Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.”

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”

The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power.”



One of the implications of this passage is that when we choose to trust God in very difficult circumstances, we actually bring Glory to God, because by our decision to keep trusting God, we refute the challenge of Satan.



When I last spoke here, I talked about two phrases that have become very important to me in grappling with challenges in my faith. The first is “faith before understanding” – not as blind faith, but rather the idea that through persistent faith, I discover new understanding over time. The second was “obedience before understanding”, that my actions or “practices” matter. When I am faithful in right practices, this changes who I am, and as my character changes, I (sometimes) gain understanding that would not have come any other way. Today I want to focus briefly on this issue of our actions – our practices. Let me tell you a story of a practice that has affected me recently.



During the lead up to the second world war, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German church leader who refused to go along with the rise of the Nazis, and ended up running an “illegal” seminary to train church leaders. Bonhoeffer’s book “Life Together” describes many of his insights from this period – I have learnt a great deal from this little book.



During this time, he developed many practices to help future church leaders develop their Christian character, not just their Bible knowledge. While some of these are described in Life Together, others are scattered through his letters and the recorded memories of his students. David Smith from Calvin College is collecting all these practices, and one of them that David found was that if someone had something negative to say about another person at the seminary, they could only say it when that person was present to hear them say it.



If someone spoke negatively of another person without them being present (which still happened often, even despite good intentions), the speaker had to go and find the person who they had spoken negatively of, tell them what they had said, and apologise for saying it without them being present. This practice had a profound impact on life at the illegal seminary – it was no doubt very hard to live up to, but when done with love, it would have built a deep Christian community.



What I find interesting about this practice is how it changes the person speaking – they can still speak negatively about another, but only with the other person present to respond to what is said. It places a burden on the speaker to try to be fair and accurate in what they have to say; and while it does not block criticism (which can be healthy), it places a restraint on how it is done. It would also be a powerful antidote to gossip and slander.



Since I heard this story, I have been trying to live by a modified form of this practice – when I have a negative thing to say about another person, I try to imagine they are there in the room with me, and I try to speak as if they were there listening to me.



I have found this makes me try harder to understand another’s point of view and what they would want to say in their defence. I try to sympathetically imagine their circumstances that have led to my negative comment, and this tends to make me a bit more even-handed. I find myself saying things like “well, if so-and-so were here, I think they would want to say this in their defence, and they would have a point to some extent.”



Don’t get me wrong – I am no saint at this – it is all too easy to speak negatively about someone who has been annoying, or petty, or unkind, or unreasonable, or simply failed to live up to the calling we have. But if nothing else, I find this practice slows me down, and helps me to step out of my own skin for a moment to try to see the world from another perspective. It hopefully makes me a bit less judgemental.



I think that when we act on practices like these, and we get it right, we bring honour to God. And like in the story of Job, in a small way, we refute the challenge of Satan, that we only serve God because of His blessings to us; that we won’t serve God when it is difficult.



What other practices might we adopt in our lives? Some of the most obvious are nonetheless some of the most important: to pray regularly, to read God’s word regularly, to keep up meeting with other Christians regularly, to give financially to those in need, to love and help others regularly.



Other practices are about resisting temptations – the temptation to put ourselves first, to fail to live up to the life of purity that God calls us to, and the temptation to simply waste time – especially on the internet!



So how do we change our practices? Above all else, we must seek God to transform our hearts by His Holy Spirit, for it is the inward transformation that at first gives us strength to act rightly, and with time sees us changed in our inner being so that we naturally want to do what is right. While self-discipline is an important part of the process, we must start with reliance on God to change us from within by His Holy Spirit.



One part of the challenge is our capacity for self-deception – we deceive ourselves about the realities of our actions. To try to counter my self-deception, there is a phrase that I have been watching out for that alerts me to areas that need change in my life. The phrase is this: “It doesn’t matter if I just…”



“It doesn’t matter if I just skip prayer tonight…


“It doesn’t matter if I just look at one more website…


“It doesn’t matter if I just leave my Bible reading until tomorrow…


“It doesn’t matter if I just play one more level on this computer game…


“It doesn’t matter if I just have another beer…


“It doesn’t matter if I just check Facebook again…


“It doesn’t matter if I just have a bit more chocolate…



Now don’t get me wrong – the Christian life is not one of boring self-denial – we are called to know life to the full. All of the things I mentioned can have their right place – it is more about priorities and timing.



In fact, the phrase “It doesn’t matter if I just…” is itself an admission that something does matter – we wouldn’t bother saying this to ourselves if it genuinely didn’t matter. What we’re trying to say to ourselves is that it doesn’t matter very much, and it’s not like it is a big deal – doing this one thing won’t change us in any important way.



That seems true until you actually fight back against this part of you. You could say to yourself, “well, if it doesn’t matter much, then I might as well do the right thing instead – seeing as it doesn’t really matter.” I don’t know about you, but when I’ve actually tried to do this – to turn off the computer game, or actually put a beer back in the fridge that I just got out – it suddenly turns into quite a big deal.



Again, please don’t get me wrong on this – I’m no saint – I might win a proper battle like this with myself just a few times a week. But it’s not that long ago that I didn’t win any of these battles for months at a time, I just said “It doesn’t matter if I just…”



You may have heard it said that self-discipline is like a muscle, the more you exercise self-discipline, the more you strengthen that muscle, the more able you are to be self-disciplined in the future. To be honest, I have always disliked this analogy – a lot.



And I hate to say it now, but there is a deep truth in this analogy. But the truth came to me in a surprising way. It’s no so much the fighting against my desires that has been the revelation for me – it has been the moments of success. Because each time I do the right thing, then next time I hit a battle like this, I remember the time I did the right thing, and this encourages me a little bit to try to do the right thing again. For me, it is the positive experiences of self-discipline that help pull me forward when I hit the next hard moment.



I recently heard our faith in God and Jesus described as a “defiant hope” – a hope that continues defiantly even when we struggle. Job had a defiant hope – even in his troubles and uncertainty.



So building on our defiant hope, I’d suggest we also think about “defiant practices” – that is, practices where, even when it is hard, we will struggle on to do the right thing – to defy the parts of us that would tell us “It doesn’t matter if I just…”



And in a small way, when we choose the right path in our practices, we, like Job, refute the challenge of Satan that we only follow God because of his blessings. When our defiant hope gives birth to defiant practices, we bring glory to God.



James Dalziel

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