All in Christian
Have you ever asked for healing prayer and received relief from your illness as a result? When this happened did you elevate those who prayed for you? If someone sick came to you for prayer, and as a result of your praying for them they were healed did you have a feeling of accomplishment as if you had done this, or felt some small part in the miracle? If either of these is true, then you have misappropriated God’s glory.
What songs do you sing when you are with your friends? Do you sing popular songs of today, old favorites from the past, folk songs, holiday songs, campfire songs, or perhaps drinking songs? Well, we are told in Ephesians that as believers we are to remain sober, greet one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs as we sing to the Lord, and to be filled with the Spirit. How should we interpret this? