"Do not fret because of evildoers,
Be not envious toward wrongdoers.
2 For they will wither quickly like the grass
And fade like the green herb.
3 Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land and [a]cultivate faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light
And your judgment as the noonday."
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Truth is an Irritant
Truth condemns those who are in rebellion, they prefer a soft and happy lie to the hard and sad truth.
A Leader or Just Bossy
If you husband is not a strong leader for Christ, your children will not follow Christ and they will develop contempt for you when you live for Him.
Ladies be very careful who you marry, test the man who pursues you, allow him to lead, if he does not and will not, then perhaps letting go of that one is best for you.
Evaluate according to God's Word, is the man who pursues you leading in righteousness or just bossy to get his own way?
Does the man who pursues you want the best for you or just his own desires? A righteous man will always be more concerned about the spiritual well being of his wife and children than he is about his own life.
Somethings to think about.
Ladies be very careful who you marry, test the man who pursues you, allow him to lead, if he does not and will not, then perhaps letting go of that one is best for you.
Evaluate according to God's Word, is the man who pursues you leading in righteousness or just bossy to get his own way?
Does the man who pursues you want the best for you or just his own desires? A righteous man will always be more concerned about the spiritual well being of his wife and children than he is about his own life.
Somethings to think about.
Use or Misusing the Word
When we are flippant about our use or misuse of the Word in the Bible, using it anyway we please without regard for truth or proper meaning, we are diminishing Christ, because He is the WORD.
John 1:1 "1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning."
John 1:1 "1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning."
Appearances or Substance?
If our goal is appearances toward man, then we walk in sin! It is substance through a changed heart that matters.
Substance Over Appearances
For many years I suffered under the false judgments of others, those who thought it was their duty to treat me with contempt because of past sin.
In my early twenties I became born again. I had an emotional response to the gospel when I was 12 but continued in sin until that day after I was married, that brought me to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. I remember the house, the circumstances and the place in the house, but I do not remember the exact date or day of the week.
The stronger I became in the Lord the more I realized that the contempt for me had little to do with any sin in my life, but rather had to do with other factors, perhaps jealousy over only God knows what, or the fact that my ideas and demeanor were changing because of my born again experience.
Those who were my friends liked me better when I was worldly, they loved the hold they had over me because of my sin. When I became born again they hated me for no longer having a hold over me. The unbelievers tormented me with phrases and mockings such as, "your such a goody two shoes", whatever that meant. They accused me of "faking" or of acting superior, but that was not my goal at all, I wanted them to find the same freedom in Christ that I now had. The joy was great in me, they couldn't stand this, they wanted me to feel helpless and hopeless. Even though they never left their sin to follow Christ, they had more accusations than a porcupine has quills, when the old life was gone for me, the new life was growing like a weed every day.
It was not only the unbelievers who no longer liked me, the self righteous Christians liked me even less because their high opinion of themselves didn't seem so high anymore. They desired worshipers, those who would look up to them for their "self righteousness", but I was no longer impressed with the pretense, I wanted the real deal, a relationship with Christ, even if it cost me everything. I actually believed that the believers would now like me for my new life in Christ, but the opposite turned out to be true, they were now meaner than ever, hoping they could get me to falter so they could accuse me of being a fake. The gossip got worse and the contemptuous actions on their part increased. I had done nothing against them to warrant disrespect or unkind treatment, they sought to use every kind act as a means of devaluing me.
You see, when we become born again we will experience the self righteous believers and the unbelievers to hate what we have become, forgiven and joyful!!!
These same people began to attempt to set me up for more sin with their insistence that I resume the same activities that I did before, in order to fit into their lifestyle. The believers wanted me to engage in meaningless superficial ritual and the nonbelievers wanted me to return to the sin I left behind. When I would no longer engage in their sin, the sin I left behind, or the rituals I began to loathe, they became angry, gossiped more than ever and excluded me from their gatherings, as well as gossiping to others who knew me in order to isolate me from all my friends and family.
One of the favored tactics of the devil is to accuse the brethren of past forgiven sins, sins that no longer occur. Once the feathers have blown in the wind from a slashed pillow, there is no collecting them all, they are out there for others to judge, even though the others do not know the whole story, nor do they want to know. Their love of hating believers is bigger than all of us, their lies are orchestrated from the pit of hell by the devil. He loves to cause others to be against believers through gossip and lies. It is all bigger than we, but Christ is bigger than all!
Revelation 12:10-11 "10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, he who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; and they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death.…"
When I attempted to have a dialogue with any of them to explain my life and give a deeper perspective, they became even angrier. I guess one of the hardest things I have encountered in my life is the intense resistance to conversation to explain things. Those who are guilty of their own sin, having nurtured their excuses for their sin and lies, hate anyone who is forthright, and truth is an offense to those who love their gossip.
