"Being" is Better than "saying"!

James 4:7-10
"Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up."

 
Why do so many Christians claim they are doing this but then argue against God when confronted with His words from the Bible?

 
Submitting to God is not just something we say, it is something we do because we love Christ. Just "saying" something has no power at all. Those prosperity preachers have had more influence than we realize when most of the population "say" more than they "do" because they are satisfied with pretending rather than "being."

The World Hates Who They Cannot Conrol

The world sees our confidence as a threat to them because they cannot control us.  Ignore them! Christ controls us, not men!

Those who want us to follow them, to become like them, will judge unimportant matters to discredit us, they are petty. Ignore them!

Some people notice our strength and call it defiance. They will see our independence and label it arrogance. Ignore them!

Putting Away Childish Things

1 Corinthians 13:11 "11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Those who live a lifestyle of pleasure remain in a child-like state living from adventure to adventure.

As they grow older when they can no longer have their adventures they slip into a sense of hopelessness, their adventures were their life and hope.

In between the adventures, there was emptiness and an expectation that one day soon they could dispel the emptiness with another adventure.

Those who are fixated on adventure into their old age and can no longer do them, talk non-stop about the adventures they used to have as though the mere speaking of them affords the missing adulation they once had in those "good old days."

Ecclesiastes 7:10

"10 Do not say, “Why is it that the former days were better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this."

Those who are walking with Christ and have learned wisdom enjoy every day in humble existence without the need for "an adventure" as the world sees adventure.

Wise people enjoy the simple things in life, the quiet things, the contemplative times that bring joy and peace. Their adventures are discovering a truth in the Bible that they haven't discovered before. Their prayers become more focused on Spiritual wisdom from Christ Who lives in them.

The life of an unbeliever bent on reliving their old adventures is one of emptiness and loneliness, but this is not the case for the born-again believer who lives for Christ contemplating His return and our home going.

Titus 2:13 "Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ".

Rebellious People Hate the Truth

All the rebellious people I know will mock whatever we say no matter how reasoned or true because their purpose is to discredit what we say or to invoke a reaction from us that they can hold against us.

The tricks and manipulations of the devil are legion but if we have been paying attention he has only a few battle tactics that he uses with everyone.

He rages, lies, provokes for a reaction, removes our support system through gossip, attempts to disarm us through physical and emotional illness and repeats and rinses over and over again to break down the one who serves Christ.

The good news is that we can ignore our emotions about what he is doing and proceed to follow Christ anyway, speaking truth anyway and remain determined to walk through everything with Christ.

So many Christians lean into their physical and emotional misery that they forget Christ is more powerful than the devil and that our God goes through with us in everything.

Not only that but everything we go through has a purpose that we may not always understand but can trust Christ in it.

We may have tears, mourning, and feelings of helplessness but those are only feelings, our Spirit knows it will pass and we need not allow those feelings to dominate or control our choices.

The Bible is the instruction book for us, it does not change merely because our feelings influence us. We must allow the Bible to be our influence, not our feelings.

So many people operate from feelings and because of this they make many unnecessary mistakes because feelings lie to us. Feelings say things are bad when they are good, they say things are good when they are bad. We must admit our feelings but never allow them to dictate our actions.

Admitting our feelings is a sort of cleansing, when we face them and evaluate them according to the Bible we can actually expunge them through the truth of God's Light.

Many times my feelings were strong about something, but when I began to pray and recall God's Word the feelings dissipated and rational reasonable thinking replaced those feelings.

Proverbs 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

When we do this the devil has no power over us and we become stronger than he while Christ fights our battles for us.

Hallelujah!

Let the Holy Spirit Lead

On another thread, I was told that the way Christians express themselves turns off atheists. The one writing the comment was mocking the answers of Christians as though because a fool would laugh at us this is reason to change how we say things. My answer was as follows:

I don't need to know the mind of anyone. They show us their mind by their deeds. One must know the bible to understand these things. Of course atheists laugh at believers because they are not able to discern the things of God.

1 Corinthians 2:14 "

"But a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned."

It is foolish to determine our words to placate the one who denies Christ. Athiests know there is a God they just deny His existence. I know this because when these types of people are facing a disaster the first thing they do is find a Christain to pray for them.

We choose what we believe, someone who denies Christ is not someone to worry about in how we say or do things. We speak according to the Holy Spirit not according to what man wants to hear.

When Christians begin dumbing down their message to manipulate the unbeliever into accepting what we say we are not walking in the Holy Spirit. Whether or not someone accepts our words is not a measure of how well we did in the delivery.

All the rebellious people I know will mock whatever we say no matter how reasoned or true because their purpose is to discredit what we say or to invoke a reaction from us that they can hold against us.

Ignore those who give you formulas for delivery when speaking with others. Christ knows perfectly what each individual needs and how he/she needs to hear it. Christ was gentle with some and harsh with others when He walked this earth and He knows perfectly what is needed in each individual situation and with each person.

Man tends to like formulas and things they think will work. How is it that man always thinks they know better than the Holy Spirit what is needed based on their own ideas? This is foolishness, we must walk in the Spirit, as He speaks through us and leave the result to Him.

Christ said everything perfectly and yet they killed Him for what He said. The apostles spoke the truth and they were persecuted and some martyred.

Those who place pressure on others to follow man's formulas are foolishly placing man's ideas above Jesus Christ.

God told us to ignore the ignorant man and proceed to depend entirely on the Holy Spirit.

John 16:13 "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come."

The Tests in Life

"The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson."

The tests of life are far more valuable than the tests in school. The tests in school give you information in your head but the tests of life give you practical experiences with all their nuances making us wiser if we learn from them.

Just knowing information in one's head cannot measure up to experiencing the real thing.

Gossip is a Relationship Killer