by Elder Mike Chon

There are many ways to decrease pride and cultivate humility in our lives. I want to highlight a few that may help in cultivating humility. Of course this is a lifelong pursuit since pride is something that we will have to continue to battle until God calls us home.

1) Love one another (Matt. 22:39; Phil. 2:3-4)

Loving someone else first means that you love yourself at least second. Find ways to encourage others by using your words, writing a letter, praying for them, and/or meeting their needs. If you know of a particular need someone has, use your time and resources to meet those needs. When we begin looking for others to love and take care of, the less time and energy we will use to think about our own wants and desires that we think we deserve. We will usually find ourselves in situations that are not convenient to our schedules or lives when we put others before ourselves, love is not about convenience. What better way to cultivate humility than to trust and love our Sovereign God and at the same time loving others.

2) Confess sins to each other (James 5:16)

Our sins bring us back to the cross of Jesus Christ. It is a great reminder of our frailty and propensity to fail. To be able to confess those failures to each other requires us to humble ourselves and be willing to admit to someone else our weaknesses. One of the signs of a prideful heart is the unwillingness to admit to any wrongdoing. Confessing our sins to each other will help our hearts from becoming prideful as well not allowing us to become familiar with sin.

3) Evangelize

Evangelism is helpful in cultivating humility by keeping us totally and completely dependent upon our Lord. When we share the gospel with someone we realize that it is the work of God that helps the person understand and accept what they hear. We are also dependent upon our Lord in what we say and helping us answer questions that those we are evangelizing to may have. If you want to cultivate humility by being completely dependent on our Lord, go evangelize.

4) Follow Christ, not others (Luke 9:23)

Following Christ means death to ourselves. We are called to deny ourselves and take up the cross and follow Him. When we start to follow man or someone in particular, we lower that calling to a person. We begin to compare ourselves to others and our lives begin to look better than they really are. Following Christ humbles us because it causes us to deny our desires, our dreams, our goals and replaces them with Christ’s.

The pursuit of humility is not something that comes easily, but hopefully as believers we see the reason why it is so important that we never grow weary in pursuing humility in our lives. May we continue to decrease so that Christ would increase in our lives.

by Elder Peter Lim

So last month, I wrote about the fact that trying to define the line that separates “sin” from “not-sin” is not simply a matter of following a list of dos and don’ts from the Bible. It’s always a matter of the heart. I also wrote in Introduction to Gray Issues that I was somewhat frustrated by the lack of clarity in my search of Scripture for answers to my questions regarding gray issues. I wanted to expand upon that thought a little more today.

It’s not really a lack of clarity in Scripture that frustrates me but rather a tendency in my own heart to simply desire to know what decisions to make practically. I’d rather not have to wrestle through every situation and examine my heart’s motives. Instead, it’s easier to just make a blanket policy of life to say “if it’s not sin, then I can do whatever I want” without ever considering why I would even want to do those things in the first place. The frustration comes when the Bible doesn’t make it very clear what the blood alcohol level has to be before being considered drunk, or whether PG-13 is okay but R is questionable and NC-17 is definitely not okay, or sharing a dorm floor with coeds is okay but sharing a tent is not okay, or gambling away $100 is okay for entertainment value but $500 is financial  irresponsibility. But the Bible does make certain things perfectly clear: We still have fleshly tendencies although we are not of this world. (Rom. 7:14, Phil. 3:20) So did God place these nebulous commands such as 1 Peter 2:12 (“Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.”) to frustrate us? What exactly does it mean to keep our behavior “excellent?” Would it be sin if we didn’t keep our behavior excellent? Yes, right? Then wouldn’t it be important to define what that word means so that we would not cross it? This is what I mean when I say that it’s somewhat frustrating that things are not so clearly defined.

