It's About Trusting the Holy Spirit

During our time in the Word today, my husband and I were discussing James chapter 3 in which part of the discussion was about the difference between godly wisdom and worldly wisdom.

I recall the historical accounts of the ship the Titanic and the thinking of the people of the time that this massive and modern ship was "unsinkable." Even though there may not have been any real claims by the shipping company that the ship was unsinkable, the media billed it that way and the general populous enjoyed the concept so much that they really did believe it was possibly the first virtually unsinkable ship, a modern miracle made by men. The media even billed it this way, "even God could not sink her."

In pondering the pride of men and the worship of the inventions of man in our day, we see that man has the propensity to place their trust in what they can build and manage.

Our country, the United States of America, has billed itself, by various means, as an invincible entity against the world. We have won many battles with other nations on their soil, overcome civil war in our own country and held off invasions from aggressing armies. We have been surrounded by friends and oceans on all sides, leading us to believe that if we have offensive weapons ready, powerful ships and missiles, we are impervious to invading armies. So we thought and still think.

God has shown us that if He desires to take us away into captivity for our sins against Him, it can and will happen and all our pride and weaponry will not save us. Just like the story of the Titanic, pride ruled the day in trusting the machinations of clever and skillful builders of that great ship, just as we have been deceived to believe that the clever and skillful builders of our constitution and modern leaders will keep us safe from all aggressors.

God will take a hand with us for turning our backs on Him and His principles, no matter how smart we think we are. When man thinks He can out think God, shaking his fist at the creator of the world and get away with it, then is when our Lord is going to show us who is boss and in control.

If we desire to see this country turn around, we must stop looking to leaders with our Titanic like pride and begin to fall to our knees in humility and repentance for our arrogance.

Do we really think we can continue to hide the inner depth of our hearts from the very God who created us, Who sees all, knows all and can effect all. The day we realize that we only hide our hearts from human beings, who's opinion of us does not matter in the vast scheme of things, only to be laid bare anyway to the master of the universe, is the day we will fall on our faces before Him in brokenness and shame over who we are, rather than boastful acceptance of ourselves.

We must lose the self esteem we were brain washed to believe in, and seek the face of God, before He removes His wisdom and it is all over.

"Seek ye the LORD while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near:" Isaiah 55:6

John 16: Trusting Christ for His Solutions

John 16 clearly shows us that we are to depend on the Holy Spirit for our responses to the issues of life.

Often I encounter people who tell me "we have to be careful how we respond to others." My answer to that is that if I am being careful, then I am relying on myself rather than the Holy Spirit who lives in me.

Most judgments now by those in the church are based on psychology and worldly thinking, rather than on the principles of Christ. We need to stop being careful in the flesh and submit moment by moment to the Holy Spirit, who said, "I will give you what to say when you need it" He told us not to prepare our own words, but to trust Him for His Words.

When we are careful we are relying on worldly wisdom and gauging our success on the response of others rather than on the Holy Word of God. Let us stop being careful and begin submitting to Christ who lives in us. He can do it, if we have faith to believe He can, then we aren't careful just obedient.

This is the hardest message to get through to a culture that seems to have an answer for everything, with innumerable self help books and psychological methods for every situation, and often they differ from each other.

The truth is hard to discern in our "worldly wisdom" because no two answers are the same. God never changes, His ways are perfect, we cannot know all the ways He has for dealing with different situations, but He knows and it is from Him that we must draw from, His Word and His leading as we trust the Holy Spirit that lives in us.

We must pray, read His Word, and obey when prompted, no matter what the response. Remember Noah preached many years before the flood and no one would listen, they mocked him and his family was his only companionship. The response does not always determine the correctness of the delivery. Our delivery can not be based on our culture, but on the Holy Spirit and the principles of God.

Christ said, “you will be hated for My sake.” I am sure that Christ was criticized for wielding a whip at the temple, today He would have been arrested for assault. I am sure that He would have been judged by onlookers as mean and judgmental.

Our Christian culture is so out of whack when it comes to right and wrong, that no situation can be judged based on the reaction of the hearer. We have many believers who are embracing the wicked and bludgeoning the righteous for their disapproval of sin.

