Character Qualities of a Christian- Thankfulness

What are you thankful for? I’m sure that with thanksgiving this past week, this question has been asked thousands of times. Perhaps it was asked at your table and you answered a generic question such as “my house, my family, my stuff*”, and these are all valid, so don’t get all discouraged, but I’m going to head down a slightly different track. Side note: I saw a picture that said “Only in America do we celebrate thankfulness and then the next day go fight people to get things we don’t have.” This is funny, but also sadly true. I’m also not here to criticize Black Friday, because I enjoy it as well, but we seriously need to take a good look at our thankfulness life. Now, the start to this article is a bit strange, but bear with me, and hopefully you’ll see what I’m getting at.

           

            When are we most thankful? Well, thanksgiving aside, we are generally thankful when someone does something for us. Maybe your parents take you to Disney World, or maybe your little sister does your chores for you when you’re sick, or someone takes you out for pizza randomly, etc. When are we least thankful? Normally when things are going wrong, or when someone messes up a project that you’ve spent seven hours working on, or when you’re two pages from finishing that novel you’ve been reading for two months, and your mom calls you to come and finish a chore. Figure out what is wrong with this scenario: You raked all of the leaves on your ¾ acre yard and are finally sitting down to watch Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and you have just enough time to finish it before you have to go to bed. Then, your mom asks you to help your dad take all of the leaves to the dump before dark. This will take one more grueling hour of work. Is your first response to say, “Thank you so much for having me work for another hour, and allowing me to rake our yard*”?

           

            When is the most important time to be thankful? That’s easy, always! 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22 is entitled (at least in my Bible) “various exhortations” and it is one of my favorite passages (but maybe I’m just weird). If you want a cut-and-dried set of commands, look here!   1 Thessalonians 5:18 is actually one of the longer commands, which says, “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” In EVERYTHING, give thanks. That basically means that it doesn’t matter what your day is like, it doesn’t matter how sick you are, it doesn’t matter how poor you are; what matters is that you give thanks. We all have something. Some days it may feel like we don’t have much or don’t have anything, but you always have something to be thankful for.

           

            Thankfulness may seem like a self-focus, but it is actually an outward focus. Thankfulness is not (or shouldn’t be) “look at what I have” but instead, “look at what God has given me, through other people.” When we think we have nothing to be thankful for, that is a lie, and it is a self-focused mentality. I often think of a song entitled “Count Your Blessings” when I think of thankfulness, and that really captures the essence of what thankfulness is. Or in the Doxology when we sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow…” A lot of times throughout scripture, we see people “giving thanks” and you probably already know that another term for this is “praying”.

           

            Now, this article really boils down into one sentence: thankfulness is an outward-focused expression of gratitude for the blessings provided by God. I’m going to get as practical as possible here, and tell you one thing that you can always be thankful for: Jesus Christ paying the price for our sins by a brutal death on the cross. That, and that alone, is better than the best day a person can have. Thankfulness is defined as “full of thanks or gratitude” and that’s what we, as Christians should be; full of gratitude.

* My guess is that somewhere near 80% of the people who were asked this question answered one of these three answers

* Unless it’s said sarcastically (which I may have done before)

Character Qualities of a Christian- Joy

           I saw a three-pack of stockings, each with a different letter on them, spelling J-O-Y. With the Christmas season coming up, you are about to hear the word “joy” a lot. So what is joy? Is it the largest box under the Christmas tree with your name on it? Is it spending Christmas with your family that you rarely see? Or could joy possibly be something that we get as a result of our relationship with God? Perhaps you have never experienced joy, and this is all Spanish to you, but bear with me here. Or maybe you think you’ve found joy, but in actuality, you have never actually had joy. Joy is defined as great happiness or something that brings happiness.

