John Murphy:
This is the Rockhouse Center podcast and I'm John Murphy.

Beth Murphy:
And I'm Beth Murphy. And we're here today to talk about the truth that God wants your desire, not your discipline.

John Murphy:
Yeah, that's kind of a surprise, a little bit of a stunner. When I'm working with clients, I commonly get a little bit of a, Whoa, wait a minute. Let me think this through. And so I sort of start off with an understanding that from the way that typically people think about their faith, there is the thought that it is about rules and discipline versus a relationship and desire and really trying to help them understand that. So in many Christian cultures or generally across Christianity, there's an expectation that there are behaviors which we are to strive for or to operate in. And we have this kind of list of things that are expected of us. But the problem is, is that we don't have the heart for those things. So what we have left is discipline. We have basically are trying to push back against our flesh and our sin temptation to try to actually live in this list of things which people have a common expectation of other believers in. And if you don't have the heart for it, the only thing you have left is to overwhelming the sin nature, overwhelming our nature to try to have the nature of Christ. And that's one of the things that we need to reconsider about our faith is that it's not about driving into a discipline-oriented set of behaviors. It's about developing a relationship with God over time and out of the desire to please him and out of the desire to fulfill his wish for us to be progressively transformed, we will have more and more hunger to do those things. And it'll just become a really a more correct expression of who we really are becoming over time as we seek to please God, both in our sanctification as well as in just the whatever the specific thing is in the temptation in the moment, because we're always going to have some flesh left to battle, of course.

Beth Murphy:
It seems like a subtle difference, this point that you're making, but in truth, it's the enormous gap that makes the biggest possible difference in how we experience our faith. And so when we think of all these different lists of characteristics of Christ that are in the New Testament and think of them as the target on the wall and that God is changing us to become more and more like that progressively, He's giving us more of the character of Christ, then it becomes a hopeful, exciting thing. But when we look at those things with the daunting thought that I'm supposed to be or do those things in my own strength, that's actually what drives people ultimately away from the church, their faith, and often away from God is the ultimate getting right down to its sense of hopelessness and ever becoming that thing, ever becoming the description of God's love in 1 Corinthians 13. If you think that that's a to-do list, then you will become hopeless and despairing.

John Murphy:
A to-do list you're supposed to do in your own strength.

Beth Murphy:
Right. If that's something I'm supposed to go out and do in my own effort, through my own discipline, then it becomes like everything else I've tried to do in my own discipline, which ultimately reaches the end of myself and my discipline and my personal inability to make myself be Christ-like.

John Murphy:
Yeah, it's interesting that in that scripture it talks about how it is God's love in us and it's through God's love in us that we're able able to do those things. And I think that's really what we're getting at. It is through God's energy and God's power and God's desire. And I think it kind of boils down to the way God has made us, that we desire to please those people who love us. And God has expressed this phenomenal amount of love. It's consistent and it's unconditional and it's eternal and it's perfect. and the more and more that we are able to accept that and realize it and feel gratitude and thanksgiving towards him for that, then it becomes a desire to please him, that we are motivated by the cause greater than self and the cause is to please someone who has saved us and who loves us and has great blessings for us, who's building a place for us in eternity to live with him. It's very hard not to feel a sense of wanting to serve and have gratitude for someone who's gone to such great lengths to bless us. That's a really critical piece of what I think drives and and I think that if I look back on my first real experience with this it was when I did the first round a really heavy forgiveness where the abusers of my past were people who the memory of that and my unforgiveness was very tormenting to me it was recommended to me by a counselor that I need to forgive those people my response was rejection of that concept I was I was really pretty angry at them I had no had no thought that I would have to forgive them for me to feel better I wasn't really ready for that. But over time as I thought about it, I realized that the reason I needed to do it, although I was told it would help me, that wasn't enough. I was told that it probably would make me better to be around. That wasn't enough. But there was a place where I began to think of how much gratitude I had for the Lord for allowing me into the kingdom and for the love that I felt from him. And that was really the emptiness I had coming into Christianity was a sense of a debt of love, a sense of emptiness, unlovability. And there was a very strong desire that overwhelmed my resistance to forgive to please God and I really had no I could really clearly feel within me I had no desire to forgive those people but there was an overwhelming desire and the overwhelming desire was that I really wanted to honor God because he deserved it and so that's a situation in which the love that, or the appreciation, the gratitude we have for the Lord actually empowers us and gives us the desire to do things which are consistent with His will and do things which do delight Him.