God’s ways work and mans ways do not, our cultural condition proves this. When the church embraces the methods of the ungodly to employ them with believers, we have moved into the realm of apostasy. We as believers must stop seeking the worlds methods for solutions and salvation and begin returning to the Word of God for our direction, in full obedience to what He tells us no matter the consequences, only then can we hope that God can use us to enlighten another believer, moving them back onto the path of righteousness that honors and blesses God.

Stop being careful in the flesh and become so close to the Holy Spirit that what comes out of our mouth and our actions will be Him and not us.

Is Christ's Love About Measuring Up?

Many years ago, I was taught and believed that we had a choice to get saved or to walk away from that salvation.  I had no sense of permanency or security in my walk with My Lord.  I questioned whether someday I may do something that God was displeased with and He would no longer love me and cast me aside for whatever that sin was.  

I believed this because my life experience was like that.  If I did not measure up to someone else’s idea of a “godly” person then I was not in the kingdom.  The problem was not sin in my life, it was how I viewed relationships.  Those who were supposed to love me, judged my heart regularly without even talking to me.  They would not listen when I needed a friend and didn’t care if I recovered.  For them it was about winning, they didn’t like the questions so their way of  “handling” me was to guilt me into submission without attempting to understand why I had the questions. 

I had such a hard time believing that I had the strength to carry on for Him or that I could measure up, after all, my life was fraught with the indoctrination from my childhood that I was of no value to my family or my community.  How could I ever be loved by God, how could He knowing me, love me.  I questioned God on numerous occasions, what sin would separate us, how many sins or how big did they have to be to incur the wrath of God, that He would throw me away.

I thought, what kind of God would tell us we could lose our salvation and then not even describe to us the detailed criteria of what can cause us to be thrown away.  

Or what kind of God would say "In Him you also [trusted], after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory"  Ephesians 1:13-14,  and then withdraw it when I had a weak moment. 

Most of my human experiences have been this kind of love, measuring up, looking good, doing all the right things that are approved of by those who are superior and your in, that is if you act the way they do, think the way they do or enhance them in some way.  If you embrace them with honesty or questions they can not answer, you become labeled as unworthy of their love.  I can see how many people who have not walked in the Spirit would act in this way.  They love to have the prominent places and seek out the “beautiful” people who will bring them personal glory.  Holiness and a deep yearning for the things of God are not necessary to live this grandiose life.  Only conforming to the culture you place yourself in and schmoozing others to like you will get you in.

I believed the teaching that one could lose their salvation because this is what people did, if I didn't measure up, they went away and rejected me, so I had the impression that this is what God does too.  I begged God to love me differently than people did, which didn't seem like love at all.  One slip up in my character and the people disappeared.  They not only disappeared but had no compulsion to come to me to try to save me, to snatch me from the firebrand.  My slip ups were not sin they were the crime of wanting more than a superficial walk with God.  I wanted answers to life situations in light of God’s Word, and most people wanted a safe, uncomplicated walk, that enhanced their life pleasurably, elevating them in some way. 

Is it possible that our view of God and our interpretation of Scripture come from our observations about people and their responses to us?  I am grateful that God is not like people. His ways are so far above mankind, that we have no ability to understand or carry out His righteousness.  We must have the Holy Spirit to walk with Him and we must possess the Holy Spirit if we are to remain.  If the Holy Spirit left us, as people do, and we are not saved by our works, then how would we ever get back again to possess the Holy Spirit, our works would not save us to come back. Oh my what a dilemma I struggled with before the Lord opened my eyes.  I saw no evidence in the Word that the Holy Spirit hopped in and out of people like a jumping jack because we didn’t measure up.  What I saw was a merciful and loving God who knows we cannot measure up on our own, so He gave us The Ultimate Helper, the Holy Spirit.   

I am convinced without doubt that we cannot lose our salvation. If we believe that God saved us after we chose and confessed our sin, and that Christ said in Ephesians 2:8 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; [it is] the gift of God," then we have to believe that God is the one who saves and we do not save ourselves through our works. If we know that we can not save ourselves through our own works then we have to know that we cannot keep ourselves by our works.

When God saves us, He gives us what we desire and that is to be forgiven and to be saved, then He does the work of saving, He does the work of cleansing and He does the work of keeping. God said 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone [is] in Christ, [he is] a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." God changes us into something we were not before.

We are however trapped in this body of death, Our soul has been overtaken by the Holy Spirit of God. Ephesians 1:13-14 says "In Him you also [trusted], after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory."

