Overwhelmed with Responsibility [49]

Host: TJ Freeman

Summary: In this episode of Back to Rurality, TJ Freeman explores the concept of Christian responsibility and how it can often be a source of spiritual guilt. He emphasizes that living out one's faith should be freeing, not crippling. TJ, a rural pastor, particularly addresses Christians in remote areas, discussing how their smaller communities mean they hold greater responsibility to demonstrate God's glory. The focus then shifts to the Fruit of the Spirit, urging listeners to see it as an integral part of their identity rather than a list of tasks. TJ zeroes in on love as a key aspect of the Fruit. He emphasizes that true transformation comes from meditating on Christ's love and aligning one's thoughts with biblical truths.

Connect with Us:

• Website: backtorurality.com
• Social Media: Facebook
• Email: tj@brainerdinstitute.com

Transcript

Responsibilities. We got a lot of them. Life is full of responsibility and that is part of what makes it so stressful. Right now you might be thinking of all the things you're responsible for that might keep you up at night, that might make you break down into a puddle of worry and anxiety. It might make you run to something to distract you or to numb the 'em, the reality that you don't wanna face.

Well, when you think about Christian responsibility, what are some of the things that come to mind? Because those things often are a great source of underlying spiritual guilt that can be really crippling in the life of a Christian. And so what are the responsibilities that matter most in this life and how can we carry out those responsibilities in a way that is not crippling, but freeing?

That's what we're gonna be talking about on this episode of Back To Rurality. Well, thank you for joining us for another episode of Back to Rurality. This is the podcast that helps Christians who live in rural places live for the glory of God, whether or not you've got a healthy church near you.

In fact, if you don't have a healthy church near you, you are the target I had in mind. People who live in places that the rest of the world calls the middle of nowhere, and you don't have easy access to a healthy church, that makes it really hard to be a healthy, faithful Christian. And so I just wanted to provide a resource that would be an encouragement to you and also, yeah, give you a little bit of nudge in the direction to say, what would it look like for you to see a healthy church in your community? 

This is on my heart because I'm a rural pastor. In fact, I didn't even introduce myself. My name's TJ Freeman. I am a rural pastor, which means I also live in a place the rest of the world thinks of as the middle of nowhere. And I know it can be really hard to know how to bring God glory out here. But here's something just to put in your little brain to think about for a while.

There are not as many people where you live as there are in, let's say New York City, or Washington DC, or Chicago, and there are certainly not as many Christians there Now, maybe per capita, there could be more, but fewer people automatically is gonna mean there's fewer Christians in the region, which means you bear greater responsibility for demonstrating God's glory.

There's that word again, responsibility. What are we supposed to do with that? Got all kinds of responsibilities. Life is just so full of them. Responsible for keeping up a home, responsible for making an income, responsible for caring for children, responsible for being involved in the community, responsible for the stuff you have to do at work.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And it can just about bury you sometimes. So then when you start thinking about Christian duties and those responsibilities, which let's be honest, sometimes are easy to put aside for things that feel more practical or urgent, but things like, oh, I don't know, reading your Bible, sitting down to pray.

Here's a tough one. You're ready. Evangelizing, sharing the gospel with lost people, loving your neighbor. I mean, the list of Christian responsibilities goes on and on and on. But I think there's a key ingredient that will help you be more fruitful, if you will, as you carry out your responsibilities. Any guesses on what I'm talking about?

 If you said Fruit of the Spirit, you are correct. That is a key ingredient that I think is missing in a lot of our lives, and that's what I wanna talk about on this episode. So the fruit of the spirit feels a lot like a responsibility, and it feels like a list that you get to pick from. By the way, this is just a little aside.

I'm using the term singularly, Fruit of the spirit. Oh. Just because that's how the Bible does it. So if you're in the habit of saying fruits of the spirit, you may wanna reframe that a little bit. There is the fruit of the spirit and it's like a, a big old basket that's all combined and interwoven and intermixed.