Beth Murphy:
As you're talking, I'm thinking about how I would apply that to myself personally and how it's been a pattern now over many years of realizing something that I'm gravitating toward that doesn't honor God, something I'm doing that's bad, or it's bad for me. and wanting to stop that or improve that or change that and maybe I am able to do it for a little while or sometimes I just really don't want to do that I don't want to do what I don't want to do and ultimately coming around to realizing the big change comes when I start imploring God to work on my heart to help me want to desire him, help me want to do the thing that pleases him. And I relate to that specifically in things like simply just eating too much and having any proclivity to say something that's gossipy or have a judgmental thought or those kinds of things that rather than beat myself up because my mind went that direction or tried to, you know, clamp down on the way I used to do those things or think that way. What made it change was get the focus off the thing that's wrong or the problem and ask for God's help to get my focus on Him and Rewire my motivation system.

John Murphy:
Yeah.

Beth Murphy:
That's really I guess the best way to say what over time the Lord has done for me and I probably I think our clients would attest to the same thing is this ongoing being transformed by the renewing of your mind, the rewiring of your thinker, your thought processes, your motivator. that makes us then naturally respond differently to situations and do things differently.

John Murphy:
Yes, actually, this isn't just something that we came up with on our own. There's one really powerful scripture, and I'm sure there are many more, but there's one in particular that sticks out for me. And then there's another scripture I think is a great little reference about calling God into the moment so that we can overwhelm whatever it is that's going on inside of us that really doesn't honor Him and that we don't want to be a part of, but we can't really push back on it in our own strength. So the first one is... You want to just walk through that for a minute?

Beth Murphy:
You can actually back up to the first chapter in Philippians where it just makes the clear claim, statement, promise, actually, that God is the one who's faithful to complete the good work he's begun in you. He began the work. So important. And he's the one who's going to complete it. And so, you know, then it goes on in the second chapter to talk about, you know, that scripture people are familiar with, the working out your salvation with fear and trembling. And various translations say it different ways. But in the Amplified, it goes on after that in this daunting description of that about your conscience and your shrinking away from anything that would not honor God. And all these things where you read it and you can just feel yourself sinking and thinking, I can't be that person. And then right when you're at that point, it goes on to the 13th verse, it says, But not in your own strength, of course, for it is God who is effectually all the while at work within you. He first gives you the desire, the heart for it, the the willingness and then he gives you the strength and the ability to obey. And so, you know, it's like Paul said, I don't want to boast of anything but Jesus Christ and that not of myself. And so all God's looking for is our heart, opening our heart to him to give him permission to change us from the inside out so that he can transform what motivates us.

John Murphy:
Yes, and he, again, back to the subject line or the title of this podcast, is that he's not looking for us to do the things he's called us to do in our own strength and in our own discipline. what would that accomplish? That would really only accomplish glorifying me. If it was through me white-knuckling a situation and not giving into whatever temptation of my flesh or whatever actual service in the church or whatever other thing I'm doing, if I'm doing that simply, simply, maybe it's not quite the word, but if I'm doing that in my own strength and I am overwhelming my desire to do something else, but I'm doing these things instead, and I end up having a display of something that is Christ-like behavior, there really isn't any glory for God in that because you did it in your own strength. And by the way, he's very clear that when you don't have the heart behind the things which he called us to do, then it's an empty task. It doesn't actually accomplish anything. And so it's just really important to recognize that his, and of course, someone would say, Well, sure, but it still takes discipline. Yeah, but just think about it for a minute, in the case of my forgiveness, the thing that empowered me to forgive was honoring him. And so who received the glory for that? I didn't. I recognized that it was because of a desire to please God that I was able to push back on my flesh. Yes, somebody called that discipline, but it was born out of a desire to please God. And so it's important for us to continue to go back to this concept that we can get caught up in the religious sort of rules and discipline approach when really this whole proposition of Christianity is really about a relationship built on God and being empowered by that relationship.

