Our anxiety over money often prevails over our faith, and we turn off the
spigot of generosity through fear of the future. Tithing excludes all that, forcing us to trust
God.
Tithing is not a path to riches, unless We mean the
riches of learning how little we need.
It isn’t for gaining worldly wealth through some magical means by
“investing” in God’s favor. Instead, it
is a way of breaking free from our money addition.
Chastity. Chastity
is the sexual equivalent of fasting. How could God have created sex as such a
pleasurable experience, then restrict it to be used only within the context of
marriage? Because sex is one of the ways
we learn submission. Denying ourselves such an obviously pleasurable act causes
us to learn mastery over our bodies.
Chastity isn’t just for some people. It is something
everyone must deal with. Unmarried
people deny themselves sex until marriage.
Married people deny themselves
sex outside of marriage. Though most of
us will experience It, we all must learn to say “no” at some time, and keep it
within a proper order.
Many people today claim
that chastity is impossible. Sexual desire, they say, cannot be tamed. We don’t have to look far to see that this
isn’t true. Catholic priests and nuns
choose to remain celibate for life, although there are some who break that vow,
the majority don’t. Until recently, most
men and women did not have sex before marriage, though there were always many
who did. Most men and women stay faithful within marriage, only a minority
stray.
Sexual feelings are not the problem—it is lack of sexual
control. Sexual pleasure has become for many an ultimate concern, more
important than relationships, vows, or health.
We know that sexual promiscuity is destructive, but we do it
anyway.
Sexual urges have many benefits, but the most neglected
benefit is developing submission and self-control. In resisting sex, with all
its appeal, we learn to submit to something higher than our appetites.
Submission is following God. When Jesus gathered His
disciples, he first said “follow Me.” He did not discuss what he was going to
do with them. When He ascended into heaven, he told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem
until the Holy Spirit came. Then they would get their marching orders.
As we think about submission, we need ask ourselves some
important questions.
Can I sit in solitude and
silence, waiting for God to lead me, and not act on impulse?
Is God my only final
authority?
Do I trust God even when I do
not understand?
Am I willing to say
"no" to my appetites and desire, when God asks me to?
Do I practice a life of
self-discipline and self-control for God’s sake?
Let
me know your thoughts. I would love to
hear from you. Here are some questions to stimulate
discussion.
1.
Which is easier—to submit to God or to submit to
earthly authority?
2.
Is humility taught in churches today? How important is humility to you?
3.
What is the hardest place to practice
submission—in eating, money, sexual habits, or following God’s guidance?
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