And it's not meant to be seen as things that you can select or things that you hope you have, you know, some degree of showing. So the whole fruit should be visible in your life. Not little portions of fruits, little sample platters. You're, you're not a spiritual charcuterie board. I don't even know if I said that word right.

And if you have the fruit of the spirit in your life, you're gonna see the complete package there that includes. Everything in the list. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. So one way of looking at at that is like, you can think of those as aftermarket add-ons.

So you, when you become a Christian, you're like a base model Christian, you know, right outta the factory. Base model. And then if you wanna get to be a souped up Christian, then you add some aftermarket stuff. Oh, why don't we throw a little love on there? Hey, you know, I really like that peace thing.

Let's add some peace to the mix. Ooh, can't quite afford gentleness. Ooh, patients. Mm, don't know about that. But we need to be careful. We don't think of these as like spiritual options or things that we hope we have some demonstration of, some of them, some of the time. The fruit of the spirit is the visible evidence of God in your life.

So if you became a Christian, the seal, or the guarantee, of your salvation is God's spirit. And to know whether or not you have the spirit is not subjective. It's not, I just feel I have the spirit. You know, I got this warm tingly feeling or this shiver in my liver and I just, I know that was the Holy Spirit.

It is not, I started going, blah, blah, blah, and all of a sudden I was speaking in tongues, and now that's how I know I have the spirit living inside of me. It is not, as someone has been saying to me recently, that you get these downloads or these revelations about things. And you just kind of subjectively feel like, oh, I, I think I have some extra insight on this matter.

And it's the spirit, especially when those things don't even line up with the things that are revealed very plainly in scripture. The most sure way to know that you have the spirit living inside of you is to start examining and actually, a Christian should do this. The scriptures tell us that we should examine ourselves to see whether we're in the faith.

Wouldn't you hate to just assume that because you prayed a prayer when you were little or because you have warm feelings toward Jesus or because you believe that there is a God and he must be the one in the Bible? Wouldn't you hate to one day face Christ and be told what it says in Matthew seven?

Depart from me. I never knew you. You need to examine yourself to see if your Christianity matches what the Bible says real Christianity is, and part of the evidence of that is the fruit of the spirit in you. So as you walk through that list, which is in Galatians five, if you want to go read it later, it, you should be asking, do I see myself growing in love?

Love for God, love for people around me. Love for the kind of people Jesus loved. Who did Jesus love? Well, he was even willing to die for his enemies, wasn't he? So do I see a love for all the people around me? In rural places, one of the, one of the spots in our lives we can see, we can ask questions about love right now in a really.

A revealing way is to ask how we feel about our political opponents. Are you able to look on others who disagree with you politically in love? Or are you like, man, ain't no way if you believe different than I do about politics, that you can even be a Christian because of X, Y, and Z, or can you look in those people with love?

And have some compassion and put the best spin on it and assume the best of their motives, these kinds of things. Are you able to bless those who persecute you as the Bible teaches us to do, which Jesus has done? Do you have a list in your mind of people that are worthy of your love and then people who are less worthy of your love?

Are there people in your life that you're just flat out ignoring? You're not even thinking about them, let alone thinking about how to love them. As a Christian, the love of Christ should be visible in us. Do you see yourself growing in that? I'm not saying are you perfect? I am saying though, however, that it should be like a stock chart that goes up into the right, over time, and you should be able to look back at your life and say, yeah, over time I can see how I'm growing in love for God.

And I'm growing in love for the people around me. There are more on the list, which we are going to cover in future episodes, but I wanted to wet your appetite with this concept to say, can you see evidence of the fruit of the spirit in you? Can you, can you show by the things that are happening outwardly, the things you're thinking, saying, doing all of that the way you're living your life, that there's been an inward transformation in you.

Now, I opened this up talking about responsibilities, and you might feel like, well, homie, you're just adding more and more responsibilities to my life. What am I supposed to do with this? And I'm saying, actually, let's reframe that a little bit and say, if you've been converted, this is the kind of transformation that's taking place in you.