Beth Murphy:
So this is actually really, really good news, because for those of us who went decades or years or however long you've gone, thinking that your faith is about rules and religion and mustering up your own discipline and your own strength, and you begin to grasp the concept that, no, it's about relationship and desire, and that God changes you. He promises. It's actually the proposition of our faith. that he is going to change us, to give us more, you know, Romans 8:28, more of the character of Christ, transform you by the renewing of your mind. So what does that mean? It means he's changing us. So he's changing our very desires. It's the reason that we call what we do at Rock House Center, our proprietary version of biblical counseling is motive transition therapy, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about that God goes all the way deep inside to change what motivates us, and when that changes, And you just naturally start doing different things. And so now think about this in the context of anybody you relate to. Do you want them to spend time with you, say nice things to you? do anything that indicates they care about you or value you simply because they were given a list of rules and they've got to follow those rules and they've got to check it off the list. No, nobody wants that. And God doesn't want that either. He wants our authentic love. He started that from the garden forward. He didn't force them to make the right decision or love him. And he wants our authentic love because he loved us authentically first. And so he's gone before us. He's laid down the track. It's the only reason why we have any desire for authentic love is he loved us first. And it's so it's out of that desire, the desire to please him, that he wants to really change what motivates us. And now back to what I said just a second ago, that's really great news, because that means you can let go of all of this the pressure on yourself, the sense that I've got to perform better, I've got to do these lists of things in Scripture, and I've got to be a good Christian, except I'm really struggling to be a good Christian. It's really hard, and it's pushing against something inside me. Okay, well, when you realize that, then it's just all about starting that dialogue with God. to ask him to change what's inside us so that we do do things differently naturally out of our desire to please him.

John Murphy:
Yeah, we're going to have to call in help. And I think we have to remember that this is, there's a very, there's a great model here in Hebrews 5:7, the way in which Jesus himself related to God. So obviously, whatever Jesus did, we're not going to get away with doing less than calling upon God any less than Jesus himself did. So it says in 5.7 that this was the season of his flesh. And during that time, he was really, and certainly in the beginning, the impression you have is that his battle with the flesh and the sin temptation that he was born into was really intense. He cried out with strong tears and supplication about the battle that he was going through. And what it said is that God was always to save him out from that moment. So he was calling upon God into the situation to have what it took to be able to overwhelm the temptation of his flesh. So he was motivated to do whatever it took not to be separated from God because he loved him so much. He even used the word horrific or the horror of being separated from the bright presence of the Father. that you can really sense how, first off, vital it was for Jesus to stay connected with his father. But obviously there was something, the bright presence and the love that he has and the regard he has for a father, that was the thing that drove him to be able to pull God in. And in that context of God being there, he saved him out from those temptations. And there you have it. So the energy in the relationship is what gave him the power to overwhelm those temptations. And it's interesting also because it is true that God was born, Jesus was born fully man and fully God, but it does go on to say that he learned an active and special obedience. So there was something that had to transform in within Jesus himself, and he had to transform his flesh, transform his experience or whatever, how you would ever, how you describe that. But the scripture is very clear that he learned an active and special obedience through this, experience. So something changed about who Jesus was through this. And then it goes on to say, so that he could become. So again, something had to change so that he could become the author and the source of our salvation. So there you have, there was a transformational experience going on with Christ himself. So he had two ways in which we can relate to that story. One is, is that in the battle with his flesh, he knew that he had to call God in. It says that God saved him out from the moment, which means he couldn't have done it without God. God actually saved him from these moments. And the experience of bringing him in and battling each place of his flesh, he was actually perfected in a way that allowed him to be the author and the source of our salvation. Well, God's trying to perfect us as well. And so we need to call him in all these battles in which we're trying to be a certain way or resist a sin or to try to become more actually Christ-like in our character, which is what God's will is for us, we have to bring God into that moment. And it's out of the love and the regard for God being the cause greater than self that is what energizes us to have victory in those moments. From that very experience of love between God and Jesus was the power for Jesus to overcome all sin for eternity for all mankind. That is the power of love. And so it is this love and this relationship is the core of where our energy comes from and our desire comes from. And it's not about us gutting it out and doing it our own strength and patting ourselves on the back because we exhibited some Christ-like behavior.

