As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain ~ 2nd Corinthians 6:1 NIV
I tend to overthink just about everything.
I frequently annoy myself with this ridiculous tendency.
Recently, I have spent a lot of time thinking about all the ways decent people can undo God’s work (Romans 14:20). This particular bout of navel gazing was the result of a very nice person coming along and undoing a whole lot of work God has done in a situation I have been dealing with for some time.
Sigh.
All this led me to thinking about the different ways we can undo what God has done in our lives or in the lives of others. There are probably a million ways we can undo the work of God but in the interest of keeping this post to a reasonable and readable length I will stick to four.
The first is:
We undo God’s work when we refuse to believe ALL the gospel story-
The gospel story is simple. We are all sinners who love to sin. Sometimes we sin on accident. Other times we sin on purpose. We all need Jesus to forgive us, save us from our sin and give us a new nature (2nd Corinthians 5:17, Ephesians 2:1-3, Ephesians 2:8-9). Once we are forgiven we are given a new nature and our lives are in Jesus. Because we are in Jesus we have the power to overcome our most sinful tendencies and vilest proclivities (Romans 8:10, 1st Corinthians 1:2, Ephesians 2:10, Colossians 1:27). Most of us do not struggle at all with the first half of the story. Most Christians, at least the authentic ones understand they are sinners and that they cannot save themselves. It’s the second half of the story that we sometimes struggle to fully grasp. Many do not truly believe Jesus living in us is enough to overcome our struggles with fear, laziness, lust, lying, anger, unbelief or whatever other weird, sinful thing is holding us back from being all that God made us to be. As a result, many of us live lives of spiritual desperation and shame because we are not victorious over our sin nature. We actually undo a lot of the work God did in us at our conversion when we believe the lie that Jesus is not enough. The key to getting free is to understand and acknowledge daily that Christ in us really is enough for us to get free of the sin that tends to entangle us (Philippians 4:13, 2nd Corinthians 12:9). As we do this we must be vigilant about recognizing sin and calling it sin (rather than a bad habit, genetic trait, or a weird personality quirk). Freedom comes when we get into the habit of repenting of sin immediately and we commit to living lives of obedience to God’s word (Hebrews 12:1).
We undo God’s work when we hold onto worldly attitudes-
The world system we are all a part of teaches us from the day we’re born that smart people are selfish with their time, energy, and treasure. We also learn that only fools, nincompoops and halfwits give up their “rights” for any reason. Conversely, the Bible teaches the more we give the more we will have (Luke 6:38). The Bible also teaches that sacrificing for the good of others is the key to living a life of joy and personal fulfillment (1st Corinthians 8:9). Basically, the Bible teaches the opposite of what the world teaches us about just about every issue under the sun. We undo God’s work when we revert back to selfish thinking and sinful attitudes.
We undo God’s work when we insist on dealing with people and situations our own way–
Very few Christians actually pray before they act or open their pie-holes (trust me, I’m speaking from experience on this one). Instead we tend to wait until after we have said something outlandishly stupid before we ask God to step in and fix the mess we created by jumping in and dealing with situations with our own limited wisdom and understanding (Proverbs 3:5). God wants us to pray, seek the wisdom of wise counselors and think things through completely before we act (Proverbs 11:14). When we don’t, we sometimes unwittingly undo the things God is attempting to do in our own life or someone else’s life (Proverbs 16:25).
We undo God’s work when we don’t learn the Bible-
God does a massive work at the point of our conversion. He gives us all the tools we need to live a successful and fruitful Christian life (2nd Peter 1:3). The most important tool we are given besides the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the Bible. It contains all we need to know and tells us what God wants us to do. When we don’t learn the stories, principles and doctrines of the Bible we cannot possibly know or understand what we have to do to live lives that are pleasing to God. Willfully refusing to become a student of God’s word effectively undoes the work God did in us when we became Christians.
