When the Christian Life Seems Impossible

How do you keep following Jesus when life often feels so painful and discouraging? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, along with my good friend Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. You can call us right now with your question at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on our Facebook or Instagram or Twitter accounts, and you can email us with your question at questionsatcorechristianity.com. Well, here we are the day after the election, and we know there is a lot of anxiety and tension in our country right now, so we thought it might be a good idea to start our program off with prayer. So, Adriel, would you pray for us? I actually wanted to first read Psalm 93 because I think it can be such a comfort to us right now as believers in Jesus Christ. It says this, Let's pray.

And while the floods lift up their voice, you are mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea. Oh, Lord, you are mighty. Help us, God, I pray, in these days to continue to fix our eyes upon you, upon your kingdom. And we pray, Lord, that your gospel would continue to advance powerfully throughout our country and throughout the world. Would you, Lord, help us? To grow in love for you, in love for our neighbors, and in the hope that you have given to us through your word. Be with us, Lord, we pray, that you would be also with this nation. Grant us your grace and your mercy, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you for that, Adriel. This is Core Christianity, and our first question comes from Lance, who posted on our Facebook page. He says, Hey, Lance, I love starting off with this question because it puts us right into this wonderful passage of Scripture in 2 Corinthians 5, beginning in verse 17. I'm going to read verses 17 through 21. It says in verse 17 that God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. He forsake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Now, reconciliation is this idea of making peace between two parties. And there are a few things, Lance, I think that you need to note from this text of Scripture. There needed to be a mediation between God and humanity.

Why? Because God was the offended party in our sin. We had sinned against the Lord, and so we need to be reconciled.

And this is just against the idea that many people today have in our society. It says everything is fine between God and humanity. God loves you just the way that you are. Well, in a sense that's true, but in another sense, no, there is enmity, tension between God and humanity because of our sin. And so we needed to be reconciled. And number two, the reconciler is Jesus himself. That's precisely what Paul tells us here in 2 Corinthians 5. It's also what he says in Colossians chapter 1, verses 19 through 20. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Where does the peace between God and humanity come from? It comes from the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ.

Here's a third point. Paul is talking about the apostolic ministry that was given to him by God. We are ambassadors, he says, and it's as if God himself is speaking through us to the world saying, be reconciled. And this is what Christian ministry is all about. This is the core of Christian ministry. It's the proclamation of the message of reconciliation through the blood of the cross of Jesus Christ. You know, there are a lot of churches that want to focus on all sorts of other things.

And sometimes those things aren't necessarily bad. You know, soup kitchens, doing good things for the community, caring for the poor. That is a part of Christian ministry.

I think God calls us to that. But the fundamental thing that we need to have, what makes the church the church, is the message of the gospel. And Christian ministers are like ambassadors of God's kingdom who come with that message, the message of reconciliation, the message that peace has come through Jesus Christ.

And it's come through the great exchange. That's what you get in verse 21. I mean, really, just once again, listen to what Paul said there. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin. That's Jesus. Jesus, the sinless one, was made to be sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Now, what is Paul talking about there? It's not that Jesus was transformed into sin in some weird way.

No, it's that our sins were placed on him, imputed to him, we might say, credited to him, so that his righteousness might be given to us. And through that, friends, we have peace with God. Thanks for your question, Lance. What a beautiful picture of the gospel, Adriel. Thank you for that.

This is CORE Christianity. If you have a question for us, you can call us at 833-THE-CORE. That's 1-833-843-2673. Hello, my name is John from Missouri. I'm an athlete. I'm getting older in age and I was curious what the Bible says about hormone replacement therapy and other kinds of supplementation. That's all I got. Thank you very much. Bye.

Hey, John. The Bible does not speak to this issue specifically. Of course, they didn't have that kind of thing when the biblical writers were writing.

And that means you're going to have to look at the teaching of scripture and use wisdom, godly wisdom, to make a decision for yourself. The first thing I would want to say to you is that it is good to take care of our bodies, but it's important that we keep things in their proper perspective. I like to exercise, too. I like to go to the gym. That's been one of the big bummers with COVID and everything going on, so I've had to find other ways to work out, to get exercise in. But there was a point in my life in college where I would hit the gym every day without fail. It became a little bit obsessive, actually, and I recall feeling an immense guilt if for whatever reason I didn't go and work out on a particular day.

It started to get unhealthy, I think. As I was reading through the book of Philippians, I was really struck by something that the Apostle Paul said there in Philippians 3, verses 20 and 21. He said, Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it, from heaven, we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. And listen to what Paul said, The Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. See, the bodies we do our best to maintain, to glorify, if you will, are lowly. We can work and work and work trying to transform our bodies, but one day those lowly bodies are going to be transformed by Jesus himself.

