I don’t know how many of you ever watched the show “Family Matters,” but one of the most entertaining things about that show to me was how Steve Urkel would just randomly show up in the Winslow home. While it was entertaining to watch, it must have been pretty annoying for the Winslow family to feel like there were hardly any boundaries in place. I think I would have changed my locks and sat down with Urkel for an honest conversation.

During a recent Bible study class at our church, a question arose: should Christians set boundaries in their relationships? This question was prompted by our study in 1 John 4, which says in verse 20 - “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” That’s really strong language and should cause us to think seriously about the relationships we have with others. But does the principle of 1 John 4:20 mean that it’s ungodly to set certain firm boundaries in our relationships?

There’s a passage that instantly came to my mind which I find helpful in this conversation:

“But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.”
John 2:24 (ESV)

It seems to me that Jesus set certain boundaries in His earthly life with the people around Him. While Jesus was often pressed in at every side with crowds of people wanting to hear Him teach and have Him heal them, He also would often retreat to be alone with His Father (Luke 5:16). Jesus had 12 disciples, but even just 3 of those men were some of his “closest” followers and friends. He did not do what everyone expected of Him which is a way of setting boundaries as well.

So we know that setting boundaries absolutely can be biblical, but how do we know when we should do so? There are a couple of guiding principles I believe we should consider:

Is this relationship bringing temptation and sin into my life?

If this person in your life is constantly trying to convince you to join them in sin, then you certainly need to be cautious about when and how you spend your time with them. If they are someone who always tempts you to be angry, for example, then you need to deal with that sin in your own heart and find ways to create boundaries that protect you from being angry. If this person is someone who is always engaged in some sinful behavior, then as a Christian, you need to consider the principle that says: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).

Is this relationship putting myself or someone I am responsible for in danger?

Yes, as Christians we are called to “love our neighbors as ourselves” (Matthew 22:39), but that doesn’t mean we are supposed to allow ourselves to be doormats to physical, spiritual, or emotional abuse. We have a duty in those situations to protect ourselves and anyone around us (for example: your children) from those kinds of abuses. Setting boundaries in this case is actually a way that we do love our neighbors. After all, love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing” (1 Corinthians 13:6).

What is my motivation for setting these boundaries?

This is perhaps the most important question to ask. If you are setting boundaries with someone in your life because they are different than you and you feel inconvenienced by them, that would be unloving and even prideful. If this person has genuinely sought your forgiveness with sincere repentance that even has evidence of their sorrow, and you refuse to listen to them, then that’s not setting boundaries, it’s the sin of unforgiveness. Ask yourself why you are setting boundaries and also ask yourself what you hope the ultimate outcome of these boundaries will be. That will tell you a lot about your own heart and whether or not you’re operating in the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) or not.

So yes, setting boundaries can be biblical, even Christlike, but we must not adopt the standards of our world that say anytime someone inconveniences you, holds you back, behaves in ‘toxic ways, etc, then you must cut them out of your life immediately and entirely. Setting boundaries does not mean withholding forgiveness, it means setting up guardrails to protect yourself and others from sin being committed against you, and it can even protect you from falling into traps of sin yourself.

John the Baptist was an incredibly strong prophet and follower of Christ. He lived in the wilderness, wore camel hair (not the designer kind), ate locusts and honey (probably got stung a few times), challenged the religious leaders, preached repentance, stood up to Herod in his sin, and eventually was beheaded for his faith. When we think about people like John in the Bible, we tend to really believe we’re not cut out for the Christian life.

But did you know that John had moments of doubt in his faith?

“Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’”
Matthew 11:2-3 (ESV)

While some scholars believe that John did not doubt, but sent his disciples to Jesus for their own benefit, it seems clear that John had at least a little bit of doubt surfacing. After all, he was in prison for doing the very thing God had called him to do - preach repentance. He likely believed the Messiah had come and was going to instantly dethrone all the corrupt religious leaders and the Roman government itself. John preached of “the wrath to come” (Matthew 3:7) and that Jesus would “clear his threshing floor” (Matthew 3:12). But how long would he have to be in prison?

He had heard of the miracles of Jesus, but was Jesus truly the promised Messiah, or maybe just another prophet from God? We don’t know exactly what caused John to question, but something bothered him enough to send messengers to Jesus to make sure He really was the Messiah.

