Messing Lives Thinking They are Excellent

If you're like me you like cooking and cleaning hacks. Watch out though not to believe everything you see.

ROLLING ON FLOOR LAUGHING

Today I saw two videos, one was a woman showing us how to be a 1950's housewife in her home. When she was through some of the areas got cleaned but every shelf was disorganized and what I would consider to be a mess. This woman received many compliments on her "hacks" but even though the floor was swept and the dishes were done her house looked like a hurricane came through.

Then another video I saw was a man showing us hacks for cooking. Everything he showed us was twice as difficult and using more utensils than I would ever use or need that required cleaning. His kitchen was messy but he thought he was really showing us something.

I must say though there have been some very good videos with homemakers who were really taking their job seriously. Everything was folded in a special way to bring order while aesthetically pleasing. Their homes were very clean and orderly.

I have seen cooking hacks that were very good time savers.

Is it possible that many people who think they have a good way are fooling themselves? When we compare ourselves with ourselves we often are diluted into thinking we are special, even so special we would share it on Youtube, but the reality is we have a long way to go to achieve excellence.

2 Corinthians 10:12 "For we dare not number ourselves, or compare ourselves, with some who commend themselves. For in measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, they are not wise."

These videos remind me that when we become proud of ourselves we cannot be objective enough to see our own messes. Unable to learn better ways of doing things we are satisfied to be praised for messy work.

When we can see ourselves in truth we can improve rather than stagnate. False praise from people should not be satisfying, doing our best will be enough, no praise is needed.

2 Corinthians 10:12

"We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they show their ignorance."

It is wonderful to feel good about a job we have done, but if we need praise from others then we have crossed the line into self-aggrandizement.

It is not boasting to share an accomplishment with a close friend, however, expecting praise and desiring it even more than the pleasure of a job well done is not as satisfying as so many think.

I didn't comment on the videos I watched, it didn't seem important to me but I sure felt embarrassed for the people.

Changed by Christ

Matthew 1:21

"21 She will give birth to a Son; and you shall name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

When someone has faith in Jesus Christ they desire to be changed by Him into a new creation. He saves us from our sinful nature, beginning the cleansing process from our salvation experience until the day we die. We are in the period of lifelong purging of the filth from our hearts.

God says our hearts are as filthy rags. Isaiah 64 6

We are made perfect in our Spirits but our flesh battles against our Spirit all the time. We have to battle the thoughts the devil places in our heads that tempt us to sin against God.

Matthew 26:41

'Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. '"

We practice holiness by resisting the devil, each time we do he leaves and does not try that temptation again. However, he will attempt new temptations often using our "feelings" to make us weak.

James 4:7 "

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

If someone asks forgiveness for a particular sin while not seeking Christ, they would still go to hell. We must trust in Christ asking Him to change our very nature of sin to be born again. It is His work, not ours. Those who think they can cleanse themselves without the work of Christ cannot be born again.

Matthew 23:25-26 "

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

But how does one clean the inside of the cup? It's simple, we cannot clean up ourselves by our own efforts, it is only trusting in Christ that will cause Him to cleanse us.

Do not think you will never sin again, but remember that He can cleanse us through His discipline to be able to have fellowship with Him.

Those who are born-again and do not resist the devil and fall into sin will be disciplined by their Father in Heaven.

Hebrews 12:4-11

A Father’s Discipline

4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;

5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

Nor faint when you are punished by Him;

6 For whom the Lord loves He disciplines,

And He punishes every son whom He accepts.”

7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?

10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

11 For the moment, all discipline seems not to be pleasant, but painful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

We must not be so proud as to think we perfectly resist the devil when he tempts us. We very likely no longer commit the big sins everyone can see, but if we are proud we will exhibit the sins of pride, self-righteousness, superiority to others, lying just a little so others may not notice or be able to prove it was a lie.

Pretending to be something we are not, kind to one person we wish to impress, and rude to the person we see beneath us is the sin of pride, not to mention all the other violations of the Scriptures, assuming we know the other person when we only have snippets of gossip and guesses based on the desired belief about someone.

When we operate from a stance of superiority and judging things that are not our business we violate the following Scripture.

1 Corinthians 13 "1 Corinthians 13:4-8

4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant.

5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered,

6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails; "

How about boasting about ourselves? Lacking humility to be able to confess wrong attitudes, or being unforgiving when others confess to you.

There is the sin of coveting what doesn't belong to us through displays of jealousy and refraining from encouraging someone who is doing a good thing because of that jealousy.

There are many sins of the heart that we can hide from others but often forget God sees them even if no one else can prove it.

Covert narcissism is the most insidious sin of all. It demonstrates a person's desire to harm others so secretively that they can deny it and no one else can see what they are doing, leaving the offended person without proof or allies.

Since the sin of 2 Timothy 3 (we call narcissism), is growing so rapidly, worse with each new generation we can expect to encounter the 2 Timothy 3 mentality every day in every way.

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Difficult Times Will Come (Ragingly Insane Times)

3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.

2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,

3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,

4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these."