            

           Before plunging into a quick overview of joy, I just wanted to put this quote in that really sums up this entire article, “The Holy Spirit stirs in us a joy and peace when we are fixated on Jesus, living by faith, and focused on the life to come.”¹ I stumbled upon this phrase in Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love, and thought it fit very well with the theme of this article. As I considered how to write this article, I contemplated breaking down this statement, but then again, as great as Chan is, he’s not God. So then that led me to ask what Jesus said about joy. I just want to look at what Jesus directly said about joy. Turn to John 16:20, and read it. Jesus says that joy will come in heaven, so does that mean that we cannot have joy on earth? Keep reading in verse 24. This is a popular verse in the Bible, but only the “Ask and you shall receive” part is, and not the part that says “So that your joy may be full”. So start a mental list of how and when we shall receive joy. 1. Asking God for things and receiving them brings us joy.

            

           Moving on (I’m not doing this in chronological order, fyi), or moving back, to John 15:1-11. You probably already know this passage in the Bible, but read it anyway. At the end of all of this, Jesus adds, “Oh yeah, I told you this so that you may have joy” (Author’s paraphrase). I’ve found that sometimes you have to read the Bible backwards as well as frontwards. Look back at what He said should make us joyful. 2. The fact that we are connected to the body of believers that are rooted in Christ should fill us with joy. This is the second point of this article, and it is also the main point of the article. Without being in a local church and growing spiritually, there is NO JOY!

            

           I just want to add one more statement to this, so as to make this list easy to remember, and this one is a little bit different from the others. Look at Luke 15:7-10. Find the word joy in this passage and then try to figure out what we can glean from it. The answer is not exactly clear, but it can be found by looking at Romans 12:15, which says to, “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” If you still have no idea how these verses fit together or even how they coincide with joy, let’s break it down a bit. Jesus says that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents. Well, we’re not in heaven are we? So how does this relate to the topic even slightly? We need to be like the angels; finding joy in the joy of others. A man came home one night to find a new car and a letter informing him of a large raise that he’d been given. In his excitement, he called up his two best friends. The first friend was overjoyed, because he knew that this man had fallen on some hard times financially, and this would be a great help. The man’s other friend bitterly congratulated the man and then hung up. His jealousy won over any feelings of happiness for his friend. 3. We find joy by rejoicing with those who are rejoicing.

            

           That story was fictional, but it showed the two different ways to react to something like that. I think everyone knows what the correct response is, but jealousy often overtakes us. I’ve found it incredibly hard to destroy whatever jealousy creeps into my heart in times where others are rejoicing, but with God’s help, it can be accomplished. So maybe this article could be called “Redefining Joy” because in essence, that’s what I wanted to accomplish, because as Christmas approaches, we receive false images of what joy is. Things on earth are often pleasurable, but nothing, save Jesus Christ, can bring you complete joy. One final thing before I end this article, if you have been searching for true joy, maybe just jot down these four things:

1. Asking God for things and then receiving them brings us joy

2. The fact that we are connected to a body of believers that are rooted in Christ should fill us with joy

3. We find joy by rejoicing with those who are rejoicing

4. Complete and perfect joy comes in heaven

¹ Francis Chan, Crazy Love (2008), pg. 109

Character Qualities of a Christian- Self-Control

          Interestingly enough, the word “self-control” was not used in the Bible until the New Testament. It is used only nine times throughout the Bible, and it simply means the ability to control your own behavior. I’m going to write this article a bit different than I do with most of mine, and I’m going to base it off of three separate statements. But before I do that though, I want to quickly define what self-control is. In its most basic form, self-control is the ability to set limitations on your life and do things in moderation; that’s where we get the term “self” combined with “control”*.

            

           Self-control is an essential component in the healthy walk of a Christian. I know that if I read something like this, I would be tempted to just say, “Yep, it is,” and leave it at that, but as Christians, we are called to a greater response. If you were raised in church, you probably learned the fruit of the spirit at a young age, maybe you even know it in song version*, but not all of us take that list seriously. I very strongly believe that it is one of the most important list of character qualities in the Bible. Self-control is one of the fruits of the spirit, and is mentioned in Galatians 5:23. If this character quality made the top nine, I think that we can assume that it is very essential component to a healthy walk. Boundaries and moderation are very important in life, but once we get our own house (and even before that), we are the ones setting our boundaries.

