DESTINY

God has plans for a great destiny with you:

Praise the Lord. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands. His children will be mighty in the land; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man.

Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely, who conducts his affairs with justice. Surely he will never be shaken; a righteous man will be remembered forever. He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. His heart is secure, he will have no fear; in the end he will look in triumph on his foes. He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor, his righteousness endures forever; his horn will be lifted high in honor.

The wicked man will see and be vexed, he will gnash his teeth and waste away; the longings of the wicked will come to nothing.
Psalm 112

Look at those last two lines once more: The wicked man will see and be vexed, he will gnash his teeth and waste away; the longings of the wicked will come to nothing. I like to slip the name Satan into those lines wherever the word "wicked" shows up, and then proclaim it into the spirit realm when I pray over my family tree and my destiny with my Father and with my Lord Jesus:

Satan will see and be vexed, he will gnash his teeth and waste away; the longings of Satan will come to nothing.

As we step out to fulfill our destiny in Him, this is Satan's end. And it makes sense, then, that in this song Destiny, we sing part of the Lord's prayer. "Father hold us in, in your arms where we are safe and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us again, again." We need His guidance. We need His love. Intimacy with Him keeps us strong. "When I'm weak, you, you are strong. When I'm broken, your power helps me carry on." Absolutely.

But God needs something from us, too. He needs our obedience if we're to work out this destiny in Him. Obviously, we can do nothing outside of Him. But at the same time, He needs our obedience if He's to takes us to our highest heights, together with Him:

While His love for you is not affected by your disobedience, His dreams for you will always be connected to the level of your obedience....The Father wants to create something special with you-and help you find that place where your destiny intertwines completely with His. That's what means the world to Him, and that's where the true magic of the relationship lies. Today, you're His son. But someday, you'll both be of one heart, like brothers. He yearns to show you what the two of you can become together. That's His dream for you, and it's for the sake of His dreams that we must all remain urgent about obedience.

Naturally, he'll forgive you whenever you miss His mark and, yes, it's true that His love for you won't change if you stumble and fall. This is the age of grace, after all.

But that doesn't make this the age of racing around and letting your eyes and heart take you wherever you want to go. Stopping short of His standards will stop you short of His dreams for you and His grace can't do anything about that.
Tactics, Pages 131,132

In Destiny, we sing prayerfully, "Jesus, become my destiny." Even as we sing, Jesus is urging us to take a step towards the flip side of our request in return-He's asking us to join His destiny, too.

We sing, "Show me your truth and let it set me free, set me free." But even before the words are even out of our mouths, Jesus replies, "I will, but you need to walk in that truth."

You see, that lyric from Destiny is essentially scripture:

"If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
John 8:31-32

Jesus intends that His truth will set us free, but not necessarily through instantaneous deliverance. Note His words "If you hold to my teaching." It is often by walking in the truth and holding to the truth that our freedom comes. That means reading scripture. That means obeying scripture. What is the cost of freedom? True discipleship and sacrificial character development through the spiritual disciplines of Bible study, prayer and worship.

Take a look at the following story to see the relationship between deliverance and "holding to" Christ's teaching:

After I spoke in Long Island, New York, one night, Tim cornered me and said, "I'm thankful for your practical message tonight. My story really backs you up."

"I'd love to hear about," I said, intrigued.

"Though I have a wonderful wife who really takes care of me in bed, I've always had eyes for women and Internet porn, which led to a problem with masturbation for years. I cried and prayed long and hard for God to deliver me. One night as I slept, I believe He did."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. I had a dream where I was standing cold and lonely in a vast dark room, frightened and unable to get out. Suddenly, a spotlight showed straight down on me from above, and a pure, white raiment floated down and settled over me, covering me in His grace.

"The next day I noticed that the pull toward porn had vanished. The desire was simply gone. I praised God all day, and I continued praising him as the days and weeks passed without making any late-night visits to the computer."

"Wow, that's great!" I exclaimed. "What a story!"

"Oh, but wait. Unfortunately and sadly, that's not the end of my story. While God had delivered me miraculously, I never really dealt with my character or my looking-around habits. Last summer, I was still staring long at the babes walking by with their breasts half hanging out. Before long, one girl with particularly large breasts got me pretty excited, which tripped a memory of someone who looked exactly like her at some porn site on the Internet. The next time I got online, I thought, It wouldn't hurt to take a quick peek. I'm delivered, after all. It can't hurt me.

I knew what was coming.

"Well, that one look led to many more over the next few weeks, and today I'm as stuck as I ever was."

Let's look a little deeper at this....You can't walk away from [your eyes]. Their ability to perform foreplay, to get your mind thinking of specific sex acts, are inside you and never very far away. That's why this sin is in its own special category, and that's why Paul gives us a unique prescription for handling this sin-by fleeing. This tactic is critical. You either train your eyes to flee, or you just keep losing. That's just the way it is. This is probably why many men tell me, "When I got saved, every other vice simply fell away, but my sexual sin just hangs on and on."