But hold on a minute. This is exactly what God intended for us to struggle with. You see, dear Christian, that God in His infinite wisdom gave these sorts of instructions to us in order to help us recognize our own sinful tendencies. He did this on purpose so that we would realize that our hearts are full of sin and then go humbly pleading on our knees to Him who paid the price for us. The struggle itself is a good thing. Remember that it’s always a matter of the heart. Fine, so we realize that. So now what? Can I still do these questionable things? Listen to yourself. If it’s questionable, why would you want to do them? Why wouldn’t you want to stay far away from the edge of the cliff? The answer to the question is, no we must not do questionable things. We are called to be above reproach. That means that we are going to have to want to voluntarily give up activities that are not necessarily sinful because the glory of God is at stake, and being above reproach becomes more important to us than fulfilling our fleshly desires.

Truth is, we’re always going to be in a battle against ourselves. Our fleshly selves are going to want to sin. Our spiritually renewed minds are going to want to fight against sin. There is hope here. As we grow and mature, we will sin less. But we will also grow in our understanding of how hideous sin is to God. So we will sin less and feel worse about it. This is the kind of godly remorse which causes us to remain humble even while we grow closer to Christ. Remember that the closer you get to the light, previously unseen blemishes are revealed. That’s how we know we are growing. Therefore, struggling (against sin) is a good thing!

by Elder Mike Chon

In my last article we examined the dangers of pride in our life. I think it’s safe to say that pride is one sin that all of us struggle with in one form or another. And since pride is so powerful and so prevalent, God has not left us to ourselves to try to battle and defeat pride. God has given us Christ and the gospel as well as His providence of trials and suffering to continue to humble us and defeat pride in our lives.

The Gospel

If you are a believer, at one point in your life you heard the gospel and you realized that you couldn’t save yourself or earn your way to heaven. No matter how good we thought we were, we all needed to face the fact that each of us were sinners to the core and that we offended a holy and righteous God. Christ calls us to complete self-denial if we are to follow Him (Luke 9:23). In our salvation our pride, our self-worth, and our self-love were crushed by the Spirit of God. In a word, we were all humbled. We were humbled not by guilt, not by some virtuous act, not by comparing ourselves with someone else, but by the Spirit of God. Our self-love turned to self-hate, our self-worth turned to self-less, and our self-centeredness turned to self-death. The Holy Spirit overpowers pride in our life and convicted us of our sin and worthlessness before God.

But why do we still struggle with pride? We still have pride in our fallen flesh, even though it has been wounded it continues to live in us. That is what our sanctification is all about. John MacArthur said, “Sanctification is the triumph of humility over remaining pride.” So you want to know if you are growing and maturing in Christ? You will see the triumph of humility over pride in your life.

One way the Holy Spirit continues to subdue pride in our life is to remind us of the gospel. He reminds us of the contrite spirit that we had when our hearts and eyes were opened to our sinfulness and hopelessness. He reminds us of the atonement of Christ on the cross, who became sin for us so that we can be made righteous (2 Cor. 5:21). He reminds us that the only good that we do is because of God working in us (Phil 2:13). He reminds us that our salvation is completely and totally a work of God (Eph. 2:8). In these ways God humbles us and continues to subdue pride in our life.

Trials and Suffering

Not only does God’s truth help us to know the dangers of pride and gives us the ultimate example of humility in Christ, the bible also teaches us that humility is not learned only by the knowledge of the truth. No matter how much we may read on humility, it will ultimately never test us to live out that truth. So through God’s providence He will graciously bring us trials and suffering into our lives so that we will learn humility through experience. In James 1:2-4, we are instructed to respond with joy in our trials because it will perfect us; in 1 Peter 5:10, Peter himself learned that through suffering Christ would restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish him. The apostle Paul learned this as well in 2 Corinthians 12, when he prayed three times to God that a thorn in his flesh would be removed. And after pleading to God to remove it, Paul understood and confessed the reason why God would not remove it was so that he would not become prideful. The death of pride does not come easy. Humility is cultivated and learned by understanding the truth of God working in your life along with God’s providence that brings trials, suffering, and defeat which destroys our pride.

