Culture vs. Christ -- True Joy and Freedom in Christ // In Rest (Part 2!)
Oct 27, 2023
Noah James Wiebe
Are you tired of the relentless chase for joy that the world promotes, only to find it fleeting and unfulfilling? I trust that this podcast episode will elevate your understanding of true joy, which is found in Christ, and guide you on how to experience it by overcoming the Lust of the Flesh and the Lust of the Eyes. We dissect the underlying issues associated with pride, love, and the comparison game that often robs us of our joy and freedom. We highlight the transformative power of the phrase, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, and its pivotal role in understanding true joy and freedom... AND SO MUCH MORE!
Are you tired of the relentless chase for joy that the world promotes, only to find it fleeting and unfulfilling? I trust that this podcast episode will elevate your understanding of true joy, which is found in Christ, and guide you on how to experience it by overcoming the Lust of the Flesh and the Lust of the Eyes. We dissect the underlying issues associated with pride, love, and the comparison game that often robs us of our joy and freedom. We highlight the transformative power of the phrase, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, and its pivotal role in understanding true joy and freedom... AND SO MUCH MORE!
Music Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/walz/library License code: PB8YPXRQUDGQNOYC
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the In Rest Podcast with Noah James Weeb. I'm your host, noah, and today we are going to be continuing our conversation about Christ's joy versus culture's joy. We're going to be getting right into the Lest the Flesh and the Lest of the Eyes and how we overcome those things in our pursuit of the joy of Christ through union with Him. So we left off mostly with the pride of life, lest of the Flesh, that kind of thing. But the focus, as we talked about, the focus of Jesus in our issues with, say, the Lest of the Flesh or the pride of life, is actually the underlying issue. For pride it's love, a lovelessness. There is a relationship to lovelessness in a person who's struggling with pride, in the same way that there's a relationship between humility and a life of love. In the same way, with the Lest of the Flesh, there's this deeper underlying issue that, besides just the struggle with the flesh that we have anyway because of our sinful nature, whatever, we also have this need within us, not just problems and issues and evil. Yes, we have evil tendencies or evil desires that wage war against our soul, and the biblical writers warn us about those things. But we also have needs that Jesus wants to meet and he's actually more interested in having those have a solution than he is in shaming you for making mistakes. So the Lest of the Flesh is something that we can overcome. God empowers us through the connections that we have in Christian community and through the power of his spirit to overcome sin and our life. So the more that we grow in him, the more that we get a stronger sense of our identity in Christ and our place in his community. Through our spiritual gifts and through connection, through worship, etc. We begin to overcome the Lest of the Flesh. And at the end of the day, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I just really want to pause there, pause at this point and just say, hey, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. That's in Romans 8, verse 1.
Speaker 1:
So if you're struggling with sin, you're having issues with sin. Listen, you are not alone and you're not abandoned and you're not condemned. John Eldridge says God does not have one single condemning thought about you. So if you're struggling with sin right now, you're struggling with doubts, you're struggling with issues in your relationship with God or with Lest of the Flesh in any way, in any sin. Don't be discouraged. Discouragement is not going to help you. Discouragement is the devil's way of numbing you so that he can rip out your heart. Don't let him. Let the encouragement that comes from being un-condemned as a follower of Jesus Christ give you hope and encouragement. Now, if you're not a follower of Jesus, then there's no hope for you unless you put your trust in Christ.
Speaker 1:
So if you've been listening to the Unrest podcast, you don't trust Jesus as your savior and as your Lord. God wants you to know Him. You have a brighter, beautiful future with Him. So put your trust in Him so that you can enter into that place of being un-condemned. But as it stands, all those who don't put their trust in Jesus have no hope. They have no future. They have no way of fighting in any significant way for any lasting freedom in the Lest of the Flesh and the Pride of Life. You don't have to become very spiritual people. Somewhere deep inside there's always going to be that emptiness and that struggle With this eternal longing for God's presence and God's love in your life. So if you want joy, fulfillment, follow Jesus, put your trust in Him today, and if you have any questions about that, please send me a DM at inrestinsta. Just type Jesus or I want to know more about Christ. I would love to have that conversation with you. Let's continue.
Speaker 1:
So the next thing is the lust of the eyes. Whoa, here's the thing. This is next level stuff that John gets into in 1st John. But the thing is with the lust of the eyes is that it's not the way that we think about the lust of the flesh. The lust of the flesh is usually the pursuit of pleasure, the pursuit of bodily gratification, of short-term satisfaction of our desires, especially as it pertains to our body's longings. The lust of the eyes is like Envy, it's coveting, it's looking at somebody else's life and playing the comparison game with them and Saying I want what you have and I'm not. I think that you have greener pastures over there and I'm gonna. I'm gonna run after that stuff.
