Ever had expectations in your life and it just didnt quite turn out the way you wanted it to? From a Christian aspect, we have fallen into a spiritually low state. Its so sad to see countries around the world in hiding, being persecuted for worshiping and praising The King. And here we are, free Americans free to worship praise and proclaim the truth, but do we?
God is telling us that we need to examine ourselves and find what is hindering our lives and put our confidence in the blood of Jesus. THere are obstacles holding us back and once we find what those are we have to move forward and live out our faith in Christ.
Our big enemy is contentment.
One of the big milk companies make capital of the fact that their cows are all satisfied with their lot in life. What is a virtue in a cow, can be a vice to us.
In Phillipians, Paul professed that he had learned to be content with such earthly things as it fell into his lot. That is something else from being content with his spiritual attainments., With these he specifically declared he was not satisfied. (Phillipians 3:13-14)
Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint. Contentment within our spiritual lives is a mark of inward blindness. Our greatest fears as a Christian, is religous complacency. Which is one who believes he has arrived at a certain place spiritually and will not go any further, from this persons standpoint it would be foolish to do so. Believing that we have arrived and we have not.
Psalm 123 " To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens! Behold as the eyes of the servant look to their master, as the eyes the eyes of a maid to the hands of her mistress, so our eyes will look to the Lord our God until He is gracious to us, be gracious to us Lord, be gracious to us, for we are greatly filled with contempt our soul is greatly filled with the scoffing of those who are at ease, and with the contempt of the proud"
- see what the Psalmist is saying about being proud..
Have you ever met someone who quoted text, to prove they have arrived, when the havent...its dangerous to simply 'quote' text. Satan knows the text too, we must make sured that we read the text, know the text, and apply the text to our lives.
Our desires control our thinking, thoughts, and fears. We are the sum of our hungers. So what are some of your desires? A million bucks, a new house, a new companion, your happily ever after? Lets take a different approach to our desires, are they effected by peer influences like my friend has.. my neighbor got.. or maybe our social habits, reading habits or even personal habits we have. Pray about these. Let God expose your desires.
Psalms 42:1-2 "as a dear pants for the water brooks, my soul pants for you Oh God My soul thirst for God, for The Living God, when shall I come and appear before God?"
The Psalmist in these verses show that their longing all but consumed them! Longing for God that is. THeir longing propelled them onward and upward to new heights which alot of Christians only entertain the thought of having and doing, thinking they will never reach it. We as Chrisitans have fallen into a spiritually low state, with minimal spiritual desire. Alot of us rarely reveal any passion or thirst for God. We fear extremes and shy away from too much 'religion' as if its even possible to have 'too much religion' faith or holiness.
On occaision we see that one, that is cheered by the discovery of a saint willing and ready to sacrifice everything, for the mere joy of experiencing God in increasing intimacy with GOd. If this is you, You go girl/boy!
we cannot under rate anything God has done for us! we have to be thankful for everything, but we cannot stop there! PRess on! Press into the deep things of GOd. Insist on tasting the mystery of redemption. We have to keep our feet on the ground but let our hearts soar as high as it will, as scripture so beautifully puts mount up on wings like eagles (Isaiah 40:31) We have to refuse to be average! Refuse to surrender to our enviornment!
Most everyone, desires change, made over into something they desire to be, how easy in our walk to take for granted that things should be changed but dont want to work for the change. THink of an athelete going to the Olympics. are they going to have a steak dinner with fries and top off with a funnel cake for dessert every day? Go out for a night of fun before the big day? NO. THey work hard, running, working out, eating right, getting the right amount of sleep put everything into a gold, silver, or maybe a bronze. So our life, Spiritual Olympics if you will, first requires us to be totally transformed in order to run a race like this, where are you today in your spiritual olympics? Romans 12:2 the message to each of us not to be conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our mind, so that we can prove the will of God which is good and acceptable and perfect'
conforming to ourselves, leads to tragedy. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us we must have help from outside the self from above to escape sinful nature.
Lets look at faith-
Our faith in GOd is only as consoling as far as we trust Him. The truth is we have to allow faith to intrude our lives, shift our gaze away from our own self, our worldly desires. No its not easy. It can actually be disturbing, uncomfortable, even painful.
Authentic faith begins with understanding our place in Gods thinking.
Psalms 8:4 & Hebrews 2:6 .. hmm.. another one of those verses repeated in the Word. "what is man that you take thought of him, and the son of man that you care for him?"
- this is not an academic question, its not for sake of argument, it is an explination. The 'thought', or to be mindful of implies man is a fixture of Gods mind and comes to His rememberences continuously, constantly. Gods love for us us a hurt for HIm, He is deeply wounded by our sin, our bad decisions. Continually, constantly never sleeping He is always with us.
1 Samuel 20:3b 'but truly as the Lord lives, and as your soul lives, there is hardly a step between me and death'
--only a step away from death...Christian faith isnt so much what we say we believe but we have to live it, consistantly, for we are a step away from death.
2 Corinthians 3:18 expains that All things begin in God and end in God Time, space, matter life it moves from God (creation) and returns back to Him (death)
we have to open our eys to see whatever does not begin in and end with God is not worth our attention. Any intrest that does not gave God in it, is an enemy. We were created for God, in His image, we are to serve Him worship Him, admire and enjoy Him. Look at Adam, the result of the fall of man. Ended up just as Adam planned huh... no not quite.
Think of God as a sculpter, our life as the art. God chips away everything that is not part of the image of Christ, so that Christ can be revealed. We are to be Christ like, Hebrews 6:1 ' go on unto perfection'
God will stop nothing short of His will. It can be difficult. Help yourself, save yourself troubles, heartace - chip away imperfections, shed them.
It seems that at times we go through any length to get what we want. We cant get a job, we long for a companion, the doctors cant help us, whatever it may be isnt this precisely the reason we fear to desire. Life is hard enough as it is but to think that GOd himself is working against what we want... JOb 10:3 JOb cried out ' what do you gain by oppressing me? YOu hunt me down like a lion and display your awesome power against me" See .. even then the same desires existed. We live in a broken world, broken people, a lot of our heartache comes from these things we have to understand we cant arrange life the way 'we'want it no matter how hard we try, we just cant.
Isaiah 57:10 "you were wearied by all your ways but you would not say it is hopeless, you found renewal of your strenth and so you did not faint''
Psalm 131:2 ' I have stilled and quited your soul like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me' ---what a beautiful picture of contentness, no fussing, no tears, she just learned to..wait.
The time has come for us to stop playing games, we cannot win we are just delaying victory.
THere are 2 types of losses in life,
1: losses in which we have no control over - we cant determine when they happen, or how all we can control is our reaction to them.
2: chosen loss or spiritual surrender
I dont know what God is speaking to your heart about, in order for us to find that quiet contented soul we have to .. surrender all.
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