Don't Give Up Yet! | Theocast

Christian Manhood, Weariness, and the Need for Hope

Welcome to the Kingsmen Podcast, where we are reclaiming biblical manhood by training and equipping men for the work of the kingdom. I'm your host, John Moffitt, the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and one of the hosts of TheoCast.

All right, gentlemen, I feel what you feel. It's interesting in the providence of God of when I record this episode. I had one of those days yesterday where you just feel like you're already on empty, and then you get drained even more, almost as if the gas can was crumpled up like a water bottle.

There's just nothing left in the tank. And then you ask yourself, when you put your feet on the ground, how do I go through today? How do I find the motivation to keep going? Because I feel like a failure as a father.

I feel like a failure as a husband. I feel like a failure as an employee, as a citizen, let alone start thinking about how I've failed God. At times, what am I living for? What is the purpose? My bank account laughs at me.

My body laughs at me. The world laughs at me. What am I doing? That is real. I don't care if you're male or female, you are feeling that. That is what's called being beat down by the world. If you've ever had the opportunity to swim in the ocean, and in the deep part of it where you can feel, and there's waves, like legitimate waves and a riptide.

I've been caught in an undercurrent before, and it's terrifying because you just feel this power that sucks you up underneath, and then it pulls you up to the top, and then it just dumps you down to the bottom.

And just when you stand up, it sucks you back again, and you're thinking yourself, wow, this is it. And life feels that way, where you just want to pop your head up for a breath of air. Not even just to succeed or swim to shore, it's like, just want to breathe, okay?

Give me a breath. And that's who I want to talk to. I want to talk to you, I want to talk to me. Because we've got to remind ourselves of what this world is, who we are, and who we are in Christ. Because if you forget that, everything we talk about in the kingdom doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. It's just data. It's just information. So today is for all of us who are weary, and we are needed to be reminded of who we are in Christ. We are sinners, and yes, we are saints. And so here's my encouragement to all of us today.

Trials Expose Our Weakness and Empty Confidence

What's interesting is that there are passages in the Bible that we tend to not understand until we're in them. And what I mean by that is, you don't understand the passages on trials until you're in a trial.

Then they become really important to you. That's why it's so counterintuitive when James says count on all joy when you're in a trial. Because what trials do is they split you open and lay you bare, and remind you of just how insignificant you are.

They remind you how weak you are. We love to find strength and confidence in who we are. If you're into fitness, boy, the way we walk, the way we dress, we can find the confidence in our fitness, in our bank accounts, in our looks, what people say about us.

You know, I had a good friend of mine once tell me, compliments are like cologne. They're good to smell from a distance, but never drink them. And often we drink it, and then we feel the effects. Like, we want more and more compliments.

We want more and more praise, and adulation, and adoration. And specifically, if it's coming from the world, well, why are we seeking that from the world? Because we believed, as I've said before in previous episodes, we have believed the lie of the world that the significance can be found here.

Fixing Our Eyes on Christ and the Sufficiency of Christ

Justin and I were talking about this recently. One of the things that we had mentioned was, Christians, the closer you look at Christ, and the hope of Christ, and the joy of Christ, you get short-timer syndrome.

I've had this a couple of times when I was in high school, when I was in college, when I was in seminary. It's like you're down to the last few weeks, and you don't want to do anything. You don't want to write papers.

You don't want to show up to class. You don't want to do anything. You just want to be, you want to, you've already accepted the job. You already know what the future is. You want to move on to that next thing.

And in many ways, that is how you should live in this life. You can look at all the problems that you have. You can look at all the struggles that you have. You look at everything that's going wrong and go, it's okay, because I'm not here much longer.

Like, that is fine. I can move on. The only way you can do that is if you bury your head into the sufficiency of Christ. You take your head out of that, you start looking around, and all of a sudden, you start worrying, and you feel as if time has stopped, and there's no movement, and you're just drowning.

No, actually, time's moving really fast. The Bible says life's but a vapor. If poof, it's over. And the only way you can remember how quick and how insignificant your life is, is if you keep your eyes on Christ.

That's the only way. Well, John, I hear what you're saying. And look, I've been there. Man, I can remember when I was in seminary, and people were like, oh, you need to just trust in the glory of Christ.

You need to trust in the goodness of Christ. And look, I don't mean to be rude. I just want to slap the guy. I'm like, dude, if you say that one more time, I'm going to punch you. Because I heard he was saying, but it made no sense to me.

Like, you know, it's like telling somebody who's got the flu, don't have the flu. Like, oh, yeah, if that was that easy, I would just stop throwing up. That sounds great. You know, wonderful advice. I appreciate that.

You know, if anybody has migraines, like, walk up and say, well, why do you have a migraine? Just stop having a migraine. That's how I feel when someone says, well, you just need to trust in the sufficiency of Christ.

Right? God knows our weakness. He knew we would struggle with this. He knew we would have a problem. You know what he says? He says, you need to go to where there's help. And there's help in his word.

Now, some of you are about to say, oh, great. John's going to talk about daily Bible reading. Nope, I'm not. You need to trust in God's word and the way in which God's word has designed to be used. Now, you can use a lot of things.

You're using a podcast right now. And I pray you hear what I'm about to tell you, because I'm hoping this podcast will be a method to, one, encourage and strengthen you to go and trust God's word. And this is what God's word says, that the body of Christ, when it's utilized properly, can be a wonderful and amazing strength for you.

It can be your brothers and sisters are what actually carry you to Christ. Right? When someone says you need to look to Christ, at times I can't, so this is what I need you to do. I need you to look to Christ for me.

