The Pastor’s Heart - A word to our heart from Dominic Steele
In a Pastor’s Heart special, Dominic Steele speaks to our hearts today as we engage in the battle of the Christian life. We get a call today to perseverance and resilience.
Dominic addresses, not just pastors, but young and old; healthy and unfit; wealthy and poor; busy and quiet; husbands, singles, divorcees and widowers; fertile and infertile, straight or experiencing same sex attraction; or struggling in addictions.
Calling out to God:
God what are you doing?
Why am I stuck in this?
What is going on?
Why is it so hard?
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Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
The Pastor’s Heart - A word to our heart from Dominic Steele
In a Pastor’s Heart special, Dominic Steele speaks to our hearts today as we engage in the battle of the Christian life. We get a call today to perseverance and resilience.
Dominic addresses, not just pastors, but young and old; healthy and unfit; wealthy and poor; busy and quiet; husbands, singles, divorcees and widowers; fertile and infertile, straight or experiencing same sex attraction; or struggling in addictions.
Calling out to God:
God what are you doing?
Why am I stuck in this?
What is going on?
Why is it so hard?
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
It is the pastor's heart and Dominic Steele. And a word to our heart, thinking about the things that hinder and the sins that entangle Today. An address to the heart as we engage in the battle of the Christian life. It's a call today to perseverance and endurance. A break from our usual format. This is a presentation that I gave at the Sydney Men Meeting, the Challenge conference.
Speaker 1:How Might we Fix Our Eyes on Jesus? I have been thinking about Ken Elliott. He left Australia for Africa in 1972. He served in Burkina Faso from 1972 till 2016 as a medical missionary Australian medical missionary At 76 years old. He was serving as a missionary there when he was kidnapped by Muslim extremists and he has been held captive by that Muslim extremist terrorist group from January 2017 and he's still in captivity. That's six years since this group took him from his wife. From 76 to 82, he's been held captive after 44 years of faithful missionary service to Jesus. Years of faithful missionary service to Jesus. Put yourself in his shoes. What kind of conversation might he be having? What kind of prayer might he be having? Might he be calling out to God? God, what are you doing? I want to suggest to you this morning that the complexities that we have, that I have, that Ken Elliott has, should not come as a surprise.
Speaker 1:In the passage before us, hebrews 12,. Just look with me at this. Just see verse 1, the word endurance. See verse 3, you won't grow weary and lose heart. Or verse 6, the Lord disciplines the one he loves. Or verse 12, strengthen your tired hands and weak knees.
Speaker 1:The picture of the Christian life that we get in Hebrews 12 does not seem like it's going to move from come to Christ, then success onto success, onto success, onto success. And so if you, like me, have found the walk of being a Christian man not straightforward, then the writer of the letter of the Hebrews says, verse 1, chapter 12, therefore, since we have, we are surrounded by such a large cloud of witnesses. He says look around, you're surrounded by a cloud, a group of witnesses. There are so many other faithful witnesses around you, but the writer is not talking about the people sitting in the row in front of you, the row beside you, the row behind you. When he says large cloud of witnesses, he's really saying because of these guys. And who are these guys that he's talking about? Well, tell me about these guys.
Speaker 1:It's the guys in chapter 11 that are mentioned, and if you look back to chapter 11 of Hebrews, there's a whole list of guys. There's Adam's son Abel, in verse 9 of chapter 11, who was more righteous than his brother Cain because he acted in faith when he offered a better sacrifice to God. Well then there's Noah in verse 7 of chapter 11, who, by faith, built an ark to deliver his family. Now you've got to imagine this Noah. He's building this enormous boat. Just picture it at Castle Hill. I don't know how you do this, but you rent a football field at Castle Hill and somehow he could rent a space that is big enough at the end of some cul-de-sac and just imagine the knocking and the mocking that he's going to get from the other people in that suburb.
Speaker 1:Noah the Fundamentalist, are you Noah's son? Oh yeah, noah's the lunatic at the end of our street building the Titanic in his backyard, and Noah's kids can't afford to go to school excursions because he doesn't work, because he's building a boat to keep himself safe when the judgment comes. Because of his faith. But verse 7, by Noah's faith, he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that becomes by faith. Noah trusted God when God said he would judge the world from godliness by flooding the world.
Speaker 1:And then you keep going and you get to verse 8, and Abraham. And Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and set out for a place that he was going to receive as his inheritance, he went out even though he did not know where he was going. Can Elliot be encouraged by Abraham's faith? Know where he was going? Can Elliot be encouraged by Abraham's faith? Well, verse 13,. These all died in faith, although they did not receive. They had promises that they did not receive. It's the same story. You get down to verse 32.