Speaker 1:
That lust is this like very strong desire For something that is probably not good for you, right? And so nobody is happy with that. The, the, the word. I can't. I actually don't know who wrote this. I'm just not gonna. I'm not gonna lie yet, but I heard, I've heard, we're seeing it. I've heard the quote, but it says comparison is the thief of Joy. Do you want joy in your life? Well, you can't play the comparison game and have joy. You can't have your comparison cake and eat joy to. You, just can't have it. It's just not gonna work.
Speaker 1:
So if you want to experience Freedom and joy, if you want to fight against the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, the only way to find freedom in that Is to choose joy from Jesus perspective. So that's cultures, joy, cultures. Joy comes from the satisfaction of those things. It comes from the satisfaction of pride, the satisfaction of the lust of the flesh and the satisfaction of the lust of the eyes. The lust of the eyes is the pursuit of basically, you know, emotional or socio-social or socio-psychological or socio-economic Status, whatever, right, like it's something mental, right, like the lust of the lust of the eyes. Then the lust of the flesh is the pursuit of pleasure and the satisfaction of that pleasure. And then the pride of life is that like self-centered drive and Ambition and hustle within us and hubris when within us that wants to just accomplish things or Make sure that other CSS good or get the attention from others, and it's basically an obsession of self.
Speaker 1:
So if there's any, if there's satisfaction in any of those things, you are absolutely going to feel happy temporarily. Whoa plot twist, didn't see that coming to jail, yeah. But the truth is, I mean, you are gonna feel happy for a little while. Of course you will. Of course you will when you become the spiritual person. Other people See that you want other people to see you as if you would become the pastor or the man or the husband that you want other people to think you are. Of course you're gonna feel happy why wouldn't you? But it's not gonna last. If you, you know, watch that video or sleep with that girl or that guy, if you get into a relationship with someone who you know is just like you know, not your spouse, or If you become friends with that social group, you know you get that car, you get that, whatever. This is just basic stuff. I mean, like we're not gonna find Satisfaction there.
Speaker 1:
Augustine wrote you know our souls do not find resting at home, but maybe it was blaze Pascal, I don't know. Somebody important said Our soul does not find rest until it finds its rest in God. If you're gonna pursue short-term happiness, get ready to be weary and Burdened because you're not gonna feel they're gonna feel a lasting joy. There. However, there is hope, there's an alternative, there is a solution. The solution is Christ's joy.
Speaker 1:
Now I'm gonna spend less time talking about this, only because it's so simple. It's so beautifully simple to experience Christ's joy. Here's what it is, okay. So earlier I talked about satisfaction of Our desires, whatever, right, this is a little about fulfillment the fulfillment of your purpose, the fulfillment of God's oh God's law in your life. And when I say God's law, bear with me. Okay, it's. It's living a life of love and feeling the deep joy that comes from having God's spirit leading you and keeping you in step with God and his will, and it's a joy that comes from from, from obeying Jesus and getting to know him and being his friend. So that's fulfillment, all right. So if it's a pride of life on one side, you that satisfaction, on the other side it's the fulfillment of Our purpose. Okay. So, instead of pride, its purpose, okay so, the fulfillment of our purpose we receive Christ's joy.
Speaker 1:
Jesus said if anyone is going to come after me, they're going to deny themselves. They're going to pick up their cross daily and follow me. Okay. So where is our purpose in that statement? Well, all of us desire to be thriving, and the only way that we do that is actually by living out the example of Jesus. He says if anyone's going to be great among you, they're going to first become your slave or your servant. But what is Jesus saying? He's saying okay, if you want to, if you want to be a disciple of mine, an apprentice of mine, if you want to live a life of love the way that I do, if you Want to live out the purpose of a purpose in God and in the God, the Father, you're going to do that by living as I do, as a servant. So if pride is all making life all about me, fulfillment is all about forgetting me in exchange For living the life that Christ has for me means leaving behind the old and choosing the new, and doing that every day, doing that as often as Possible, every day, every moment of the day, choosing Jesus over us and what that does for us is not actually completely Forgo all of our needs.