I need you to remind me and tell me over and over again who I am in Christ, all the benefits I have in Christ. I'm just going to name you a few as your brother, and then I hope that you have a good church, that you can go and you can receive the means of grace this week.

And trust those means, the preaching of the word, the receiving of the table, singing and prayer and fellowship. And if you're not in a good church, well, how much longer can you go like this way? It's kind of like, if you're all you can, if you've got no means of eating, how long can you go without eating?

You know, you're gonna become very anemic. So let me encourage you with some truth of Christ, and then let me encourage you how to go get more of it. When you forget about your home, your real home, like where you're going to be, then it's easy to start putting your eyes here.

Our Salvation and Inheritance Are Secure in Sovereign Grace

So let me remind you of your future home. Let me remind you of what 1 Peter says. He says that your inheritance, first of all, he says your salvation, which is often we question ourselves because I'm based on performance.

He says, well, God already wrapped that all up in his sovereign grace and sovereign design. We hear words like sovereignty and grace and we always want to throw a but and, well, yeah, I know, but I still have to do my part.

If 1 of your salvation was dependent upon your faithfulness and obedience and the fruit of the Spirit, then you are 100 damned. I know I've said it before, but it's good to hear. Dear child, God never looks at how well you perform.

This is kind of a weird illustration, but I'm going to use it anyways. Have we ever celebrated a child when they were born? Like, good job, you came out. We're so proud of you for coming out. We weren't quite sure you were going to come out, but you chose to come out and we're so thankful you did.

No, we celebrate the birth of the child, but we don't give any credit to that child whatsoever. That child, it didn't create itself, it didn't sustain itself, and it did not birth itself. All of that was given to it by its mother.

That's the exact illustration God uses for you and your salvation. Rebirth, right? He adopted you, he gave you a new birth, a new spiritual life. So just remember that. If you're struggling with, why am I a Christian or not, or I haven't been performing well, you will never perform to the level that God would accept.

That's why he looks at you and says, I love my son, and you have all of my son's righteousness. Not only do you have his righteousness, to which he was one who gave you new life, you get all of his reward.

See, he did all the right acts. He did all the right obedience. And so instead of you getting what you deserve, you're going to get what Jesus deserves, which is an inheritance. That is, he says, it's unfading, unperishable, and cannot, it cannot be decreased.

Man, that's really good to look forward to. So you can sit back and go, okay, well, my performance is not based upon how I get saved, because I was born by the Spirit, and my future is not dependent upon my, the inheritance of my new home is not based upon my performance, so I can rest there.

Then, John, what am I supposed to be doing? Exactly. You see, the joy of the Lord comes when you rest in his sufficiency, and you're realizing you're not obeying out of fear, or out of, okay, there's two, there's two ways that Christians obey.

Guilt, right, I feel guilty because I haven't performed to the level, or FOMO, the fear of missing out. I'm not going to get the reward and level and respect that I want. Neither one of those are how Christ calls us.

Setting Our Hope on Grace and Living by the Means of Grace

If you continue in this concept of 1 Peter, verses like 13 through 16, he says, well, after these truths, you have these truths, you set your hope fully on the grace that is to come. So when I talked about look unto Christ, or run unto Christ, or put your head into Christ, literally, you have to bury your eyes, spiritually speaking, to bury your heart into the sufficiency of Christ, so you'll stop listening, and stop seeing all the just destructiveness around you, because that's what allows you to be effective.

How do you pick yourself up tomorrow and put your feet on the ground after just absolutely being drained of everything that you have? You're going to hear a verse right now that you've heard misquoted many, many times.

You know how you do it? Because you can do all things in Christ who strengthens you. You can make another day fighting sin. You can make another day being in an absolute corrupt government, in a corrupt world, in a marriage that you've messed up in, in a father.

You can do it one more day, because Christ will give you the strength to do it. You can do anything in Christ's strength. That's how you do it. You wake up and say, all right, Christ, without you I cannot make it.

And when you wake up and that's not true, you need to go call a brother or a sister and say, I need you to tell me why it is that I can make it one more day. Pastor, preach Jesus to me. Hand me the bread.

Hand me the juice. Remind me of my significance because of Christ. I pray this is encouraging to you. I hope this is helpful to you, and I want to leave you with this. One day you will find strength. You will grow, and you will understand how to let go of this world.

And as you do, you're going to look around and go, hey, that person's enslaved. That person's trying to use sex, money, fame. They're trying to use other people to find their significance. I can give them what I have.

I can give them Jesus. I can let them know to let go of the world and show them the law. The law says if you keep doing what you're doing, you're heading towards wrath. But if you let go and you look to Christ, he will give you everything you're trying to clamor for.

He will give you love and significance. He will give you peace and joy, and he'll give you a home that won't fade. You'll actually wake up every morning realizing your life has an eternal purpose. You get to love and care for people who are saved, who forget about their salvation, and you get to give salvation to people who are really bad.

Like, bad. Like you. I love it when Paul says, such were some of you. Sexually deviant murderers, liars, thieves, did nothing to benefit the world and did nothing for the glory of God. And some person opened their mouth as an ambassador for Christ and said, hey, you should be reconciled to God.

It's called grace. That's what helps keep you going in the morning. So I hope this encouraged you. I implore you to take the truth of the gospel, allow it to encourage you, and then go be a part of a community for two reasons.

To be strengthened and to strengthen others. I love you as my brothers and sisters in Christ. Share this with somebody who's struggling, and hopefully next week I'll see you in the arms of Christ in glory.

But if not, we'll be here again to remind you that you're not alone and that Christ is sufficient. The King is sufficient. We'll see you next week.