            

           Self-control can be achieved by all Christians. God generally sets realistic goals. Just turn real quick (this is still sort of on-topic) to Luke 18:27 where Jesus says, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” I’m definitely not saying that we can achieve self-control in our own strength. A popular phrase is “God will never give you more than you can handle” but that should be, “God will never give you more than He can handle”. Self-control can only be achieved through the power of the Holy Spirit. Christians can only have the ability of self-control when they surrender everything to God and let Him work in their lives.  

            

           Self-control has been commanded by God. A Sunday school teacher that I had several years ago would say something but follow it up with the statement, “But don’t take my word for it; open your Bibles...” So, open your Bible to 1 Corinthians 9:25. This verse seems a bit confusing at first, so I just want to break it down into two sections. The race that we are running in is our life. Run so that we may obtain the prize, which means to give God all that we’ve got. Exercising self-control is key to running the race. 

           

           Picture this: four runners are getting ready to run a race. The guy in charge* gives no rules and no boundaries, not even a track, but he does give a goal and no instruction on how to get there. I’m guessing that not many of them would actually make it to the end, because there were no boundaries. This is what I believe Paul is saying: Self-control is essential to our “race” because it gives us a direction or purpose in life and boundaries that keep us going in the right direction.

* In case you didn’t catch that, it’s control over one’s self…

* AKA, fruit of the spirit 2.0

* Yeah, that shows how much I watch racing… Referee? Umpire? Coach? Bat boy? Guy with the starting gun?

Character Qualities of a Christian- Humility

          I have had an unordinary amount of free time recently, and so I have mainly used that time to blog. When I got to this quality, though, I figured that I would be able to write an article on humility. Then, as I started writing it, I realized that I didn’t even have a rudimentary understanding of humility. This article is my discoveries about humility that I pray are helpful to whoever may read this. I have come to realize that humility is something that is sorely lacking in the world today, but some of the world’s greatest people were humble. I would like to learn from people that have a reputation for humility, and what humility is, and also the dangers of pride.

            

           I want to take a quick look at two people in the Bible that were humble, and see what we can learn from them. The first person is Joseph, which I know is a typical person to study, but he was a very humble person, and I believe that something can learned from him. I love watching Joseph’s attitude throughout his life, which tends to remain as a general thankfulness to God. When he had a prestigious position in Potiphar’s house, he thanked God, when he was in jail, he still praised God, and when he became vizier he praised God. Now, I know that, had I been in Joseph’s position, I would’ve been sitting in jail, feeling forgotten by God, but when I became vizier, there would be a tendency in me to pat myself on the back (although physically impossible), telling myself that I had gotten there myself (in spite of my evil brothers). But I think above all, Joseph’s humility shows in Genesis 50:19, where Joseph’s brothers come before him, begging for mercy, and he almost laughs that they thought it necessary to do that. He asks, “Am I in the place of God?” This is translated as, “Yes, it is true that you guys tried to kill me, but instead sold me and faked my death, and I was sent to Egypt where I was falsely accused and thrown into jail, but on second thought, I have done way worse by sinning against my Creator, and why should I be taking the position of judge from God who put me in the political position. God put me here in this position, so why should I, as a lowly servant of God, be judging my brothers who he created and has a plan for, especially after He delivered me from despair and death?” Joseph realized his place and how little he was involved in the process of going from slave to vizier. The first step to humility is realizing the enormous difference between what we have done for God and what God has done for us.