Speaker 1:What more can I say? Time is too short to tell about Gideon, barak and Samson and Jephthah, andah and David and Samuel and the prophets who, by faith, conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises. Shut the mouths of lions, so he says. Since we are therefore surrounded chapter 12, verse 1, by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us witnesses, let us, let's do this, gentlemen, let us point 3a let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let's engage in this battle. First, a sin that hinders a thing that hinders and a sin that entangles A thing that hinders a sin that entangles. First one, gentlemen, I suspect if you do an audit in your life and I do an audit in my life. There are things in our lives that may not necessarily be bad things but are getting in the way of you serving Jesus.
Speaker 1:I'm thinking just of one friend who wanted to learn Japanese. Now, learning Japanese, I think, is spiritually neutral, but it is certainly time-consuming. And this friend ended up saying you know what? I can't do it? I can't prioritise being a kids' leader, kids' church leader, being regular at midweek group, being regular at church time spent sharing Christ with my non-Christian friends, and learning Japanese. And so he said something's got to go from my life and those things can't go. So this is a thing that has to go. For him it was a thing that hindered.
Speaker 1:Or another friend that was a positive example. Here's the negative example. Another friend he said I don't have a time to go to midweek Bible study. His job was so busy he did not have. I don't have time to go to midweek Bible. So actually, what's the thing that hinders the particular job that he has? Actually, if you're so busy that you don't have time to go to midweek Bible study, then your job is a thing that hinders and you need to get a different job Because he says, let us get rid of, let us lay aside the thing that hinders.
Speaker 1:Is it a holiday house and visiting the holiday house that's stopping you get to? Well, that's the thing that hinders, neutral in itself. Or is your heavy work travel schedule a thing that hinders? But there's other stuff that gets in the way. I'm still in verse 1.
Speaker 1:The lay aside the thing that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. There's all sorts of sins in our life that grab hold of us, that we find attractive, that cling to us, that ensnare us. The things we look at on the internet, the things we look at on Netflix that we know we shouldn't look at. I was talking this week to a Christian sex addict friend and he said to me you have a conversation after church with a guy after church and maybe they'll say to you I had a problem with porn, maybe, but what they don't tell you is every Friday for six hours for 20 years.
Speaker 1:Let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us and instead let us run with perseverance, run with endurance, the race marked out for us. There's that word endurance, perseverance and the line to understand is that the Christian life is a long-distance race. For me it's been 37 years. It's not a short sprint. And you cannot run a long-distance race with an overcoat on and rocks in your pockets. There are good things, christian friend, pockets. There are good things, christian friend, that we will need to give up in order to run with endurance, the race marked out for us. It may not necessarily be a bad thing, but if it is getting in the way of you serving Jesus, get rid of it. What do we need to do?
Speaker 1:Well, verse two eyes on jesus. Verse two keeping our eyes on jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He, jesus, is the pioneer, perfecter, the start, the finish, the A to Z, the source, the end of faith. We look to Jesus who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame. Jesus whose whole life is characterized by an unbroken and unquestioning faith in his heavenly father. I mean, you see this at Gethsemane, contemplating his pending execution, jesus cries out to his father Father, all things are possible, take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. We look to Jesus and Jesus' trust in his Father as he looks forward to his resurrection, his ascension. He's seated at the right hand of the father and it carries him through the taunting, the whipping, the bitter agony, the rejection, the dereliction, the desolation. And they're calling out to him mocking, come down for the cross. And we might believe. Had Jesus come down, had Jesus given in to their taunts and their mocking, he could never have been described as the perfecter of our faith. For had he come down at that point he would have been the wimp out at the last minute person. But he endured the cross, despising its shame, death by crucifixion, lowest depths of ultimate disgrace, the punishment reserved for the person unfit to live in the Roman worldview, the punishment for submen, roman citizens exempted from crucifixion. But for slaves, for lowly ranked criminals, for foreigners. It was an appropriate treatment and Jesus endured it.
Speaker 1:Frequently in church we emphasize the aspect of the cross of atonement that Jesus in his death pays for our wrong before the Lord, that he takes the punishment that should rightly have been directed at me. But here what we see is Jesus in his going to his death, the example of Jesus in the face of battle, in the face of struggle. And so when I'm struggling with sin or when I'm struggling with a thing that hinders, I fix my eyes on Jesus. And for Jesus, the incentive is he sits down see there, verse 2, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Right now Jesus is seated in heaven. The task is finished. He's seated ruling the universe, and that is such an encouragement to me, to you, for verse 3, consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won't grow weary and give up my journey on Christian ministry.