Speaker 1:
It doesn't mean that we always deprive ourselves, we refuse to take care of ourselves, which, by the way, is actually more self-centered than you realize. It actually puts us in a position where we may not get the satisfaction of our pride, but we do feel, and maybe even if we don't feel it, we always receive a level of Joy in Christ through the letting go of ourselves and choosing not to be self-seeking and self-serving. So we receive a confidence instead of a pride or a prideful arrogance. We receive a confidence, a genuine confidence, living in between this, this overblown Arrogance, and this totally crazy insecurity, this, this downward spiral of insecurity. We live in the middle of Confidence, where we don't think too highly of ourselves and yet, at the same time, we understand that we are loved by God.
Speaker 1:
The fulfillment of our purpose is To know that we exist to love God and love others in a relationship of of love with him. If we live in love the way that Christ does, it means we live the life of love that he lived. Jesus said I've given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one, I and them and you and me. And then later he says so that they, so that the love that you have for me may be in them and I myself may be in them. And so fulfillment through Christ instead of satisfaction is fulfillment instead of self-centeredness, its service and the reception of love, real love, and a love in which we are loved to love others and, in fact, an actual, a genuine love for self is expressed more heartily in the fulfillment, self-forgetness self-forgettingness, if that's word and the humility and the service that's. That's that's seen in Christ.
Speaker 1:
Joy, Self-love the way that the culture talks to us about it is actually like, really, this ear, this gross, like self obsession, where is in Christ? It's a real understanding that we're living our best if we're living in Christ and we're living the way that he wants us to live, even if that means we don't always get what we want. So let's. So. Self-love is actually a gap a is defined by a gap a and then it's expressed by loving our neighbor Effectively and hopefully in the same way that we would care for our own needs. So I'm gonna get into that in a later episode. The bottom line is, instead of the pride of life, we have the service of love, the fulfillment of our purpose.
Speaker 1:
So the next thing is the book at a lesson, the flesh versus what it's, the denial of self, right. So self-denial and living in accordance with God's command, right, the gods, god's law, okay, law. Getting back to it now. Circling back is about living a life of love, even if that means we Intentionally choose not to satisfy the flesh, even if that means we choose to fast, even if it means we choose to stay up later to take care of a child or to take care of a friend, or to take care of Even a stranger, maybe even if that means going out of our way, going out of our way not to have our needs fulfilled for a time in order that someone else's maybe more, prioritize more. Maybe that means actually waiting to engage in sexual relationship until it can be done properly and healthily in the context of marriage, and maybe that means Leaving behind a struggle with internet pornography. Maybe that means getting into a, getting into a group where you feel so vulnerable and uncomfortable and yet you find victory because you're in connection with others. That is, that is, that is helpful and wholesome and good.
Speaker 1:
So Jesus talks about how the, the law, from his perspective, is really hung on these two commands Love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, all your strength, with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. If those are the two laws that Everything else hangs on from Jesus perspective, that's the law that you, that that is expressed in and through us when we put our faith in Christ, and Paul even calls it the law of Christ love your neighbor as yourself, right? So it's interesting because this, this, this obedience to God's law, is what Jesus talks about directly. And when I say God's law, he's talking about himself, too, right. He's talking because he is father, son, holy Spirit, he's God, right.
Speaker 1:
So, jesus, he's talking about his love and his love and his love and his love and his love and his love and his love and his love. And so, when we obey the law of love, we deny our flesh its constant gratification in Exchange for union and remaining in Jesus. Just like I said, jesus said I've given them the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are. When that I myself I'm. But in that, like when we obey love, we do what love tells us to do. When we do what Jesus calls us to do, we, we grow as his friends, we get to know him better and we remain in him, we begin to abide in his love.
Speaker 1:
The it's amazing, in a YouTube video that I did not too long ago, ignite your igniting your faith is predicated on this relationship of love and obeying what God has put into us. And if that, oh that, that law is Love one another, love your neighbor, love God and love them in this specific way, then you begin to ignite your faith. And so, instead of the death, the deadness, the deadening that comes from giving into our sensual desires, we have the in the living, in the, in liveening the end of the, the, the vibrant bringing State that comes when we obey the law of love. Instead, when we obey our lusts, we die. When we obey love, we live, and we live forever.
Speaker 1:
We live in a way that is just, that's just so well connected to loving and knowing God, the way that I talked about last episode with yada. Knowing this connection, this intimacy is built on love. And so Jesus says in John 15 remain in me, just as I remain in my father and obey my command, just as I obey my father's commands. And I'm telling you this. So you, this is that my joy may be in you and your joy may be Complete. So Christ's joy, but from his perspective, is about obeying him and finally, it's contentment.