And as we've seen from Tim's story, even if God does miraculously free you in a moment of time, if you don't learn to flee, you can fall right back into your addiction. Your eyes, like a broken sewage pipe, will continue to carry in sewage and leak it into your life.

That is why we not only need to fight on the spiritual front by praying as Tim did, but we also have to fight on the physical front with our will by fleeing, as Paul taught.

What does fleeing look like in practice? Simple: It is cutting off those sensual images that create that mental pop! Bouncing the eyes is one form of fleeing. Starving the mind of new images and taking lustful thoughts captive is another. Fleeing into a deeper relationship with God through regularly reading the Bible is a third.

One reader finally came around to this truth, saying, "I can finally see the practical truth you expressed in Every Man's Battle. For some reason, my pride would not allow me to see the common sense in there until now. It's just like the Israelites were supposed to do to the Amalekites. When God told Saul to destroy them all, he didn't. He kept some of them alive. Later, the ones he didn't destroy came back and attacked Israel again. And I have come to the point in my life where I realize that I must hack to death all avenues of the flesh."

Jesus declared that the truth would set us free, and we can all live freely if we'd only walk in it. Sure, I may not be free to stare at or watch anything I'd like, but I've never been freer in my life, freer to relate openly to women, freer to pray to my Lord, and freer to love my wife and to look deeply into her eyes without the guilt of my secret sin.
Every Man's Challenge, Pages 37-38

Tim had at once been instantly delivered from his sexual sin by God. But because he didn't "hold to" Christ's teachings afterwards by training himself to flee from sexual immorality, his underdeveloped character did him in:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
1 Corinthians 6:18-20

Where does that leave us as men? In Destiny, we sing prayerfully, "And I'm changed by your presence and I'm found in your love." This is a great prayer, and we must pray it. There is no question that there have been many times in my life that Christ's very revelatory presence has changed me instantly. His lovingly whispered words instantly transformed my understanding, and I've seen Him do it in Brenda and my children, too. Like the song says, "One word from you, I'm changed, ever since I met you my life's been rearranged. You take the old and you make it new, I owe everything to you, to you."

But just as often, it has been the "holding to" his teaching that has transformed us and taught us our character. And sometimes, just as it was here in Tim's story, Christ gave me revelation to help me walk straight for awhile, only to see me fall back into my old ways of thinking because of my sloppy mental discipline or follow-up character development.

At those times, I've been left masquerading as a servant of righteousness, rather than being one. What about you? Are you actually a slave to righteousness, wholeheartedly obeying Christ's teaching? Or are you just wearing a good Christian costume with a whitewashed smile on your mask?

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Romans 6:17-18

When it comes to your Christian life, are you going to be one, or just seem like one? Are you going to run from the water, even though you drank some?

Choose your destiny! Sing this with all your heart: "I put my trust in You, You my king, You my king. Jesus won't you, Jesus become my destiny? I want to run into, into your beauty. I want to fly with you, into your glory." He wants to restore you. He wants to give you His beauty:

The Father's not going anywhere. He's here to restore you, and He simply wants to make you a man after His own heart. He made one of David:

So [Jesse] sent and had [David] brought in. He was ruddy, with fine appearance and handsome features.

Then the Lord said, "Rise and anoint him; he is the one."

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power.
Samuel 16:12-13

God wants to make you spiritually handsome and ruddy on the inside. He wants you to be a mighty man fully committed to making Jesus king in your heart. He wants to anoint you in the presence of your brothers, and He wants to come upon you in power. He's not here to raise up nice-looking, obedient little boys with tucked-in shirts and straight parts in their hair. He wants to make you into a mighty man of valor who hates the Enemy's work as much as He does.
Tactics, page 26

Hold tight to the Lord's teaching! He has so much in store for you!

This is what your obedience will mean to your Father in Heaven. Like [my son] Jasen's obedience in my family, your obedience is your Heavenly Father's hope for seeing His dreams accomplished in His family and in the lost hearts around you. Sure, there is a cost to stepping up to the plate. But if you stay in the box and don't flinch when the high hard ones come your way, blessing after blessing will pour out of His marveling heart and into your life. He won't be able to help Himself, because of His overwhelming delight in you. You will have become one in heart, brothers in the same family:

Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.
Hebrews 2:11

God wants his boy-you-to be just like Him. No matter what the suffering, no matter what cost, this is what your Father calls you to deliver to the family of God. He wants His family to be normal and flourishing. He knows that as His sons pick up on His dream and vision for His family chain and kingdom, the godly pattern that results will draw all men to Christ.
Tactics, page 140-141