If someone as strong in their faith as John experienced moments of doubt, then I can take comfort that I am not alone or even in the minority when doubt sets in my own heart. There is a difference between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is when we are asking questions about our faith and wrestling through the things that cause us to have those questions. Unbelief is a blatant rejection of who Jesus is. Here are a few things to keep our doubts from turning to unbelief

Ask the hard questions

Many of us might have been afraid to approach Jesus and ask if He truly was the Messiah. Not John. He made sure that whatever questions he had were brought right to Jesus. In your time in prayer, ask God to reveal the truth to you. Seek out your pastor, a trusted godly friend, or counselor who will be able to walk with you through your doubts and point you to the truth. We should never be afraid to ask questions as a Christian. When something is tugging at your faith, make it known and relentlessly pursue the truth.

Stay in the Word

If you read Matthew 11 further, you’ll see Jesus answer John’s doubts by pointing him to the Scriptures about the Messiah. Jesus is the living Word of God, He could have directly answered John’s questions, but He pointed John to the place every believer should go when doubt creeps in - the written, revealed Word of God.

Take the Lord at His Word

Nothing about John’s circumstances changed. He honestly had not even received any new information about Jesus (he already knew the prophecies), but Jesus’ words were enough for him. He didn’t need a miracle or a change in his circumstances, he simply needed the assurance of the words of Jesus. For the Christian, we are to take refuge and comfort from our doubts in the sure and steadfast Word of God. We are to believe Him over and above our doubts. We are to allow His Word to be a comfort for our anxious hearts. What He says should always move us from the shifting sands of doubt and plant our feet firmly upon the Rock that is Himself.

Doubt is a very real and common struggle for believers. You are not alone in this battle. Take comfort in the story of John the Baptist. Because if someone whom Jesus said was not a “reed shaken in the wind” (Matthew 11:7) could experience doubt and overcome it by the Word of God, then you can too!

I have been engaged in some form of social media since 2005 when MySpace was still a thing. Does anyone remember MySpace? The thing I missed the most about it was the ability to customize your profile page and add a song to it. Then, of course, around 2008, Facebook came into view for me and, at first, I wasn’t a huge fan. Over time, however, that’s where everyone else was at, and I wanted to be a part of the conversation too. For the most part, it was a fun way to stay in touch with people and connect with them a bit over funny pictures and life moments. Over time, it devolved into an endless pit of useless information and angry shouting through keyboards and iPhones.

The Dangers of Social Media
No doubt, social media has its benefits, but it also has its dangers. Maybe near the top of the list is its ability to hook you into endless (also mindless) scrolling. I found that whenever I was bored, standing in line, wanting to disconnect from reality, or even just sitting with my family, I was scrolling through my feed. Honestly, most of the time, I didn’t really intentionally choose to be on there, it was just my default reaction whenever I had the chance.

Social media also has a way of forcing you to have an opinion about everything that’s happening in the world before you’ve had a chance to process the events and think through them biblically. I found myself defaulting to opinions that I didn’t really hold myself, but everybody on my news feed did and that’s what I was filling my brain with.

I often would use the excuse that I just “needed to let my mind wander for a minute after a long day.” But the truth is, I was engaging with social media on my phone at very unhealthy levels. It was distracting me from family, work, friends, and healthy rest. These honestly are only a few of the dangers, but they are the ones that were most problematic for me.

Why I quit
In January of this year, I made a decision to completely quit social media in every form for at least one month. I needed a hard reset and I knew that the only way to do that was to delete all the apps and block the websites from my phone and computer. I was tired of the endless scrolling and the ways it was impacting my mental and spiritual health. I was ready to quit it forever, but I wanted to give it some time before coming to that conclusion.

Jordan Raynor, the author of “Redeeming Your Time” has a great perspective on social media and he asks a very important question I think we should all consider:

That’s the question I really began asking myself and it’s the question that led me to almost entirely get rid of social media. For me, it was costing me family time, deep work, and mental energy I wanted to use elsewhere.

What I’ve missed since being off
Honestly… I haven’t really missed anything. I still know what’s going on in the world and in the lives of the people that matter most to me. I guess I had forgotten that my phone could be used for direct communication with these people and I didn’t have to find out about their child being born from Facebook. Okay, okay, truthfully, I’ve missed the memes a little bit. Who doesn’t enjoy a good meme? But even memes get sent to me from friends at times, so I’m not really missing that. And I’d much rather be with my family, or reading a good book than reading countless mindless jokes that add little value to my life.

How I’m currently engaging with social media
Currently, I log on about once or twice per week for no more than 5 minutes just to see if there’s anything interesting, but I very quickly get bored of it and log off. I haven’t posted anything on there (that I can remember) since the beginning of the year. Although, ironically I may post this blog post on there for those wondering what happened to me (the truth is that probably nobody is wondering that).

I do have plans to slowly work my way into posting things that I believe are valuable again at some point and engaging with comments once per week, but for now, I’m really enjoying the hiatus and I’m making no promises to myself to get back on.