Speaker 1:I was on holidays. I've been Christian three, four years. I was on holidays at church in the country and we went to church this weekend at this church in the country and the sermon was so bad and actually the sermon was so wrong that I thought I should go into Christian ministry because at least I wouldn't be as bad as that guy and at least I wouldn't be as wrong as that guy and at least I would agree with me. And so I put my hand up, became a ministry trainee and Al Stewart, who's speaking this afternoon, I was his first ministry trainee. He was my trainer. I went to theological college. We planted a little church in Glebe. We started with 10 of us meeting in the library in Glebe. A little while later, the Anglican Church gave us the defunct Anglican Church building. In that defunct, well, it wasn't quite dead, but there were vultures hovering overhead.
Speaker 1:In the kindness of God, things started to grow and a guy at our church, 15 years older than me, was making remarks that caused young women to be upset to complain about him. I asked him to pull his head in. He didn't pull his head in. I sent him an email and he sued me over that email for defamation. It was copied into 12 people the leaders, the denominational leaders and the local leaders and five weeks in the Supreme Court, four years of stress before I was cleared.
Speaker 1:But in the middle of it it's morning tea at the Supreme Court and I'm in the foyer of the Supreme Court and I'm having one of those conversations with God, me praying to God, and I'm thinking how did I get here? This isn't what I mean. I didn't mean to set out to be here. I set out to preach Jesus Christ and just do better than that other bloke and I tried to plant a church and now I'm a defendant in the Supreme Court and I'm on antidepressants and I can't think straight and I want to give up.
Speaker 1:And it wasn't just that court thing. There was other stuff going on as well. We'd had a building project that had blown out in costs. I'd had to take out an apprehended violence order against a guy who had been threatening our staff with a cricket bat, and Kath and I were trying to support a woman at our church who'd been sexually assaulted by her non-Christian boyfriend and fallen pregnant, and I was so stressed about the court case that I for two years turned into a complete introvert and I wasn't allowed to share about the court case because the charge against me was defamation and church got into financial trouble. Staff were disappointed with me and I was walking from church to my house and Parramatta Road is between my house and church and I'd stopped on the footpath and I pressed the button to cross the traffic lights and I was there right on the edge of the footpath and this bus went past and missed me by that much and I thought, oh, if only I'd been leaning a little bit further forward and if only this bus had hit me and I could have had an early mark for heaven and it would have been an accident and it wouldn't have been sin and village church could be somebody else's problem.
Speaker 1:I wonder if that's how Ken Elliott is. I mean, his issues are orders of magnitude bigger than mine and he set out to preach Christ and he's been doing it for 44 years. I mean his issues are orders of magnitude bigger than mine. And he set out to preach Christ and he's been doing it for 44 years. And whatever his aspirations were for his retirement, I doubt they were to be seven years apart from his wife in solitary confinement held by Muslim terrorists, feeling abandoned by his government on the other side of the world. This verse has got to be true for him. Fix your eyes on Jesus, jesus who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross and scorned his shame. Consider him verse 3, who endured such hostility from sinners against himself. So that you won't grow weary and give up, look down to verse 5.
Speaker 1:I'm at point 5. You have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons. My son, do not take the Lord's discipline lightly or lose heart when you're reproved by him, when something seems to go wrong in my life, your life, it may be, it may not be, but it may be that God is disciplining you. For verse 6, the Lord disciplines the one he loves and punishes every son. He receives Endure suffering as discipline. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline?
Speaker 1:Now my kids are older now. I hardly ever do babysitting now, but I remember when our kids were younger, when other kids had come over, when I used to do babysitting. I had a goal babysitting. I'll tell you what my goal is in babysitting. It's that everyone goes home alive. I'll tell you what my goal is in babysitting it's that everyone goes home alive. That's my plan. If everyone goes home alive, that's a win. I'm not trying to grow them, I'm not trying to train them. I'm not trying to discipline them. I just want them to get out of here alive. Now, however, if we're talking about my kids, who I love, then I want to train them, then I want to discipline.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing, dads, and you know this If you don't train them, if you don't engage in the training moment with them and they're your kids then what you're actually doing is credit card parenting. You tell your kid to do something. They don't do it. You let them get away with it. Then you're putting a charge on the parenting credit card of something that you're going to have to pay for later because you're going to have to do extra training later to make up for what you didn't pay for now, and it's going to be more expensive and more difficult and harder to train them later.