If we understand the importance of humility and the dangers of pride, we should embrace the truth and providence of God in our lives. If you have ever met someone who is humble, you know that they understand the depth of their sin in light of the cross, and have experienced trials, sufferings, disappointments, distress, and defeats in their life without ever losing hope in our sovereign and loving God.

In the next article we will examine some practical steps we can take to help in our battle with pride.

by Elder Peter Lim

Last month we introduced the discussion regarding “gray issues.” Some may wonder why the topic of gray issues even needs to be discussed.

• Isn’t it just an individual’s choice where to draw a line and stick to it?
• Isn’t it called “gray” because scripture is not so clearly black and white?

It would be a mistake to think that this issue is as simple as each individual so arbitrarily defining the line between right and wrong, not-sin and sin, light and darkness. To think so would indicate a clear lack of understanding of the link between the actions that we take and the heart behind those actions.

• So why isn’t God’s word written more clearly for us?
• Why doesn’t it draw more well-defined lines between sin and not sin?
• If sin is so serious, wouldn’t God want us not to venture across the line?

I believe God chose to write it this way because our sinful tendency is to go as close to the line as we can without sinning without regard to the attitude of the heart. If God had written the bible as a list of dos and don’ts, people would Pharisaically obey the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law. Just like the Pharisees, we would think that we are righteous if we stop short of crossing the line into sin. Then we would forget that the law was given to people to help us see that we are sinners in need of God’s grace. That’s what Romans 7:7 is all about:

What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

What this means for us is that sin happens before we cross the “sin border.” That is, we shouldn’t consider ourselves to be safely in the “white” category before we cross the line into “black” territory. This is what Jesus meant when He said that one who hates his brother is guilty of murder. Murder is the sin border but sin happens before you get there when you harbor hate and bitterness in your heart. So before we cross over, we need to examine our hearts and interrogate our minds to discover the motivation why we would want to stay in the gray area. This examination doesn’t stop at our own hearts. We need to consider at least two other issues: not causing the weaker brother to stumble, and being above reproach to avoid even the appearance of evil. Hopefully we will examine each of these issues in more detail in future articles. An example here will help to illustrate the concept. I shared this illustration recently at church:

The king wanted to hire a driver for his daughter, the princess. He wanted to hire the very best driver since his castle was located high on a hill and the road leading up to it was a wall on one side and a cliff on the other. Three coachmen appeared before him for their interview. The first driver bragged that he can get within 12” of the cliff and not fall over. The second driver boasted that he can get within 6” without falling over. The third driver humbly said that he’s not sure how close he can get to the edge but one thing that he does know is that he will stay as far as he can away from it so that he doesn’t even get close to it. Of course the king hired the third driver. Now let’s add another factor: It’s always foggy and you can’t tell exactly where the cliff edge is. Wouldn’t you want to stay as far from the edge as you can then? Sin is often like that. You can’t see it coming until it’s too late. Therefore, why wouldn’t you want to stay away from it?

To summarize, if you say “If it’s not sin, it’s okay to do,” you are not being wise. If you say “If there’s no verse saying we can’t do this,” you are being a Pharisee. Let us be careful to make decisions that would reflect a desire to stay far away from sin and glorify Christ.

by Elder Mike Chon

From the fall in the garden to today, there is one characteristic that can sum up the condition of the fallen world: pride.

From the world’s perspective, pride is looked upon as virtuous. The world teaches us that you must put yourself first before anyone else. It worships self-exaltation, self-esteem, self-satisfaction, and self-centeredness. The world practices the religion of self-worship. Of course we shouldn’t be surprised by this since the world continues to embrace what Scripture calls sin and redefine it as virtuous. They say what is good is bad, and what is bad is good.