And brother, I think that that's something that we can all rejoice in right now, especially as you get older, as we get older and we feel our bodies breaking down and we long to go back to that time when we could just do the kinds of things we did before, where I could jump like I did as a kid and run like I did as a teenager, that kind of a thing. Well, our bodies are deteriorating, but one day God is going to transform our lowly bodies. Now, I'm not saying that supplementation is necessarily wrong or bad. I think with anything, you're going to want to weigh the side effects of whatever it is that you're taking to determine if it's wise to do so or not.

And I don't know enough about the kinds of drugs that you might be referring to to be able to weigh in, but what I am saying is take care of your body, enjoy exercise, but don't be enslaved to it. And ultimately, make sure that your hope is in what God is going to do for you at the resurrection of the dead, in the fact that the Lord is going to restore our broken down bodies. One more verse for you. This is what Paul told Timothy. Remember, Timothy is a young man.

As Paul is writing to him, he says to him, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness. For while bodily training is of some value, and it is, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds the promise for the present life and also for the life to come. Bodily exercise, brother, is valuable, John. It is a good thing, and so do it. And if there are some of these things that can help you to do it as you get older, well, that's a wisdom issue that you're going to have to determine for yourself. But make sure, again, that your priorities are right. Bodily exercise profits.

It does profit a little. Exercise in godliness is what God calls each and every one of us to, including you. God bless you, brother. You're listening to Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and if you or someone you love has been struggling with depression, we want to tell you about a resource that we believe will be really helpful to you. Here we are talking about the importance of taking care of your body, and our brains are a part of our bodies.

We can really wrestle with this. A lot of people really wrestle with depression. That's why we created this resource, Nine Things Everyone Needs to Know About Depression, and it is free for you when you sign up for our weekly newsletter. We created this resource to give you a foundational understanding of what depression is and how Christians can best help someone who suffers from depression. So head over to corechristianity.com forward slash offers to download Nine Things Everyone Needs to Know About Depression.

And it's particularly apropos right now because we know that with this whole COVID situation, a lot of people have been feeling depressed or just despondent about life, and so please give us a call for that resource, 833-843-2673. Let's get to another question that came in. Joyce posted this on our website, and she says, when Jesus is tempted by Satan in the desert, his answers to Satan's questions do not really seem like answers. Could you explain what Jesus' answers really mean?

Hi, Joyce. So let's turn to that passage of scripture. I'll go to Matthew's account in Matthew chapter 4, the temptation of Jesus. I'm going to read verses 1 through 11.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. And Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. And the devil left him and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. Joyce, what we have here is a biblical chess match. Satan twisting scripture in order to try to deceive Jesus. And Jesus responds with what?

Scripture, with the right understanding of scripture. And here we're given insight, I think, into one of the devil's tactics. Satan doesn't always flat out deny the Bible, deny scripture, what God has said. Sometimes he uses it in a subtle way to lead people astray.

That's what he's doing here. He's pointing to these various promises in the Old Testament, and he's misapplying them to Jesus. He's saying, if you really are the Son of God, he's calling into question his identity. If you really are the Son of God, well, do this. And Jesus knows because he was the one who inspired the holy scriptures, the prophets spoke through his spirit. He knows what the scriptures truly mean and what they truly teach. And so he responds to the devil, to the twisting of scripture with the right understanding of the word of God.

And frankly, brothers and sisters, that's something that we have to do as well. We have to be on guard one for satanic distortions of what the holy scripture teaches, even misapplications of the promises of God. And we see this all around us in our day today, don't we? People taking certain promises, maybe Old Testament promises related to prosperity or long life in the land for obedience, those kinds of things, and applying them today without understanding them in their context and through Jesus Christ. The devil is at work today still twisting scriptures, and so we have to be on guard. We have to study the word of God, and we have to know it in its context, and we need the Spirit of God to help us have understanding. But there's something else here, I think, beneath the surface, Joyce, that this whole scene gives us, this picture of who Jesus truly is.

It's really interesting. In Matthew chapter 2, Jesus came out of Egypt. In Matthew chapter 3, he went through the waters. He was baptized by John.

So out of Egypt, through the waters. Matthew chapter 4, he's tempted for 40 days, and then in Matthew chapter 5, he goes up on a mountain and delivers God's law, the Sermon on the Mount, to the people of God. In one sense, here in Matthew 2 through 5, you have Jesus walking in the footsteps of Israel, out of Egypt, through the waters, tempted for, not for 40 years, but for 40 days, going up on the mountain like Moses, right, to receive and to deliver God's law. Jesus is coming as the new and perfect Israel, the one who was perfectly obedient in all the places where Israel under the old covenant was not obedient, where they fell, where they were tempted in the wilderness for 40 years, and they sinned. Jesus is tempted here for 40 days in the wilderness, and he doesn't sin.

He resists the temptation. And that's, Joyce, a great hope for us, because we do sin. We fail.