These people didn't want to hear me say I was a sinner who had been changed by Christ, they loved their old opinion of me and mocked my new existence. In fact they would have enjoyed and loved me if I had remained in my sin.
I know there are many of you who can relate to these difficult relationships. Because we are hardwired to desire flesh and blood family to love us, this cannot be the case for most believers. Many if not most people who have come to Christ in earnest, will be despised by family members, often even "Christian" family members who hold themselves in high regard, as though they have never had to confess sinfulness.
Cultural Christians often attend church because they believe they are so good that God is pleased with them, since they have never done, in their minds, "the big stuff", they overlook the same attitudes that propagate the big stuff, but their fear of rejection keeps them from it. It's not about their devotion to Christ that motivates them, it is their love of being admired by man.
The need to feel superior to others and the love of being admired comes from self righteousness, it is not of God. Every believer, EVERY believer, must come in brokenness over their sinfulness. If anyone who claims to be a Christian has never been broken over their sinfulness, they were never born again.
Anyone who thinks they deserve Christ because of their own goodness, will not be born again.
Psalm 51:17
"17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart These, O God, You will not despise."
God despises those who think they are good enough to gain heaven and the favor of God. He loves those and has mercy on those who can face their sinfulness in truth and openness to confess it desiring to be cleansed by Christ. Anyone who thinks they are "cleansing themselves", cannot be born again.
Ephesians 2:10
"10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
2 Corinthians "7:1 Therefore, beloved, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that defiles body and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
We cleanse ourselves by reading the word of God and praying for God to do the work in us. If we are looking to cleanse ourselves by doing all the right things, we are not only not cleansing ourselves but heaping upon ourselves "self righteousness", thinking that WE are doing a good thing. It is Christ Who must cleanse us, but we must want Him to do it.
Read His Word, learn His principles while praying that He will build in you what He wants. When His desires become our desires, then we will walk uprightly, but we will not walk uprightly if we think we can follow His rules to become righteous just by knowing them and using self effort. Our righteousness is Christ, nothing of us.
Stop trying so hard to be good and begin trusting Christ to change us. When we become born again by trusting Christ, then is when we only begin the trusting, we must trust Him for everything after that.
Galatians 3:6-9 "6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” 7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith."
Faith for salvation is all we need, but faith to trust Him for everything else should follow. When we have decided to be good enough on our own, refusing to confess sin to grow in Christ, then we will miss many blessings of God for our lack of faith in Him.
1 John 1:9
"9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
God will not move us forward in spiritual growth if we will not confess sin, if our pride holds us back from confessing then so will our spiritual growth be held back.
James 5:16 "16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail."
We confess to one another to build relationships, without this relationships are destroyed.
The reason we have so many unresolved relationship problems and spiritual infant like responses to life, is because so many will not confess, they even defend their sin, raging at those who attempt to help grow them through teaching and dialogue.
May we admit pride, stop the pretense and begin to look at ourselves in truth, to be able to grow in holiness, and in many cases to become born again.
So many people refuse to admit their sinful attitudes because they see "admitting" as weakness. The very thing they think will make them "look" weak, will be the thing that "makes" them spiritually and emotionally strong. We need to stop gauging our spirituality by the responses of others and begin looking to Christ. The more we see Him, the less "wonderful" we look to ourselves. The more we look to others for approval the less likely we are to obey Christ and the greater our pride.
In my early twenties I became born again. I had an emotional response to the gospel when I was 12 but continued in sin until that day after I was married, that brought me to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. I remember the house, the circumstances and the place in the house, but I do not remember the exact date or day of the week.
The stronger I became in the Lord the more I realized that the contempt for me had little to do with any sin in my life, but rather had to do with other factors, perhaps jealousy over only God knows what, or the fact that my ideas and demeanor were changing because of my born again experience.
Those who were my friends liked me better when I was worldly, they loved the hold they had over me because of my sin. When I became born again they hated me for no longer having a hold over me. The unbelievers tormented me with phrases and mockings such as, "your such a goody two shoes", whatever that meant. They accused me of "faking" or of acting superior, but that was not my goal at all, I wanted them to find the same freedom in Christ that I now had. The joy was great in me, they couldn't stand this, they wanted me to feel helpless and hopeless. Even though they never left their sin to follow Christ, they had more accusations than a porcupine has quills, when the old life was gone for me, the new life was growing like a weed every day.
It was not only the unbelievers who no longer liked me, the self righteous Christians liked me even less because their high opinion of themselves didn't seem so high anymore. They desired worshipers, those who would look up to them for their "self righteousness", but I was no longer impressed with the pretense, I wanted the real deal, a relationship with Christ, even if it cost me everything. I actually believed that the believers would now like me for my new life in Christ, but the opposite turned out to be true, they were now meaner than ever, hoping they could get me to falter so they could accuse me of being a fake. The gossip got worse and the contemptuous actions on their part increased. I had done nothing against them to warrant disrespect or unkind treatment, they sought to use every kind act as a means of devaluing me.