I still watch TV and YouTube videos and have found other ways to consume entertainment, but those things have never been an endless rabbit hole for me like social media was.

What about you?
Have you seriously considered your level of engagement with social media and how it affects you? Maybe you’ve always made excuses or couldn’t imagine the thought of being off of it for an extended period of time. Let me be clear, I am not in any way saying everyone should do what I’m doing, nor do I think it makes me more holy or anything like that. It was just something that had obviously become a problem in my life and I needed to address it. I hope that sharing a bit of my journey with it would encourage you to think deeply about this as well.

I always thought I would regret not being part of the conversation and memes, but it has truly been one of the most refreshing decisions I’ve ever made. Don’t let FOMO (fear of missing out) hold you back from getting rid of something that is potentially harming your relationship with Christ, your family, your job, or anything else that has more value than that little app on your phone. Let me close with wise words from the apostle Paul:

Every single follower of Jesus has been supernaturally gifted to serve in the body of Christ. No matter what your natural skills and abilities are, the Holy Spirit, at the moment of your repentance from sin and faith in Christ has graciously given you a supernatural ability to serve the Church. Not only that, but the Lord has commanded us to use those gifts to serve others:

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”
1 Peter 4:10 (ESV)

The problem that many of us have run into is that we either haven’t ever thought much about our spiritual gift, or we just aren’t sure what our gift(s) might be. I would like to offer a few thoughts on how you can confidently discover how God has graciously gifted you to be an important part of the body of Christ. First, let’s take a look at the list of possible spiritual gifts that we find in the Scriptures. There is no passage in the bible that gives us an exhaustive list of all the gifts, but as we compile the different passages like Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12, and 1 Peter 4, we can come up with a pretty good list of the gifts.

An Important Note

Just before I give the list of gifts, no doubt that some of you will notice that some of the gifts mentioned in the Bible will not be on the list below. I do not plan to make an extensive argument on this point in this blog post, but I hope it’s sufficient for now to share that I believe that the miraculous gifts such as tongues, healing, and prophecy have ceased. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe God does miraculous things - He most assuredly does. However, one passage that I will point to now to consider is:

"How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.”
Hebrews 2:3-4 (ESV)

The author of Hebrews seems to pre-suppose that the miraculous gifts had a time that has since passed that the Lord used them to authenticate the message of the Gospel. Again, a further discussion on that will be for another time, but I wanted to at least touch on why some of those gifts won’t be on my list below.

A list of the spiritual gifts

Wisdom - The supernatural ability to think with Godly wisdom in accordance with the Scriptures.
Teaching - The supernatural ability to teach the Word of God in an accurate and understandable way
Shepherding - The supernatural ability to pastor and shepherd God’s Church as an undershepherd of our chief shepherd.
Mercy - The supernatural ability to show mercy and compassion to people in your life - even those who have wronged you or don’t seem to deserve it.
Leadership - The supernatural ability to lead God’s people to follow Him and to equip others to do the work of the ministry.
Knowledge - The supernatural ability to discern through even difficult theological truths and to have a capacity for learning and remembering them.
Intercession - The supernatural ability to pray without ceasing. To often react to situations with prayer as a first response.
Hospitality - The supernatural ability to care for others and refresh their souls by serving them in some way. To even want to do this for strangers.
Helps - The supernatural ability to want to serve others and make sure that all perceived needs are met. To not be able to sit back when there is work to be done.
Giving - The supernatural desire to want to be generous and the dedication to actually following through. This is not limited to, but certainly includes, financial giving.
Faith - The supernatural ability to trust the Lord in all things. While others tend to often worry, you have a strong faith even in the midst of worry.
Evangelism - The supernatural ability and desire to reach lost people. Of course, all believers should have this, but those with this spiritual gift stand out in this area and have an extra level of zeal.
Encouragement - The supernatural ability to encourage others and build them up. When others spend time around you, they often walk away feeling encouraged.
Discernment - The supernatural ability to be able to determine right from wrong and truth from error. Again, all Christians are called to do this, but those with this gift seem to excel in it and pick up on errors before others do. This is usually in relation to false teachers.
Administration - The supernatural ability to guide others and help organize plans for the furtherance of the ministry. This is more than those who have a natural bent toward organization, it’s those who seem to be able to discern what’s most important to focus on and are gifted to help implement strategies to that end.