I would like us to take a look at some of the words in this verse, they are; Holy Spirit of Promise, Sealed, Guarantee, inheritance, purchased possession. All of these show that it is a done deal when we have been changed by God. When we realize that He changes us when we get saved, He makes two people one in marriage and He remains faithful to Israel in all His promises. All of these works are His and constant with His character. We cannot undo our salvation, and we don't want to. We cannot undo our marriage and if we are saved, we don't want to. God is a God of faithfulness even when we are not.

We do sin after salvation because God said that no one is righteous no not one, this is why God had to seal us with His Holy Spirit, to keep us. It is a salvation by works and inconsistent to say that we can't save our self but we can do enough good works to keep ourselves. Christ can not come off the cross, He said it is finished. HE will not ever go back to the cross, because "it is finished."

Now the problem is that, we see people who claim to be saved and have walked away, but God said in Matthew 7:21-23, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord , Lord', shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"

It is clear that many people who claim to be saved, will look so good that others looking on will not realize that they are not saved and never have been. In this passage God says "I NEVER knew you." They were never changed into a new creation even though they looked so good on the outside.

We do however sin, we are not sinless but we sin less, because God said that He is in the process of sanctification until the day we die. This is why God said in 1 John 2 "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." An unsaved person does not have an advocate with the Father, only His children do. If we see someone living a lifestyle of sin without conscience about it, then they not saved. They may go to church, pray in front of people, and even.....get this....cast out demons in His name...but they have never been changed because they have never trusted Christ. They may even have lived a good life, but are doing it in the flesh rather than under the control of the Holy Spirit. For me this matter is settled. The Lord gave me the "smoking gun" scripture in Ephesians 1:13-14, that settles it completely for me.

My God told me, "I will never throw you away because you do not measure up, you could never measure up.  When you fall I will pick you up and bring you back"  I remember the story of the lamb who wanders off from his shepherd. The shepherd does not let him go to fall over cliffs and die; he goes after him and breaks the legs of the lamb.  He breaks his legs and then carries him so that the lamb learns to depend on the shepherd and will not continue to wander away after that.  God sometimes breaks our legs as believers, but he never throws us away as people do. He is pure love and knows the propensity of man to wander.  

Do we love people as God loves us or do we love people the way humanity does, with disinterest in one another. Associating only with those we think “measure up.”  Do we do the easy thing focusing on feelings and fun, rather than the hard work of rebuke and discipline praying for and hoping that our loved one will be restored?  God does walk away from rebellious pretenders, but He never walks away from His lambs.

A Heart Grown Dull

 “The heart of the people has grown dull.”  Matthew 13:15

What does it look like when we observe a heart that has grown dull?  Perhaps a dull, cold heart is one who is no longer interested in learning the principles of God and one that holds little regard for the welfare of others. 

A heart that has grown cold may be one that thinks primarily of its’ own pleasures and needs and considers not how it will effect another person. 

God says, “Let nothing be done in selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.  Let each one look out not only for his own interests but also the interests of others.”  Philippians 2:3-4  We can see that the teaching of “self esteem” has no place in the life of a believer and has done great damage in our culture.

When we hear someone move into a long dissertation of explanation as to why they sinned or why they believe we don’t have to follow the commands of Christ, in other words, excuse making, we have encountered a heart that thinks primarily about its desires rather than living a holy life before the Lord.  When the Lord is our focus we are deeply convicted over sin and cannot rest until there has been open confession and restitution has been made in a very real way to God and those we have offended.

So many people think that as long as they say “sorry” that is all that is needed and everything is made right, even though attitudes and actions do not change.  The Lord says that for repentance toward another person to be complete there must be first brokenness in our own spirit, and an attempt to restore what was stolen from the person, whether it be dignity, possessions or reputation.  When we love God first as God said was the greatest commandment, we do not rest in our soul until we have done all we can do to rebuild the relationship between God and man.  The second commandment is covered in these actions, when the Lord said that the two greatest commandments are;

                                                                                                                    “Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself, on these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”  Matthew 22:37-40. 

Notice that God does not explain that we need to learn to love ourselves. We are born doing that without thinking.  It is a learned skill to love others more than ourselves.  We don’t have to teach children to be selfish, they do that automatically; we have to teach children to be unselfish and to share because we are born loving ourselves too much and it comes naturally to take care of ourselves too much.