It's not a responsibility you're meant to exercise. So you're not like, I need to make a list of 27 ways I can become more loving. You may have a list of things that you know you need to work on and that's great, but you can't put this in the list on your to to-do list. Like this is a responsibility I now have.

This is who you fundamentally, fundamentally, I almost sounded a little British there, didn't I? Fundamentally, I don't know if that's a good British accent, but, you know, you, you need to realize this is who Christ has transformed me to be. This is my new identity. And if you wanna become more loving, it's not your to-do list.

You need to go to, it's to the cross. You run to the cross and you look at, and you think about, and you meditate on how loving Jesus has been toward you, you realize the only reason you love God at all is because he first loved you. And you can see that love outwardly displayed through Christ's work for you on the cross.

So you think about the way that Jesus suffered and bled and died as the song says, think about the way that he was raised. Think about the word that he is, that he's also spoken, that has been preserved for us in scripture and the way God made sure that generation after generation, the gospel was passed down to you.

Think about the way he ordered the circumstances of your life to point you to himself this kind of love, which is so undeserved, is absolutely startling. And character changing. It's transforming at its core. And so you need to be able to think about what that love is like, and then ask yourself some questions.

Am I that? And start thinking about how can I be transformed by that? And you start replacing the bad thoughts that you have about people, the bad thoughts that you have about yourself, whatever it is, with biblical thoughts. Not some kind of hocus pocus, high self-esteem. You know, you're awesome and you can be whatever you wanna be.

Dream your dream. Do your thing. That baloney is not gonna help anybody, but think about true things about you that God has said in his word, like the fact that he knits you together in your mother's womb. He made you as a, as a masterpiece exactly like he wanted you and Ephesians two 10, you are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works that God prepare prepared beforehand that you should walk in them.

You're his workmanship. He's got important stuff for you to do. That's why you matter. Beyond the fact that you're made in God's image and that you're given his dominion. So replace the garbage thinking you might have about yourself, not with some kind of fluffy nonsense, but with biblical truth, and learn to believe that.

Then you're transformed by the renewal of your mind, Romans 12, one, and two, and then you start thinking about other people the same way. You know what? I'm not gonna think about my sibling as somebody who annoys me, or someone who's hurt me, or as an obstacle. I'm gonna think about them like Christ. That sibling is made in God's image.

That sibling was made by God for a purpose, exactly how God wanted them to be. That sibling struggles with the effects of sin just like I do. We're here to help each other. God put us in the same home. God put us in the same family. Do that with your coworkers, your spouse, no matter where they're at.

Believer, unbeliever, whatever. You start thinking about them biblically and asking the Lord to help you love them. This is not some duty that you go do. Some responsibility that you need to dig into. This is about who you are at your core. So that's just the first part of the fruit of the spirit. I didn't say the first fruit of the spirit.

It's the first part of the fruit of the s pirit, and I'm gonna just keep working through them here over the next couple episodes. So if this is helpful, come back for the next one. We will be talking about joy. Could you use a little of that in your life? Well, in this episode, we've looked at what it means to have a lot of responsibility in your life and to realize that your faith.

Is not a responsibility. It is meant to be at the core of who you are and that it is made visible, at least in part through the presence of God's spirit in your life, which you can look at and see because there is real fruit that is produced in you. And we talked about love, the importance of loving God.

I didn't mean to frame it this way, but I think I did in the episode the importance of loving yourself. And I do not mean. All that baloney that's out there. I mean, having a right view of yourself that aligns with scripture and thinking of yourself like God thinks of you, and then. Others actually loving others.

And the truth is, you need to love others better than yourself. And that is not, again, a responsibility. That's gotta be part of the core of who you are as a Christian. So read your Bible, meditate on it, pray. Get this stuff into your head so that you are transformed through the renewal of your mind. And I'll see you next time.

For now though, how about we get back to life? Back to Rurality. We'll see you.