Before we begin to point our finger at the world in disgust however, we need to be aware that we are not immune to the effects of pride in our heart. What makes pride so dangerous is that is blinds us to the reality of how sinful we really are. Pride leads us to rebel against the one true and holy God. Pride seeks to dethrone God as the absolute sovereign Lord of this world. It is no wonder that men left to their pride and self-love will never seek after God and follow Him. There are many dangers to pride, but I’d like to focus on three that can arise in a heart that allows pride to rule.

1. Spiritual Blindness. While Scripture calls us to examine ourselves (2 Cor. 13:5), we can become blind to our own sin. This happens often when we are in a conflict or a disagreement. We become so focused on what the other person has done or said that we become blind to our own sinful heart and attitudes. Our response to conflict reveals to what extent pride has gripped our hearts. When someone has wronged us, we typically don’t respond with grief over the sin, but instead we respond sinfully because we can’t believe this person would do or say this to ME! Even though we respond with anger, hatred, gossip, and/or slander in retaliation, we are often so blinded by our own pride that we refuse to recognize our sin in the conflict. And at times we are so offended by another person that we refuse to extend forgiveness; how blind do you have to be to not see the cross of Christ in your life?
2. Separation From Others. Pride also causes us to put people into categories or ranks. We begin to look at others and rank them in terms of their “spirituality” or “gifts.” We see ourselves as better than others and try to work our way into the company of those that we perceive to be better than us. We begin to put imaginary titles or initials after our own name, believing that somehow we are greater than someone else. And as we saw in #1, this can happen without knowing it since pride can blind us to our own sin. This manifestation of pride can be especially deadly for those of us that are older or have been believers for a longer time. We have to remember that all of us are equal in the kingdom of God. No one has greater status or a greater salvation than the person next to us. We have all been saved by grace and we are all being sanctified by grace.
3. Self-Absorption. Pride causes our heart to turn away from serving others to serving ourselves. We begin to even do things that externally appear to be for others but ultimately are for self-exaltation and recognition. This is what I like to call the “I’ll give a gift so that I can receive one later” syndrome. We outwardly follow what God has called us to do, but it is for the glory of self and not the glory God. We begin to subvert what God meant for His own glory, and desire and seek it for our glory.

However, the single greatest reason that pride is so dangerous is that it is not something that is easily recognized or admitted to by the believer. Who wants to admit that they are prideful? Our minds and hearts have believed the lies of this world and have not taken seriously the danger of pride in our lives.

In the next article I will examine how we can battle pride in our lives.

by Elder Peter Lim

Perhaps no subject stirs up more controversy within the church than the topic of “gray issues” or Christian liberties. I’m certain that I don’t know all there is to know about this topic. However, I must continue with my life and so must you so let’s deal with this. In my search through scripture, I’ve been somewhat frustrated by the lack of clarity and definitive answers to my questions. I’m sure that the fault of this lack of clarity is mine alone. Certainly the bible has been written by God the way He meant to communicate to people and He’s perfect and therefore His word is perfect. Issues are only gray in our own mind. God is able to search our hearts and know its condition accurately. We are not. Therefore, our task will be to try to look at ourselves from His perspective.

The incident that prompted me to write this article is that some male and female college students were said to have shared a hotel room during a trip during Spring break in order to save some money. Should we as a church ignore this? Should we speak out against or in support of it? Is this issue even worth mentioning at all? I believe that the day-to-day dilemma of most Christians is related to this issue. We are constantly making decisions that deal with wrestling through gray issues. For example, when was the last time you struggled with whether you should commit murder or not? Hopefully never. But when was the last time you looked at someone with hatred? (1 John 3:15) Now was it really hatred of a brother (which would be sin) or was it merely being upset at him? (which would be gray whether it was sin or not) How upset does one have to be before it’s considered hate? The process of thinking through gray issues is something that I believe most people have not really thought through biblically.