            

           The second person that I want to look at is Jesus. This is one of the most amazing examples of humility. He created this earth, and died for it, yet He comes to earth and washes the feet of dirty, sinful humans. Jesus was well within his rights to come and live like a king, and demand that everyone bow in His presence, but He came and served others. Mark 10:45 says, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life [as] a ransom for many.” Jesus is the ultimate model of humility. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords came to earth, and did the job of lowly servants, suffered for wretched sinners, and eventually died in one of the most treacherous, painful ways to die. He didn’t care about how things should be, or how unfair things were. The second step to humility is to strive to model Jesus’ humility.

            

           Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness¹. C.J. Mahaney, author of Humility: True Greatness, defines “humility” in a cut-and-dried style. This definition is what Joseph lived out in Genesis 50:19, that looking at ourselves in the blinding light of God’s holiness is a genuinely humbling experience. There are two general types of humility: outward humility and inward humility. Outward humility is the phrases such as, “Oh, it was nothing” or “Anyone could have done it”. Attitudes such as these are false humility and they are normally digging for reassurance on how incredible whatever that person did was. Genuine humility is the incredible feeling of being brought to your knees by the overwhelming realization of the difference between your incompetence and God’s omnipotence. 

            

           To finish this article with something practical, I want to give two examples of humility: false and genuine.

Example 1: You make a full court shot while the entire youth group is watching, and afterwards you are congratulated heavily. You cheeks then turn red and you quietly mumble, “Oh, there wasn’t much to it.” The youth leader then remarks how he appreciates your humility.

Example 2: After practicing three months for an offertory, you play it at church, and afterwards an elderly choir member pulls you aside, forcefully telling you that your piece was too loud and energetic. You nod and say that you will work on that (or something of that sort) and then reevaluate whether or not there was any truth to what the choir member said. Your action is then based off that, and your desire to please God.

            This is probably pretty obvious which one is fake and which one is genuine.* Fake humility is really camouflaged pride. To sum this all up in the words of Mahaney, “[T]ransfer all the glory to [God] and experience the promise and the pleasures of humility².

¹ C.J. Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness, pg. 22

² C.J. Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness, pg. 170

* If you’re still stumped one which is which, I’ll give you a cheat: the first is false humility, and the second is genuine humility.

Character Qualities of a Christian- Patience

            “Just be patient.” I cannot count the number of times that I have been told that phrase. Patience is one of the most difficult things for me, partly because it affects several things. When you don’t want to wait for God to work, you are impatient. When you get angry, you have “lost your patience”. When you are quick to give up or freak out, it is normally because you are impatient. Asking questions in the beginning of articles helps me better figure out how to grow in this area, so here goes. What is patience? What does the Bible say about patience? Why should we be patient? How can we as Christians improve in this area?

           

            The first question that I want to touch on is, “Why should we be patient?” This is important, because without answering this question adequately, the rest of the article has no purpose or direction. One reason why we should be patient is because everything is much sweeter when you have waited for it. If I ate at Pizza Hut and then went to Golden Corral right afterwards, the Golden Corral food wouldn’t taste as good as if I had not eaten anything for several hours before eating at Golden Corral. Another reason is because God commanded it (see Philippians 4:6). Later in this article, I will more or less attempt to answer this question a little bit better.

           

            What is patience? Well, I looked up the word “patience” in a thesaurus, and these are the words that I came up with: endurance, tolerance, persistence, fortitude, serenity, perseverance, stamina, forbearance, and a few others as well. That’s a long list to define, so that’s why those words are all summed up with one word: patience. Perseverance is working hard to finish a task; sticking with something. Endurance and stamina describe more of a level of how long a person can endure something (i.e. a race). Tolerance is when your four year-old brother is making weird noises with his face over and over and over again, and you just ignore it and don’t tell him to knock it off (although there is definitely a place for that). Persistence is asking over and over again for something until you get it. Now, obviously these words have multiple meanings, but those are just examples of what those words mean.

