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Jonathan Edwards Resolution #61

by Pastor John Kim

To the LBC family!

Jonathan Edwards Resolution #61
Resolved, that I will not give way to that list­less­ness which I find unbends and relaxes my mind from being fully and fixedly set on reli­gion, what­ever excuse I may have for it – that what my list­less­ness inclines me to do, is best to be done, etc.

Listlessness is some­thing that we would often dis­guise as “I just need to clear my mind” kind of men­tal­ity and is ulti­mately revealed to be an escape from being fixed and focused on seek­ing Christ. Our ten­dency to being eas­ily dis­tracted con­tributes to this as well and the main con­se­quence really is a loss of a dis­ci­pline for the sake of god­li­ness. While we must be care­ful that duty alone does not gov­ern our moti­va­tion, there are times when the pat­terns of dis­ci­plines are dis­rupted by sea­sons of mind­less­ness that go back to our heart motivations.

Why is it that we are so eas­ily moved away from Christ in our minds? Is it not the enemy that seeks to tempt us with thoughts that would sway us from the Savior? Are we not often pulled to con­form to the world instead of being trans­formed by the renew­ing of our minds (Romans 12:2)? Knowing that we have this ten­dency as we face the daily onslaught of worldly think­ing, it is no sur­prise that we are exhorted by the apos­tle Paul to think about things that are true, hon­or­able, just, pure, lovely, com­mend­able, excel­lent, and wor­thy of praise (Philippians 4:8). It is only in the Word of God that we find the cen­ter of our think­ing pro­vided and that is in the per­son and work of Jesus Christ. When the cross is the focal point of our mind, it will not lead to list­less­ness because to dwell on the gospel can only result in the glory of God becom­ing the end to which our whole life can then find its ulti­mate fulfillment.

Colossians 3:1–2
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

If our mind is sent on Christ and the things of Christ, we will be able to tran­scend the earthly mind­ed­ness that we are often found wal­low­ing in and instead we can be seek­ing first the king­dom of God and His right­eous­ness (Matthew 6:33). When we are mind­ful of Christ and fol­low­ing the way of the cross, not only do we indi­vid­u­ally find ben­e­fit but we are then able to truly con­tribute to the unity of mind that should char­ac­ter­ize the church.

Philippians 1:27
Only let your man­ner of life be wor­thy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are stand­ing firm in one spirit, with one mind striv­ing side by side for the faith of the gospel,

When we are liv­ing in a man­ner wor­thy of the gospel of Christ, it will be revealed through a firm unity shown in one spirit and one mind striv­ing for the faith of the gospel. The work of the gospel is then max­i­mized by our Christ-mindedness.

Philippians 2:1–5
So if there is any encour­age­ment in Christ, any com­fort from love, any par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Spirit, any affec­tion and sym­pa­thy, com­plete my joy by being of the same mind, hav­ing the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do noth­ing from rivalry or con­ceit, but in humil­ity count oth­ers more sig­nif­i­cant than your­selves. Let each of you look not only to his own inter­ests, but also to the inter­ests of oth­ers. Have this mind among your­selves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,

When we are of the same mind, it will result in a self-sacrificing ser­vice of one another that fol­lows in the foot­steps of Jesus, who dis­played the ulti­mate self-sacrifice through His obe­di­ence to the point of death on a cross so that we might have a Savior who could save us from our sins.

To put it another way, let me ask a series of ques­tions regard­ing the state of your mind:

  1. Do you find your­self eas­ily dis­tracted from the things of God?
  2. Does the glory of Christ seem like a fad­ing shadow to you?
  3. Do the things of this world seem more attrac­tive than the things of heaven?
  4. Are you dis­in­ter­ested in the lives of your fel­low broth­ers and sisters?
  5. Do you rarely think of the gospel in your every­day life?

If the answer to these ques­tions are more a “yes” than “no”, you might have some issues with how you take care of your mind. It is not a good thing to be lazy about the care of your mind. In fact, if you do not set a proper guard over your mind, you just mind find your­self list­ing off so far from the cross of Christ that you no longer even think or feel or act like a Christian. The price for list­less­ness can be costly so don’t under­es­ti­mate the amount of time that is lost in your mind­less wan­der­ings apart from Christ.

As the Great Command in Matthew 22:37 states, let us love God with all our mind and in so doing offer up our minds in wor­ship along with the rest of our whole being to His glory.