As an elder in the church, I have the responsibility of making sure that our church supports biblical principles. If our people are advocating a lifestyle that is inconsistent with the bible, I have the responsibility of steering people toward the bible and propagating a biblical lifestyle through our church environment. This means that at some point in time, people in our church who disagree with the elders on the attitudes propagated through our church culture have to make the difficult choice whether to submit to our views (without necessarily agreeing with them wholeheartedly) or leaving a church that they love otherwise in their stand for their opinions on gray issues. In the coming months, I hope to shed some biblical light as it applies to these everyday situations.

by Elder Mike Chon

I couldn’t imagine almost twelve years ago when I began attending the home bible studies that our church would be what it is today. God has definitely been faithful to shape and mold our church through all the blessings and trials that we have experienced over the years. It has been a blessing to witness God’s faithfulness in using trials to help our church grow to be more like Christ (James 1:2-4) and how many of you have endured through trials to God’s glory. As I reflected on our church, I cannot help but to give thanks to God for you all (1 Thess. 1:2-3).

There is no other place I would rather be than at Lighthouse Bible Church (San Diego or San Jose).Today so many people move around so many times because of so many reasons that it is difficult to find people and families that stay in one area for more than five years. Likewise some people may think that it doesn’t matter if you change churches multiple times as long as the sermons are good and the people are nice. The problem of this type of thinking is that the church never becomes anything more than a place where you seek to get your needs met and to grow individually (which is not a biblical concept). In addition to that, the church never becomes a family where we relate to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s why I am so thankful for Lighthouse Bible Church which has become a true family over the years. We have rejoiced with those that have been blessed and grieved with those that suffer (1 Cor. 12:26). I have never experienced a church that truly cares for their brothers and sisters as our church does. We have had church members go through very difficult times and have various needs, and immediately you have come to give support and meet the needs of your fellow brother or sister. Even in my own life and the life of my family, many of you have come to help when we needed assistance and support. When you say that you will help in any way that we need, I know and trust that those words are not mere words. Our church is what it is today because of the people that have been so faithful and committed to the Word of God and to Christ’s bride, the church. I am so thankful for you and my heart rejoices and is overwhelmed by your example of love and care for one another.

I want to say thank you especially to those that have taken steps to gently confront the leaders because of your love for the church. We are definitely not above being kept accountable. Thank you for your desire to see God glorified in our lives and the church and your willingness to approach us with your concerns regarding issues in our lives as well as the ministry. I am thankful that you came with humble and gentle hearts to correct us as well as support us in the process. Those that have been faithful to carry out the peacemaker pledge with us as well as others in the church have brought great joy to our hearts since it reveals to us that your desire is first and foremost for God’s glory. It is truly a joy to serve along you as a fellow slave of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Even in a church full of sinners I can honestly say that there is no other place I would rather be than at Lighthouse Bible Church. I want to thank you for being a church that loves Christ and His church. Let us continue to “press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). Thank you!

by Elder Mike Chon

(Editor’s note: Given the recent disaster in Japan, the Weekly Links has been delayed to bring you this article instead.)

The recent catastrophic disaster in Japan is a solemn reminder of the fallen world we live in and God’s impending judgment on this world. It appears that it is going to get worse before it gets better in Japan. A “natural” disaster is not something uncommon, but when these things occur many are left with questions and too many have trivial answers.

We need to be careful before we presume on God and assume that somehow God has given us the knowledge of why this happened, when it happened, and to whom it happened. God warns against assuming that people suffer more in this world because of some sin they committed (Luke 13:1-5). Some of us are too quick to give the “God is sovereign” answer and walk away from the horrific reality of the magnitude of the disaster that just occurred. Some of us may just think that it was “bad luck” and that “nature” just didn’t like them. Many of us in America are too busy with our own lives to even take time to consider how we should respond to such a disaster on the other side of the world.