Beth Murphy:
I'm thinking about the Psalm that says you can see striving and rest in Him, because I just had this sense of just, as you're talking, just the release that comes from God giving us permission And in fact, in instructing us, teaching us that we are to cease striving, we're to quit trying so, so hard to be the good Christian, the good person that we cannot be through our own efforts. And just acknowledge, you know, just like Paul did at the end of Romans 7, that he didn't have any goodness in his own flesh. And as he cried out about his condition, you know, Who will save me, this pitiable wretch that I am? Oh, well, you've saved me, you God, you sent your Son, my Messiah, Jesus Christ. I've got his righteousness. And just the ceasing to try to create goodness and righteousness in our own efforts flows then into the next promise, the Romans 8:1, that there is no condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus. So We can stand on the authority of the blood of Jesus in proclaiming that we don't accept the condemnation from the enemy because we already know we don't have any righteousness. I can't muster up goodness in my own strength and through my own goodness. I don't have any goodness. And as I released that and I acknowledge that, no, I needed a savior. I was a sinner in desperate need of a savior, and I got saved, and then I was in desperate need of being transformed. And that is what's underway with God. He's the one back on the Philippians. He's the one who's faithful to complete the good work he's begun in me. And he's the one that's gonna give me first the energy, the desire, and then the willingness, and then the strength and the energy to obey.

John Murphy:
Yes. So I think we need to have a conversation with God right now. I think for those of us who have been caught into this old model of thinking about our Christian walk as a thing of absolute discipline, it's all about us, and we need to throw that thing away, and we need to allow the Lord to backfill with the reality that this is about Him, this is about His love for us, and loving Him back, and that's really what in that relationship, that knowing of Him is really what should be behind our walk. So I think it'd be really great for us to just move into a time of prayer for those of us who are feeling the conviction of this or feeling the hunger to get out from underneath this whole discipline message that a lot of us have lived under to try to advance our faith. So if you are feeling that right now, just enter into this prayer with me. So Heavenly Father, forgive me for trying to exhibit the characteristics of your Son and try to fulfill the things that you've called me to in my own strength. Father, I declare that I don't have enough strength and I have no ability to actually accomplish that in any real, credible way. Lord, I declare the truth that it is only through the energy and the desire that you give me that I would have the will to do your work and to delight in you. Heavenly Father, please heal me of the way that I have suffered under the burden of trying to fulfill your will and my strength. Forgive me for any way in which I have usurped your glory. I ask, Lord, that you would strengthen me, to call you into every situation of my life. Lord, actually, I invite you now, ahead of time, to invade my thinking, so that no matter what I undertake, whether it be for the kingdom or anything in life, that you would enter into my thinking, Strengthen me to call upon you. Strengthen me to rest on you. Strengthen me to know your love and to rely on it and your love alone, to be able to fulfill the vision you have for me, which is to be more and more like your son. Lord, give me the strength to resist the desire of my flesh, to take back control, and to try to do these things in my own energy. I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

Beth Murphy:
Amen. That's the end of our podcast today. We really appreciate you joining us and we look forward to talking again soon.

John Murphy:
Yes. Thanks for joining us and just remember we're here if you need any help. Goodbye.