Praying that you would be mind­ful of Christ,
Pastor John

Announcements:

  1. LKC will con­tinue this Wednesday at 6:30pm.
  2. There will be no Friday Night Bible stud­ies this Friday as we will be hav­ing our all-church Mission Bowl Pep Rally at 6:30pm at the church. Everyone is invited to come for a fun evening as we pre­pare for the Mission Bowl.
  3. The Women’s Mission Bowl will be held at UCSD Muir Fields this Saturday. All par­tic­i­pants are asked to meet at the church at 7:30am for a joint ser­vice with the other churches. The tour­na­ment itself will start at 9:30am at UCSD and end around 5pm.
  4. For the Mission Bowl, we need a count of those who are inter­ested in pur­chas­ing lunch that day. We need to know ahead of time because of the arrange­ments that need to be made with UCSD. If you an e-mail Naomi Yu by Wednesday evening with the num­ber of lunches you would like to order, it will be $3.50 per lunch. Please con­tact Naomi at naomiyu@gmail.com.
  5. For the Mission Bowl, there is also a need to help with the food prep and dis­tri­b­u­tion. If you are avail­able to help this Saturday, please con­tact Naomi Yu as well for this oppor­tu­nity naomiyu@gmail.com.
  6. Project Ahualle is con­tin­u­ing until March 19 and there is still oppor­tu­nity for you to con­tribute to their fund as we hope to help the Ahualle fam­ily not only enjoy their time here but to also pro­vide for them resources and gifts that would be an encour­age­ment to them in their min­istry. You can pick up an enve­lope at church and then give your con­tri­bu­tions to Pastor Patrick by this Sunday. We would like to have all the con­tri­bu­tions by this Sunday because we hope to send any addi­tional funds that we raise with them when they leave on March 19. **One thing that we would like to ask is if any­one has any extra guest passes for Disneyland or California Adventure that you can donate, please let me know as soon as pos­si­ble. We are also con­tin­u­ing the fundrais­ing for Project Ostrava (April 20–28, 2010) so please prayer­fully con­sider sup­port­ing that trip as well.
  7. This Sunday, we will be hav­ing an all-church fel­low­ship at 5:30pm to cel­e­brate our time with Pastor Jorge and his fam­ily. It will be a potluck din­ner so we are ask­ing if you could bring a con­tri­bu­tion of a dish that would be one of your favorites that you would like the Ahualle fam­ily to try. If you could bring a gen­er­ous por­tion to share with every­one, that would be much appre­ci­ated. Please mark any serv­ing dishes or uten­sils with your name so that we can know who it should go back to at the end of the evening. There is a rumor that Pastor Jorge and Norma will be cus­tom mak­ing a 1,000 Tucumanian empanadas so you will not want to miss this event!
  8. This Sunday we will be hav­ing a spe­cial 2nd hour pre­sen­ta­tion by Pastor Jorge as he will be shar­ing about the work in Tucuman as well as his per­spec­tive on mis­sions. So the adult Sunday School classes will not be meet­ing this com­ing Sunday but will resume the fol­low­ing week. Please stick around for this as it is going to be a great oppor­tu­nity to see what God has blessed our part­ner­ship with in the min­istry at Tucuman.
  9. We will be going over John 10 this Sunday so please read the chap­ter in prepa­ra­tion for the mes­sage. For the children’s mes­sage we will be going over the aspect of PEACE from the fruit of the Spirit. Please remind your chil­dren to keep a good record of their notes and pic­tures. They are doing a great job!
  10. This Sunday will be the last Sunday to signup for the Singles Retreat, which will be on March 19–21 at Pine Valley Bible Conference Center. The cost is now $150 – please signup this week­end! Also, for those of you who have already signed up, we will be get­ting hoody sweat­shirts so please give the appro­pri­ate size to Maria Oh if you have already reg­is­tered. If it is the same size as the t-shirt size you sub­mit­ted, then you don’t need to do any­thing else – we will just use that size. But if you need it a lit­tle big­ger, please let Maria know by tomor­row no later than 5pm. If you have not yet reg­is­tered for the retreat, you will need to reg­is­ter by tomor­row in order to get a sweat­shirt as we will not be order­ing any extras due to the extra cost. If you know some­one who wants to reg­is­ter, please make sure they do so by e-mailing Maria Oh at ohmaria@gmail.com.
  11. We will be hav­ing one last DTR series on the fol­low­ing dates: March 21, 28, April 11, and 18. They will be held on Sunday evenings at the church from 6–8:30pm and will be focused on pre­sent­ing a God-centered, gospel-oriented, bib­li­cal world­view towards the issue of dat­ing. We will be address­ing some issues that have not been addressed in pre­vi­ous ses­sions so it will be mostly new mate­r­ial that will build on pre­vi­ous mes­sages. So invite your friends, both Christian an non-Christian as we will be pre­sent­ing the gospel through this series as well.

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