           

            What does the Bible say about patience? The answer is: a lot. In his second epistle to the church in Thessalonica, Paul says that he boasts about the church’s patience (2 Thessalonians 1:4). James says that the testing of our faith produces patience (James 1:3).  In Colossians, Paul tells the church to put on patience (Colossians 3:12). Patience is one of the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22). There are so many other verses on patience in the Bible, but unfortunately I cannot mention them all. However, in this we see that patience is a virtue of many different aspects. Impatience leads to hurt relationships, short tempers, and missing some of the benefits of waiting for things.

           

            So how, as Christians, can we improve in this very important area of our lives? There is always a challenge in taking a command in scripture and practically applying it to our lives. It is not a skill that I have exactly developed, but this is my best attempt at it. I believe that patience and prayer go hand-in-hand, in the sense that without prayer, patience is impossible. Sure, without prayer, you may keep it together a little bit, but I desire a patience that lasts. Everyone tends to struggle with different aspects of patience, but no matter what type of patience you are struggling with, you cannot be patient in your own strength. So, my practical solution is to pray, and don’t beat yourself up when you lose it, but try to do better than you have done yesterday, which may sound cliché, but that is the very best way to work towards improving in this area of your life. If you mess up, pray and focus on improving. 

Character Qualities of a Christian- Purity

            Impurity or sexual immorality is an ENORMOUS problem that infests our society. Is it possible to remain pure in such a fallen world as this? What does purity look like? How can purity be achieved? What does the Bible say about purity? I am going to try to find answers to these four questions in this article, but first one concept must be understood. Purity is one of the most important qualities for a Christian to have, yet often it is the one that is the biggest problem. Before I get too deep into this article, take a quick look at 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8. This is about as direct of a command as you can have. Verse 8 says, “Therefore, he who rejects this does not reject man, but God…” So basically, sexual immorality is you trading God and your purity for earthly pleasure.

            

            The fourth question that I asked was “What does the Bible say about purity?” The actual word “purity” is only used seven times in the Bible (NKJV), but the word “pure” is used over one hundred times. First, look at 1 Timothy 4:12, which says, “Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, [and] in purity.” Next, look at 1 Corinthians 6:18, which simply starts off, “Flee sexual immorality…” If 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 wasn’t clear, this is. Turn a few pages later in 1 Corinthians to chapter ten, verse eight, which says, “Nor let us commit sexual immorality…” I think we have the answer to the question… RUN!

            

           The next question that I want to find an answer to is whether or not it is possible to remain pure in such a fallen world as this. Before I give my opinion on that, I want to first say that it is very difficult to remain pure with the amount of sexual sin there is in the world today, but it is possible. This doesn’t belittle struggles that women have with sexual sin, but it does tend to be harder for men than women. Struggling with what we see is a great struggle for men, and it’s mostly a matter of not following Matthew 5:28 and Job 31:1.

           

           Now, with Johnny Raincloud out of the way, I’m going to move on to the question of “What does purity look like?” Purity is normally a battle in relationships with members of the opposite sex. So, let me base my answer off of 1 Timothy 5:2 (see verse one for context). We are supposed to treat other women who are around our age as sisters and women that are several years older than us as mothers and for guys it’s the same thing but like brothers and fathers. Until you are married, treat the person that you’re dating or courting like a brother or sister. That sets a high but achievable standard for purity in our relationships and what we see.

            

           Finally, we get to the last question, “How can purity be achieved?” Maybe you’ve already “blown it” so to speak, but really you haven’t. Your battle for purity is an ongoing thing, and if you have “blown it”, your battle starts again now. You haven’t lost, you’ve maybe just been dormant. Perhaps you’ve been successful in your battle for purity, and if that’s the case, awesome, but you haven’t won, you’ll fight until you die. The answer to this question was more or less answered in the previous paragraph. We achieve it by following the standard that has been set in 1 Timothy 5:2.

            

           Before I end this article I want to include four “P’s” that have helped me a lot. The first “p” is purity, which is one of the many things that we should be striving for, but it is also possibly the hardest. The second “p” is promise. Make a commitment to give God your best, which includes a pure body. The third “p” is power. This one means that we cannot accomplish things in our own strength. We have to ask God for help with our problems, which ushers in the third “p”; prayer. Prayer is one of the most important, if not the most important, part of a Christian’s life. So remember those, and above all, pray for strength.

       Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, [and] younger women as sisters, with all purity… ~ 1 Timothy 5:2

       Let no one despise your youth, but be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, [and] in purity ~ 1 Timothy 4:12

Character Qualities of a Christian: Kindness

           What happened to kindness in today’s culture? Maybe a better question for today’s culture is, “What is kindness?” If we look to the Bible, we see God’s kindness defined in several ways. God’s love is everlasting (Isaiah 54:8), His kindness is merciful, meaning that we don’t deserve it (Psalm 117:2, 119:76, Titus 3:4), His kindness is great (Joel 2:13), God demonstrated His kindness by sending Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:7), He also showed his kindness through his deliverance of Israel out of Egypt (1 Samuel 15:6), God’s power is marvelous (Psalm 31:21), and last but not least, God’s kindness is abundant (Nehemiah 9:17).

           

           Kindness is a difficult quality to have and keep, but it is attainable. No one’s kindness can be as perfect, as forgiving, and as abundant as God’s kindness. I looked up the difference between kindness and love, and the difference is that love tends to be a feeling, while kindness tends to be an action. So God’s love for us is his feelings toward us, and his kindness toward us is the miracles (small or large) that God does for us. To put this concept in a more concrete form, take the Exodus, for example. God loved his nation, the Israelites, so He was kind to them by delivering them out of Egypt. Kindness usually flows out of a heart full of love. If I am very angry at someone, I am not likely to go and clean their car for them or give them a present. Use this equation: Love + Action = Kindness.

            

           So all of this is like a jumbled dinner where none of the components seem to go together, but it is all headed toward a general point. You have God’s perfect kindness at the top, and our imperfect kindness on the bottom, and we have to climb the rope. We can never and will never (until we have our glorified bodies) reach the top. Everybody may be different places on the rope. You may be an overly kind person who enjoys showering people with gifts and words of encouragement or you could be an Ebenezer Scrooge before his change, but most of us are somewhere in between those two.

            

           Here comes the practical part. How do we climb the rope? Well, first of all, I think that as I work on climbing, I tend to slide back down a little bit. Many times, it feels like the “one step forward and two steps backward” feeling, where I’m not really gaining ground, but if you are praying for strength and going out of your way to be kind, you will find yourself steadily moving up the rope. I think the main aspect of kindness that I struggle with is letting people have their way and not forcing my opinion or idea on them. In order to improve in kindness, we need to be purposefully going out of our way to be kind to someone, and that can be anything from a gift to a word of encouragement. Let the other person have their way. Go out for lunch where they want to. In Matthew 5, Jesus says to love your enemies, and as I previously mentioned, kindness flows out of love. In order to show kindness to someone, you almost always have to start by loving them.

            

           So after throwing all of that at you and calling it “practical”, I just want to throw out another question, “Why should we be kind to anyone?” It is certainly a valid question, and the answer is simple, “God changed us by pouring out undeserved kindness on us.”¹ That’s it; God modeled kindness to us so that we would be able to show kindness to others. If we think about what God did for us, I think we can find a way to be kind to others, no matter what. God’s kindness to us should inspire us to climb the rope.

            

           Before wrapping up this article, I should go back and attempt to answer the question that I asked to start the article. The question was, “What happened to kindness in today’s culture?” Kindness has not disappeared, but the amount of it in the world has lessened. I think that part of the reason for its lessening can be credited to the fact that climbing the rope, as I call it, is a grueling process, and many don’t want to work for the prize at the end. So the question is, are you going to strive to climb the rope as I am. I mess up a lot, and so will you, but most of us have nowhere to go but up. Climb the rope.

¹ J.D. Greear, Gospel: Recovering the Power That Made Christianity Revolutionary (2011), pg. 115