Speaker 1:And so what do you want to do? If you're a parent, if you're a father, you want to engage with discipline. And so he says seven endure suffering as discipline. God is treating you as sons. When god engages with us in discipline, he's treating us as a son. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? And if you're without discipline, which all receive, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. If you are without discipline, you're an illegitimate child. He's not your dad, he's just a babysitter. You're an illegitimate child. He's not your dad, he's just a babysitter. But if you're going through the suffering and you're finding it really hard, then I need to ask what is happening. Is this a discipline thing that God? Is God trying to teach me something here? What is Might he be training me here? Verse 9,.
Speaker 1:Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us. We respected them. Shouldn't we submit even more to the heavenly father, the father of spirits, and live, for they disciplined us a short time based on what seemed good to them. I mean that's right. As we fumble through as fathers in this life, we try our best for a short time, based on what seems good to us, but he, the heavenly father, does it for our benefit so that we might share in his holiness.
Speaker 1:My friend Richard, very old friend, he texted me this morning. We first met in theological college first year. Five years before we met in first year theological college, he was leading on a Christian camp and his wife and child were on the camp with him and they went home early on the Sunday before lunch because his little son, his baby son, was due for an after lunch nap. Richard stayed back to clean up the campsite. His wife and one-year-old son were killed by a truck head-on collision, ploughed into their car on the way home.
Speaker 1:I have listened to him talk about this. I've listened to him talk about this, actually listening to him give a sermon on Hebrews 12. And he said, reflecting on these verses my wife and son got early marks to heaven. But for him it was awful. There were so many awful times, awful years, awful times, awful years. But one of the positives was that the whole experience has been good for him and that he sees that God was disciplining him to make him more holy. Very painful, very painful, but it did have an impact of making him more like Christ, of causing him to rely on the promises of God in a way that he had not before.
Speaker 1:And so I read verse 11, no discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful Later on. It yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who've been trained by it and the kids of parents who don't discipline. Those kids are dreadfully behaved. Discipline in child-rearing produces a harvest of righteousness and godliness and guys fathers, it's our responsibility. And godliness and guys fathers, it's our responsibility. So, with spiritual discipline, this is true for my friend Richard, but I've found it to be true for me At the time of that court case, as I reflect back, I think I had the skills, but I didn't have the character. I'd started to become full of myself and there were issues of pride and God brought me down. God humbled me. The whole ministry imploded, but God was kindly, lovingly investing in disciplining me. It took me a while to see that, but now I'm sure that that is true.
Speaker 1:Jumping down to 6b and verse 16, make sure there isn't any immoral or irreverent person like Esau who sold his birthright in exchange for a single meal. For you know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, even though he sought it with tears, because he didn't find any opportunity for repentance. Now Esau, he's the typical Australian man. He's immoral, he's irreverent, he's godless. He gives free expression to his body whenever he feels like it. You read back to Genesis, the chapters in Genesis, esau comes home hungry. He says give me some stew, I want it. Now His younger brother says to him sell me your birthright, sell me your inheritance, and I'll give you stew. What happens, esau? He was the eldest son. The eldest son. He was down to inherit two-thirds of his father's property, but he was the eldest son in the family line of God. He was to be the one who would inherit the blessing of God, through whom his descendants, the whole world, would be blessed. And Esau says rather than the blessing of God, I don't care about the promises of God, I don't care about spiritual things, I don't care about future inheritance. I want to taste it. I want the sensual now. I want satisfaction now. I want physical pleasure now. I live for this moment and I want to do what I want to do and I want to feel his touch. I want to see her body, I want to use her body. He went for the physical now and squandered his eternal inheritance Verse 17. And squandered his eternal inheritance Verse 17. You know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, even though he sought it with tears, because he didn't find any opportunity for repentance. Because he didn't find any opportunity for repentance, there came a time when it was too late for Esau Application. We keep indulging our sensuality now. There will come a time when it will be too late for us.