Speaker 1:
So, instead of the less of the eyes, right. So that is faction of our social, socio economic Vision of the American dream, or of having that car or having that thing, having that greener pastor, jesus is like I'm. I become your shepherd. I'm the one who's taking care of you, instead of you constantly focusing and forcing life to go your way. You can let go of that burden. Let me be responsible for you, let me be the good shepherd that's taking care of you. You can hear my voice and let me lead you, let me guide you.
Speaker 1:
And so, instead of you know Satisfaction of the lust of the eyes, the satisfaction of you know earthly stuff, we have the fulfillment of our Need for contentment. We have the fulfillment and contentment that comes from knowing that Jesus is the one that's taking care of us. And Actually that's what Paul is talking about in Philippians, chapter 4, when he says I can do all these things through Christ, who strengthens me. He's talking about contentment. He says I have learned the secret of being content in every circumstance, whether in plenty or in want, bottom-line or hunger, thirst, whatever. I can experience Joy in Christ. I can do these things Through Christ, who strengthens me. So, through Christ, who strengthens us, instead of you know service to our worldly, you know visions for success. We live in a state of contentment, and that brings us joy, the joy of Christ, because Jesus didn't force anything to go his way. He didn't force things to happen the way he wanted them to go. He had submission. And so, instead of satisfaction, we have a submission and a fulfillment of our need for anything, our needs being met, because we know that our deepest need is already met in Christ. So hopefully that made sense. But the bottom line is worldly joy is found in self self-satisfaction, and Christ's joy is found in the fulfillment of God's law in my life, through a love relationship with Jesus and through union with Jesus.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, if you have any questions about this, by the way, feel free to shoot me a message, or even shoot me an email, if you want, at Noah, at inrestlivingcom, send me an email. I dare you to send me an email. Good one, don't just spam me. You can, I guess, if you want, but you know, don't. Anyway, I would love to hear from you if you have any questions about this, because I believe that this is so crucial to our understanding of the gospel is union with God. It's so amazing. I love it. Just this last weekend I preached a retreat in Nova Scotia and I talked about union all weekend long, and it was amazing. So I just love to talk about this. I love the gospel of union that comes to us through Christ.
Speaker 1:
The restoration of our relationship with God through Jesus is an amazing thing and it really does bring us joy. I'm not lying here. The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit who comes into us as we put our faith in Christ, god himself lives in us. Just like Jesus said, the love that the Father has for him is in us and he himself is in us. How, through the spirit of God, and the byproduct of the Holy Spirit being in our life is this love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. And against such things there is no law. Why? Because it's based on the law of love, yo.
Speaker 1:
And then he says what is he saying next? He says don't envy and bite each other up and hurt each other. Be content with what you have and love your neighbor as yourself. Anyway, all of those things to say. If you keep in step with the Holy Spirit who gives you love, joy, peace, et cetera, you will not gratify that it's ours or the flesh. So I am just giving you this encouragement to tell you Jesus loves you so, so much, and so do I, and that means because Jesus loves you, you can live the life that God's called you to live by tapping into that love, through the fulfillment of him, his love, and your purpose for your, god's purpose for your life, through trusting in Jesus. So if you are not a follower of Jesus and would like to become one, I invite you right now to say Jesus, yeah, seriously, repeat after me.
Speaker 1:
If you're listening to this in the car, you're watching this on YouTube, I don't care how awkward or weird it is, just do it. And maybe it's just under your breath, that's fine, or maybe in your heart, but pray this with me, jesus, I want union with you, I want life with you. Give me love, forgive me of my sin, forgive me of my life of hate and lovelessness. Give me joy, true joy, your joy, and help me to have your forgiveness and peace in my life forever. Give me eternal life and union with the Father. Amen, amen.
Speaker 1:
Hey, if you pray the prayer right now, you better tell me. I wanna know. So you send me an email noa at inrestlivingcom, or a dm at inrestinsta, or leave a comment or anything at all. I just wanna know. Please tell me and I'll be praying for you, but as we go, let me pray for you and we'll close this episode, this two-parter episode. Dear Jesus, I thank you so much for my listeners today. I pray that you bless him or her and fill them with your peace and help them to know just how much you love them, and help them to choose Christ's joy over the culture's joy and experience, not a satisfaction of self, but a living of fulfillment in Jesus, through faith in him and through union with him. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, hey, thank you for leaving a five-star review. Jesus loves you, so do I Live your best in Christ. Okay, bye.