You see, when we become born again we will experience the self righteous believers and the unbelievers to hate what we have become, forgiven and joyful!!!
These same people began to attempt to set me up for more sin with their insistence that I resume the same activities that I did before, in order to fit into their lifestyle. The believers wanted me to engage in meaningless superficial ritual and the nonbelievers wanted me to return to the sin I left behind. When I would no longer engage in their sin, the sin I left behind, or the rituals I began to loathe, they became angry, gossiped more than ever and excluded me from their gatherings, as well as gossiping to others who knew me in order to isolate me from all my friends and family.
One of the favored tactics of the devil is to accuse the brethren of past forgiven sins, sins that no longer occur. Once the feathers have blown in the wind from a slashed pillow, there is no collecting them all, they are out there for others to judge, even though the others do not know the whole story, nor do they want to know. Their love of hating believers is bigger than all of us, their lies are orchestrated from the pit of hell by the devil. He loves to cause others to be against believers through gossip and lies. It is all bigger than we, but Christ is bigger than all!
Revelation 12:10-11 "10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, he who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; and they did not love their lives so as to shy away from death.…"
When I attempted to have a dialogue with any of them to explain my life and give a deeper perspective, they became even angrier. I guess one of the hardest things I have encountered in my life is the intense resistance to conversation to explain things. Those who are guilty of their own sin, having nurtured their excuses for their sin and lies, hate anyone who is forthright, and truth is an offense to those who love their gossip.
These people didn't want to hear me say I was a sinner who had been changed by Christ, they loved their old opinion of me and mocked my new existence. In fact they would have enjoyed and loved me if I had remained in my sin.
I know there are many of you who can relate to these difficult relationships. Because we are hardwired to desire flesh and blood family to love us, this cannot be the case for most believers. Many if not most people who have come to Christ in earnest, will be despised by family members, often even "Christian" family members who hold themselves in high regard, as though they have never had to confess sinfulness.
Cultural Christians often attend church because they believe they are so good that God is pleased with them, since they have never done, in their minds, "the big stuff", they overlook the same attitudes that propagate the big stuff, but their fear of rejection keeps them from it. It's not about their devotion to Christ that motivates them, it is their love of being admired by man.
The need to feel superior to others and the love of being admired comes from self righteousness, it is not of God. Every believer, EVERY believer, must come in brokenness over their sinfulness. If anyone who claims to be a Christian has never been broken over their sinfulness, they were never born again.
Anyone who thinks they deserve Christ because of their own goodness, will not be born again.
Psalm 51:17
"17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart These, O God, You will not despise."
God despises those who think they are good enough to gain heaven and the favor of God. He loves those and has mercy on those who can face their sinfulness in truth and openness to confess it desiring to be cleansed by Christ. Anyone who thinks they are "cleansing themselves", cannot be born again.
Ephesians 2:10
"10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
2 Corinthians "7:1 Therefore, beloved, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from everything that defiles body and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
We cleanse ourselves by reading the word of God and praying for God to do the work in us. If we are looking to cleanse ourselves by doing all the right things, we are not only not cleansing ourselves but heaping upon ourselves "self righteousness", thinking that WE are doing a good thing. It is Christ Who must cleanse us, but we must want Him to do it.
Read His Word, learn His principles while praying that He will build in you what He wants. When His desires become our desires, then we will walk uprightly, but we will not walk uprightly if we think we can follow His rules to become righteous just by knowing them and using self effort. Our righteousness is Christ, nothing of us.
Stop trying so hard to be good and begin trusting Christ to change us. When we become born again by trusting Christ, then is when we only begin the trusting, we must trust Him for everything after that.
Galatians 3:6-9 "6 So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” 7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith."
Faith for salvation is all we need, but faith to trust Him for everything else should follow. When we have decided to be good enough on our own, refusing to confess sin to grow in Christ, then we will miss many blessings of God for our lack of faith in Him.
1 John 1:9
"9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
God will not move us forward in spiritual growth if we will not confess sin, if our pride holds us back from confessing then so will our spiritual growth be held back.
James 5:16 "16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power to prevail."
We confess to one another to build relationships, without this relationships are destroyed.
The reason we have so many unresolved relationship problems and spiritual infant like responses to life, is because so many will not confess, they even defend their sin, raging at those who attempt to help grow them through teaching and dialogue.
May we admit pride, stop the pretense and begin to look at ourselves in truth, to be able to grow in holiness, and in many cases to become born again.
So many people refuse to admit their sinful attitudes because they see "admitting" as weakness. The very thing they think will make them "look" weak, will be the thing that "makes" them spiritually and emotionally strong. We need to stop gauging our spirituality by the responses of others and begin looking to Christ. The more we see Him, the less "wonderful" we look to ourselves. The more we look to others for approval the less likely we are to obey Christ and the greater our pride.
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