We fall. Our hope is in the perfect one, Jesus Christ the righteous, and we're given a glimpse into that perfect one here in Matthew 4 at the beginning of Matthew's gospel. So thank you for that question. Hope that helps to unravel this passage of the temptation for you. Joyce, thanks so much for your question. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and just a reminder that we are listener-supported, so we count on people just like you to keep this program on the air. If you'd like to learn more about making a gift, just go to our website, which is CoreChristianity.com. Well, Adriel, we were talking about depression earlier and that resource that we have on depression.

Galene has a question related to that. She says, I was wondering about why it's so hard to live the Christian life. It's one thing when you first really submit your life to God, you're walking with the Lord, and you're seriously loving Him for the first time. But then you begin to feel mentally attacked, and you feel discouraged. How do we live through those attacks? I'm trying to do what's right and staying in the Word, but the discouragement keeps coming.

How can I keep going? Well, Galene, first, let me pray for you. Heavenly Father, I lift Galene up to You, and Lord, we know the struggle that she feels, that she experiences. We know that You talk about it in Your Word, and we pray for her, Lord, that You would sustain her, that You would sustain her faith, that You would help her in the midst of the attacks of the evil one, to be grounded in Your Word, in the true promises of Your Scriptures, to have her eyes fixed upon Your Son, Jesus, and His love and goodwill toward her. I pray, Lord Jesus, that You would be with her, that You would strengthen her, and that You would cause her, Lord, to abide in You, to rest in You, Lord, even in the midst of the feelings of depression, even in the midst of the feelings of anxiety and fear. Lord, would You be her anchor and her comfort. In Jesus' name, amen.

Galene, the first thing I want to say to you is you're not alone. I was just reading something that Martin Luther wrote. Martin Luther was, of course, the guy that helped to spearhead the Protestant Reformation, which a lot of us were just thinking about the end of October. Recovering these core Christian doctrines, focusing on the importance of the teaching of the Bible and salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. That was what Luther did. And he wrote this about the Christian life.

Listen. He said, the entire life of the faithful is a sort of exercise in hatred against the remnants of sin in the flesh, which murmur against the spirit and faith. The godly repeatedly feel terrors. Then faith fights against the lack of trust and despair, as well as against lust, anger, pride, revenge, etc. The battle continues in the godly as long as they live, in some more violently, in others more gently. Hence, they have sorrow and hatred for sin combined with faith.

Therefore, they cry out with Paul in Romans chapter 7 verse 24, wretched man that I am, who will liberate me from this body of death? Luther goes on to say, the hearts of the godly are sadder over their sins and fear of death than they are joyful over the life and inexpressible grace given through Christ. Indeed, they struggle against this lack of trust and overcome it by faith. Yet this spirit of sadness always returns. Therefore, their life is marked by continual repentance until death.

Galen, you are not alone. The godliest people throughout history have felt the exact same struggle that you're talking about. Martin Luther himself, the Protestant reformer, said throughout our entire lives, our lives as Christians are going to be marked by continual repentance until death because the fact of the matter is, we're always caring about this body of sin, if you will, and until we're in the presence of the Lord, it is going to be a fight. And it's so important that you understand that because I think sometimes, you know, Christians have embraced this wrong idea of the Christian life that it's supposed to look like, you know, a bed of roses. It's just, you know, the victorious Christian life all the time, never a struggle.

I'm always living on the mountaintop, if you will. That is just not the ordinary Christian life. The ordinary Christian life looks like daily putting to death our sins, fighting against that unbelief, looking to Jesus and clinging to his cross. And it isn't just Luther who knew what that was like.

The Apostle Paul himself, like Luther quoted there in Romans chapter 7, he was able to say, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ. So first, I just want you to know, Gaylene, that you're not alone, that this is what the Christian life is like. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't moments and seasons where things feel better, where it seems as if we are on the mountaintop in the Christian life, and we're really experiencing a sense of joy and peace in the presence of the Lord.

But there are those repeated valleys that we go through as believers. Now, I do want to say, if you are struggling with depression, one, get a hold of that resource that Bill already mentioned earlier in the program that you can get for just signing up for our newsletter. But it is good to also consider sitting down with a doctor, someone who could give you a better sense of maybe there's a chemical issue, a chemical imbalance, Gaylene, that is also contributing to these feelings of despair and darkness. And I don't want to minimize that. I think too often the church has minimized clinical depression in particular.

So it is important that if you're having these feelings consistently, that you consider sitting down with a doctor who might be able to encourage you and give you some guidance, at least as far as that's concerned. But with that, knowing that as you walk with Jesus, as you pursue the Lord, there are seasons of joy and peace and there are seasons of lament. I also think of the book of Psalms. It's one of the things that we see throughout the book of Psalms, right? You don't just have the Psalms of thanksgiving and the Psalms of praise. You also have the Lamentations, where the people of God are crying out to the Lord saying, where are you? It feels like you're distant. It feels like I'm being crushed by my sins, by that sense of isolation, by that sense of loneliness. You know who else took up the Psalms of lament on his lips? Your Savior, Jesus Christ. Go to him, turn to him, because he knows you and he loves you. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this podcast. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.