When we love God with all our being and our neighbor as ourselves, we will desire to obey God on all fronts, when we fail, we are broken over it.

When we make ourselves the primary focus in all that we do, it is not possible to love others before ourselves.  Even our good deeds toward people will be based on our own pleasure or self importance.  God says these deeds are as “filthy rags” as stated in 2 Timothy 3:2.

“For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good….”  2 Timothy 3:2-3.

Selfishness is the human condition from birth without trying; it is only through Christ that we can be otherwise.

When we are most concerned with growing in holiness, we will be attentive to Christ’s commands more than any other thoughts that filter through our minds throughout the day. 

When we encounter people, our first thought will be “What would God want, how can I please Him.”

When we seek excuses and justifications for our ungodly behavior we are not seeking holiness or God’s desire, but our own will and way. 

“For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.”  2 Corinthians 7:10

When we live in the flesh on a regular basis, perhaps we were never changed into a new creation, but are attempting to do as the rich young man did, that is trust in his own ability to follow the Ten Commandments.  I am confident that the young man who thought he could attain heaven by following “the rules” was not at all obeying all of them as he thought because there was pride in his goodness.  To think that we can follow all of them enough to earn heaven, is a matter of pride, the same pride that caused Satan to believe he could attain godhood in heaven and the same pride that Satan tempted Eve with in the garden, “you can be like God” he said to Eve. 

One who does not love Christ above all else, within the church, is one who places rules above spiritual growth.  There is only correction given when the human rules are broken while holiness is ignored.

I have heard it said that “One of the elements of holiness is the absence of self awareness.”  (Author Unknown)

When holiness is paramount in our daily lives, we will avoid sin, being repulsed by it. We will run unhesitatingly in the reverse direction.  When we observe an individual who embraces sin without conscience toward it, then we know this person is unrepentant, and has not been changed into a new creation by God, because all who have been changed by Him, hate sin.  Shame over sin is one of the first signs that the Lord has changed a heart in someone. 

In our culture today there is no shame, nor is there repentance for evil deeds.  We are told it would be this way in the end days.   Pride is at the root of all calamity and shame.  Our country is becoming known around the world as the “liberal” nation, we have shamed ourselves in the sight of the rest of the world because we have used our prosperity for our own indulgent pleasure, breaking every commandment as though they were mere minor suggestions for a better life, not realizing that we have offended a holy God and every arrogant sin has broken fellowship with Him.  The Ten Commandments have been removed from our public places, by God.  He is angry that we have had no regard for them.  We say we have regard for them with our lips but in action we negate them, every day.  

“These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”  Proverbs 15:9-10

“When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom.”  Proverbs 11:2.

                                                                                                                    “…the unjust know no shame.”  Zephaniah 3:5

We are as in Jeremiah’s time:

“Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; nor did they know how to blush.”  Jeremiah 6:15

                                                                                                                    “"There is no fear of God before their eyes."  Romans 3:18

Our country has become increasingly unjust in all its dealings, our leaders have indulged in corruption and lies.  We think it is “them” that are at fault for this down turn in our culture, however it is the fault of everyone in the culture, all those who tolerate wickedness for various reasons, even those who do not practice wickedness but validate those who do.  We have wicked leaders because we have lived a lie, accepting in our lives and the lives of our friends the commandments of God flagrantly, independently and with aggression.  Many things we think are not wicked are in fact evil, but we do not go to the Lord to ask for purging of our souls from our sin, rather we defend it. When we are confronted we fight and argue for the right to sin and justify that which we know is sin, but do not want to be held accountable.

“Who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”   Romans 1:32

It has been my observation that even those who do not believe in the evil we see in our families and community, approve of them by accepting the people involved in the evil as though they are doing no wrong.  When we do not shun evil but embrace the people who do it, we are partaking in their sin. 

“Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people’s sins; keep yourselves pure.”  1 Timothy 5:22.

                                                                                                                   

There is only one solution for this mess we find ourselves in and that is to repent, seek the Lord as He commanded with all our heart soul and mind.  If we do this He will reveal Himself to us and cleanse us from all our unrighteousness.  Our nation is beyond political help now, our focus must be on the Lord rather than political saviors.  Christ alone can save us now and not through our begging that He change our leaders, but our appeals to change our hearts.  Let us stop shouting at God and demanding more blessings, but let us humble ourselves on our knees in humility asking for mercy.