One thing is certain, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people have had their lives completely changed from this earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. During times when the world cannot give comfort, when the world cannot give an answer, and when the world has no solutions, people begin to search for something. When we realize that our lives can be completely turned upside down in a matter of moments, when all our hopes and dreams can be taken away, suddenly the people begin to search for something. Sooner or later people begin to realize that their understanding of the world is deficient. They cannot understand how and why something like this can happen. They need answers from the only One that can give answers.

This is the time to pray for the people of Japan. This is not the time to debate why this happened. We need to pray for those families that have been devastated and for their daily needs. We need to pray for people to go and preach the gospel to the people of Japan. We need to pray for the gospel to reach the people of Japan to show them the glory of God in the face of Christ. We need to pray for people to turn from their sin and turn their lives to the one and only Lord of this world. Apart from the financial support that they will need to recover, the people of Japan desperately need our prayers for God to display His glory. Let us kneel before our Lord and pray for the people of Japan.

by Elder Peter Lim

Would you like to know what your reputation is? Are you sure? Do you even care? For some of us, this is one of those questions that we want to know the answer to only if the answer is favorable. But some of us actually don’t care what other people think of us. This can be good and/or bad. On one hand, we should do what pleases God despite what people may think of us. On the other hand, we should care about what others think of us as it may have an impact on how we reflect God’s influence in our lives. After all, don’t we want people to think highly of Christians so that they would want to be Christians too? Problems potentially arise when those two values come into conflict with each other.  But no matter what your initial response to my question is, what are the biblical principles that apply? Let’s look at some key passages.

1 Timothy 3:7
And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

In this qualification for Elders, Paul emphasizes that a man who seeks to be a leader of the church needs to have a good reputation even among non-Christians. Why is the opinion of an unsaved person so important? Because a leader needs to be a man of proven character who is living an exemplary life as a Christian in the midst of non-Christians among whom we appear as lights in the world. Acts 6:3 also points out that we are to select men of good reputation to put in charge of tasks such as serving tables. Of course non-Christians won’t always agree with us what a good reputation looks like. They may accuse Christians of having a bad reputation because we don’t support their sinful causes or beliefs. When we hear from non-Christians that a Christian has a bad reputation, we need to find out more details why they think of someone that way. It very well may be the case that what they consider to be a bad reputation is actually good reputation from a Christian perspective. However, as Proverbs 3:4 says, even a non-Christian raised in a Judeo-Christian-influenced country such as the U.S. can generally exercise good judgment in identifying someone with a good reputation.

Proverbs 22:1
A goodname is to be more desired than great wealth, Favor is better than silver and gold.

Having a “good name” or good reputation is very valuable. Wealth has only a limited value which is temporary at best. Having a good reputation is associated with a life which is in tune with God. It’s valuable not because our good reputation benefits ourselves in some way, but because it reflects on God who lives in us and empowers us to do anything good in the first place. It gives us opportunities to share Christ with those who are attracted to our lives of good repute.

A good reputation is difficult to gain because it takes time and consistency in one’s behavior. However, a bad reputation is easy to earn because all it takes is just a single incident to develop. As Christians who understand that our righteousness is not our own but imputed to us, and that we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do good works, we have nothing to boast of other than Christ’s work in our lives. Scripture is clear that our reputation matters to God and men. We must care about what others think of us. The irony is that we are not to do good works in order to be seen by men, but we are to do them knowing that the world is watching us. The difference is subtle but important. It has to do with our motives which reflects a heart that seeks to worship God instead of man. Therefore, let us continue to do the good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:10)

by Stephen Rodgers

This is the hub post for Elder Mike Chon’s five-part series on making Biblical decisions.  From this page, you can easily find and refer to all posts in this series.

All posts in the Decisions series:

• Part 1 – Introduction, and What Biblical Decision Making is NOT
• Part 2 – The Basis for Biblical Decision Making
• Part 3 – Misinterpreting Providence (Doors, Fleeces, and Feelings)
• Part 4 – Sources of Wisdom
• Part 5 – The Sovereignty of God