The key to navigating through this world is to recognize what people are doing, knowing it has nothing to do with us and be ourselves led daily by the Holy Spirit.

The goal of the devil is to cause prideful reactions in us that manifest defeat. He wants more than anything for believers to be no different from the world. The more we look like the world the less influence we have on those around us.

When we 'love our enemies" we will tell the truth" but refrain from reacting to their response to the truth. If we are prideful we will fight back, allowing the devil to have his victory.

If we are confident and have the love of the Lord we will not fight back in a tit-for-tat argument. We will state the truth and walk away confident that God has this, He can use it without us.

Those who must win, those who fight until everyone has been upset are those who not only possess pride and self-will, but they also lack faith to allow God to do His Work. God doesn't need them, we must obey but ultimately the final say is God's.

If we do not have pride we will not fight to win as those who must win to feel superior. Our confidence in Christ will allow us to remove ourselves without having the last word. This is faith, that we allow Christ to have the last word in the lives of others, we are not responsible for them.

Born-again believers walking with God never have to use tactics such as mocking demeaning, battering, and forcing because we know we are not responsible for the outcome, God is!!!

Romans 12:19

"19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord."

Apostasy in the Church

Many people do not see the world getting worse because they are not reading their Bibles nor are their eyes being opened by the Holy Spirit. They are so entrenched in the cares of this life that they think life is good even if they disagree with some things going on here on earth. They have accepted all the sins their families are doing just to remain friendly with them.

Most people I know who say they are Christians have entirely accepted divorce and remarriage in violation of the Word of God. Even if they do not do it themselves they are defensive about the practice when it comes to their friends and family.

The people in the churches easily rage and reject anyone who brings the Bible to clarify an error or challenge a wrong doctrine. Correction is the new hate speech even among church attendees.

2 Timothy 4:3-4

"For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths."

Galatians 4:16 "Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?"

Those who wish to use the Bible as the standard and see Christ as the head of the church are demeaned, mocked and excluded from the group who wants to make up their own humanistic standard rather than obey God.

Luke 11:42-44 "…42 Woe to you Pharisees! You pay tithes of mint, rue, and every herb, but you disregard justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. 43 Woe to you Pharisees! You love the chief seats in the synagogues and the greetings in the marketplaces. 44 Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, which men walk over without even noticing.”…"

John 15:18-25

Disciples’ Relation to the World

18 “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you.

19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.

20 Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well; if they followed My word, they will follow yours also.

21 But all these things they will do to you on account of My name, because they do not know the One who sent Me.

22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.

23 The one who hates Me hates My Father also.

24 If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My Father as well.

25 But this has happened so that the word that is written in their Law will be fulfilled: ‘They hated Me for no reason.’"

Most of the church attendees in our world today are apostates, they are the world and they are pretenders, therefore they will hate authentic believers who have been born-again. Pretenders sometimes are very subtle, hard to spot and confusing at times. They seem humble and kind until we disagree with them, then they turn into raging wolves because what we saw on the outside was a deception.

Matthew 23:27-28

27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you too, outwardly appear righteous to people, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Anytime we experience someone who is embarrassed or hostile to the word of God even though they say they are "Christians", we are watching a Pharisee, a religious person who does not have the Holy Spirit and has never been born-again.

Here is a description of the last days church:

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Difficult Times Will Come

3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.

2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,

3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,

4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,

5 holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these."

Notice these people are those who have "A FORM OF GODLINESS", but deny Christ in their actions.

Matthew 15:7-9 "…7 You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you: 8 These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. 9 They worship Me in vain; they teach as doctrine the precepts of men.’ ”…"

God tells us to get away from these people. In our region of the country, it is difficult to find anyone interested in prayer and Bible study. Those who are deeply led by the Holy Spirit are few and very much alone. Some have even been asked to leave gatherings because they are to fanatically Biblical Christians. Those who have not been asked to leave have been driven out by rejection and cliquiness.

When we find a group that refuses to use the Bible but thinks they are loyal to the Bible, when they quote passages our of context to fit their desired belief we have met an apostate church.

I have met many people who say they are a Bible believing church when they violate more of God's Word than they obey. They use the Bible like the Catholic church uses an amulet or idol. Instead of searching the Bible and asking the Holy Spirit to show them truth they seek out writers who agree with what they like, and I almost never hear anyone saying they asked the Holy Spirit about anything.

John 16:13 "

However when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth; for He shall not speak from Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will show you things to come."

Nowhere in the Bible does God say any man will lead you into all truth. He may use someone else who is led by the Holy Spirit but even that person must be tested by the Word of God.

1 Thessalonians 5:21 "21but test all things. Hold fast to what is good."

Isaiah 8:20

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

Many people will claim things that are not true, the test is to challenge them with the Bible and see what comes out of them. If they are hostile that is the clue they have never been born again or they would love to discuss it in humility to glorify God. Hostility is always a sign of an angry self-righteous spirit who trusts in himself or other men but do not have the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 10:14, "as Jesus sends out his disciples (two-by-two), He declares, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”

Those who love Christ and desire above all else to follow Him will never become hostile at the mention of the Bible, they will lean in and love that a discussion is about to happen.