Speaker 1:When the organisers of this conference approached me, they set the program for today, they divided up the passages of the scriptures and they talked to me. They talked to Toby, they talked to Al and I said I see you've put Hebrews 12 on the list as a passage to be addressed today. Could I please pick that one? Would you mind if I spoke on Hebrews 12? I mentioned that it was 37 years and two months ago that I came to trust in Jesus Christ. I'd been going to church for about six months and our church took part in this big multi-church conference in the Blue Mountains not totally unlike this one, except there were women there and the speaker that night spoke on Hebrews 12 and said pretty much what I've said this morning, in fact, lines like the Christian life is a long-distance race and you can't run a long-distance race with an overcoat on and rocks in your pockets. Sorry, you can't run a long-distance race with an overcoat on and rocks in your pockets. I got that line from him and he said the line. It may not be a bad thing, but if it's getting in the way of you serving Jesus, get rid of it. And that night, the 26th of January 1986, I prayed to God, thanking him that Jesus had died to pay for my wrong before the Almighty.
Speaker 1:And the next day on the drive home I drove to my then girlfriend's house and she lived less than 10 minutes from here. I picked her up. We went to a cafe at Windsor from here. I picked her up. We went to a cafe at Windsor and I have a clear memory of looking at her across this table in the cafe and saying to her I became a Christian yesterday. That means we're going to need to stop having sex. This is where my mind was. I'd been listening to Hebrews 12 the night before.
Speaker 1:For me to be having sex with you is a sin that entangles, a sin that snares. It's me choosing to be sensual like Esau, but actually me going out with you and you're not a Christian, I'm a newborn baby Christian. Well, it's least a thing that hinders. And what I need to do is fix my eyes on Jesus. And I remarkably had clarity on this that if I really loved her, then more important than me having a relationship with her and me having a relationship with her and me being sexually satisfied with her was her having a relationship with Jesus. And she needed to see that. For me, jesus was more important to me than she was and I needed to get out of the way so that she could investigate faith in Jesus Christ. And I needed to work on my own issues of fixing my eyes on Jesus.
Speaker 1:And I think what happened was we agreed we wouldn't see each other, we wouldn't talk to each other, we wouldn't email. Well, email didn't exist, but we wouldn't communicate for six months and we didn't talk for six months. I gave her airspace to consider the issues of Jesus. I gave her airspace to consider the issues of Jesus. I prayed for her every day and six months later we met up again, the day before my 21st birthday and in that six months period she'd started going to Bathurst Baptist Church where she moved for work. She had come to a saving relationship in Jesus Christ, and so we did, after that, start going out again, and we went out for a few more years and then actually we broke up. And it was a few years after that that God, in his kindness, gave me Kathy, and we've now been married for almost 30 years. And we've now been married for almost 30 years.
Speaker 1:But I share this with you this morning because these words from God in Hebrews 12 have been revolutionary in my life and I hope and pray that they will be revolutionary in your life. Hope and pray that they will be revolutionary in your life. Let me finish by suggesting a training plan for the long distance race Plan. You might want to write this down plan some time in the next few days to carve out a few hours to get away by yourself. Carve out a few hours to get away by yourself, away from home, away from work, away from phone, away from iPad. Just you, a Bible, a piece of paper and a pen, and write down an Olympic training program. Read these words from Hebrews and consider Jesus, fix your eyes on Jesus. I want to run with you, jesus. I want to run the rest of my life focused on you.
Speaker 1:Work out what are the things that are perhaps spiritually neutral in themselves but practically in your life are getting in the way of you serving Jesus. They're not necessarily bad things, but they're getting in the way. What are those subtle things, those things I really like but ultimately are getting in the way of me serving Jesus? And write them down and work out. Then, next list what are the sins that hinder, the sins that ensnare, and write them down. I suggest categories, categories like addictions, habits, occasionals, one-offs. Write those sins down and then switch from the reactive to the proactive and work out what is it that you would add to your life If you were really serious about running with perseverance?
Speaker 1:What training regime would you need to adopt? What training with friends? What training on your own? Would you join me in speaking to the Heavenly Father in prayer? Would you join me in speaking to the Heavenly Father in prayer?
Speaker 1:Heavenly Father, we thank you that we are surrounded by such a large cloud of witnesses. We think of those greats of the faith of Hebrews 11. Of Hebrews 11. Help us to lay aside every thing that hinders and to lay aside the sin that entangles. Lord, help us to run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Lord, may we as individuals and we as a group of men, keep our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith. We thank you that he endured the cross, that he scorned its shame, that he went to his death for us to pay for our wrong, our sins, our failures, and we thank you that he is now seated at your right hand as Lord of the universe, and we pray that you would help us, in principle and in practice, to live to run with him as our Lord, and we pray this in the powerful name of Jesus, amen.