How do I discover my gift(s)

That list can be a lot to take in and process, especially if you have not personally ever discovered what your gift is. Every believer has at least one gift, and some have been blessed with a few. The Bible does not explicitly teach that you have the same gifts for your entire life and it can never change, so it’s certainly possible that the Lord gives you the gifts you may need for certain seasons of life. But for now, our focus is on helping you discover what your gifts are so you can begin using them for the sake of God’s glory and the building of His Church. Here are a few thoughts on how to begin doing that.

• Start using them

You don’t have to know what your spiritual gift is before you can start using it. Every one of those spiritual gifts is something that all believers can and should participate in to some degree. So if you’re not sure what your gift is, jump on the connect team and begin asking yourself if you’ve been gifted with hospitality, for example. Or get on the parking lot team and find out if you have a supernatural ability to want to serve in an often thankless role. Start serving, and you’ll begin to pretty quickly start to see how God has gifted you.

• Ask others

Find other brothers and sisters in Christ who know you pretty well and ask them what spiritual gifts they see in you. Very often, they will be able to give a fairly quick response. While they won’t ALWAYS be right, The Lord often uses the people around us to show us what gift(s) He has given us. Also, take note of the fact that it will be a lot easier for others to see how you’re gifted if you’ve actually been serving. If all you ever do is show up to the church and leave without ever serving, the people around you have no context as to what gift(s) you might have.

• Pray, pray, and pray some more.

This should go without saying, but unless you have the spiritual gift of prayer, it’s likely you’re neglecting this step. The Bible is clear that “if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:14). Therefore if God has told us to use our gifts, He certainly will hear our prayers to help us discover what those gifts are.

Conclusion

This is a subject that doesn’t seem to be talked about much in the Church for some reason. But this is one of the most important and practical truths we have. God has specifically gifted you to have a place in and serve the body of Christ so that the Church can continue to make disciples of all nations. That’s a really big deal and an immense privilege. Do not forget that He doesn’t need you, but He wants you. J.I. Packer once said, “Every-member ministry in the body of Christ is the New Testament Ideal.” We all have a role to play, so let’s find out how God has graciously gifted us to serve and jump in!

Further Reading

Here are a few more articles that I would highly recommend for further study on this subject:

https://equip.sbts.edu/article/heres-better-way-determine-spiritual-gifts/

https://www.gty.org/library/bibleqnas-library/QA0068/how-do-you-identify-your-spiritual-gift

https://www.ligonier.org/guides/spiritual-gifts

https://www.gotquestions.org/spiritual-gift.html

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “God’s grace?” Perhaps your mind is immediately compelled to think about all of the sins you’ve committed in your life and how the Lord has graciously saved you from the penalty you deserved for that sin. Maybe you also think about how His grace sustains you every single day to live according to His will and not continue being enslaved to your sin.

Both of those are foundational to understanding how God’s grace comes to us and transforms our lives for eternity. And still, there is more to his grace than even those amazing truths. Admittedly, there is infinitely more to God’s grace than we will ever know or be able to search out. For now, I want to call your attention to an aspect of God’s grace that I believe we don’t give enough attention to. I want us to consider how God, in His grace, allows us to experience abundant life in our obedience.

Maybe that last sentence didn’t immediately make sense to you or cause you to fully understand what I’m trying to get at here so let me explain. God, in His grace, has saved us, and in His grace, He sanctifies us, but have you ever thought about the fact that on top of all of that, He graciously allows us to experience overwhelming joy in our obedience? In other words, God has not simply given us rules to live by so that we don’t experience His judgment - His Law actually leads us to life abundantly itself - and that, I believe is also part of His grace to us.

Psalm 119 is a great passage that teaches us the joy of walking in God’s Law. I would encourage you to read through it (yes, I know it’s really long, but I’m willing to bet it will take you less time than it took you to scroll through Facebook or Tik Tok earlier). I do want to pull out one verse for now and focus on it:

“If your law had not been my delight,
I would have perished in my affliction.”
Psalm 119:92

David is saying that when difficult times come and we choose to delight in God’s Law, we will not perish. I think some of us believe that obedience to God’s Word is something that we have to force ourselves into joylessly. While there are certainly times we must obey even when we don’t feel like it, I believe God’s grace meets us to show us the true joy of walking in His commands. That even during hard times of affliction, we can have immense joy as we walk in His ways. Because while sin offers temporary pleasure, obedience to Christ is an eternal fountain of joy and satisfaction that will never fade.

God is worthy of our obedience, and because He is God and we are His creatures, He deserves our obedience. At the same time, He graciously allows us to find pleasure in our obedience to Him. Kings and rulers all throughout history have commanded their subjects to blindly obey whether they have wanted to or not while the King of Kings has given us commands that lead to life and eternal satisfaction. Praise Him for His grace in leading us to abundant life through His perfect precepts!