{"id":13144,"date":"2017-02-21T01:00:07","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/?p=13144"},"modified":"2017-02-21T09:38:36","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T17:38:36","slug":"were-not-our-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/2017\/02\/21\/were-not-our-own\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Not Our Own"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Pastor James Lee<\/em><\/p>\n

Frank Sinatra once sang, \u201cI\u2019ll do it my way.<\/em>\u201d Miley Cyrus now sings, \u201cThis is our house, this is our rules\u2026 we run things, things don\u2019t run we, don\u2019t take nothing from nobody.<\/em>\u201d Is it any surprise that one of the first things that comes from the lips of our children is \u201cmine\u201d, and keeps coming from ours, just in a more sophisticated way? That\u2019s me. That\u2019s you. That\u2019s all of us. Let\u2019s be honest about it. I believe we would all agree that there is no shortage of things to repent of on a daily basis in light of His grace. At the very least, we are far more independently minded than we realize, especially as those who publicly profess Jesus as \u201cLord\u201d\u2026 with the added irony, that we succumb by default to some temporal servitude elsewhere. We\u2019re not nearly as \u201cfree\u201d as we boast, but when life hits our self-appointed demi-god status, we get upset with said freedom. Our remaining flesh insists on being captains of our own ship. That\u2019s the madness, insanity, idolatry, irrational nature of our shackled \u201cemancipation\u201d. The tune of our Western post-Enlightenment edict screams the maxim \u201cIt\u2019s My life! My choice! My body!\u201d Of course, we know it\u2019s nothing new. It\u2019s as old as sin, \u201cDid God actually say\u2026 you will not surely die!<\/em>\u201d Yet, that\u2019s the song of our own arrogance and self-sufficiency when it surfaces. Whether we\u2019re teenagers yelling at our parents because we think we know better, or we question God\u2019s perfect wisdom by worrying, or we think we deserve better in life, or the ways we approach church commitment, or how we disregard godly counsel for what we want, or assume that something is ultimately our accomplishment and possession \u2013 our degrees, our opportunities, our homes, our money, our stuff\u2026 Thus, we tend to enthrone our own timetables, expectations, desires, standards, not with a conviction of accountability to God, but with an attitude of autonomy from Him.<\/p>\n

But we\u2019ve never been our own. And what we have has never been our own. Thus, every time we think that, we believe the age old lie of our supposed self-autonomy. We couldn\u2019t create ourselves, let alone sustain ourselves. We live and breathe as the universe is held by His personal power without a sweat. We need to eat and sleep. God doesn\u2019t need. We struggle to consistently love others like we would want to. We can\u2019t figure out our problems that we ourselves created, only to have the audacity to blame God despite everything good He has given us and everything bad that we puny and fallible and limited and fallen sinners have made a muck of all on our own. It\u2019s a divine miracle and mercy that Louis Armstrong can sing \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful World.<\/em>\u201d It\u2019s not as bad as it could be, but we looked at the creation, and knowingly suppressed the truth about the Creator (Romans 1:18ff). In the midst of that blindness, our loving God intervened!<\/p>\n

If left to myself, I would have never sought after God \u2013 I did not find Him; He found me! He did not stumble across me by accident or hope or wait for me to ask for His mercy or wish that I as a spiritually dead person (Eph 2:1) with no desire for Him at all, then would somehow one day \u201creturn the favor.” Rather, He set His loving affections on the criminally undeserving and stopped us from continuing on the path we were on. Romans 5:8 declares, \u201cBut God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.<\/em>\u201d He has loved us, loves us, knows all our sorrows, cares for us as we experience the consequences of our own sin and of living in this fallen world. He commits to love us, and we\u2019ve done nothing to merit or earn it. He set His affections on us, formed us in our mother\u2019s wombs, preserved us, called us, saved us, gave us new life! Creationally, not just consequently by redemption, we\u2019re not our own. Our lives belong to the Lord!<\/p>\n

Here are at least 8 reasons why we\u2019re both joyfully and soberly not our own:<\/p>\n

1. We\u2019re Not Our Own\u2026 Because We Were Never Our Own<\/strong><\/p>\n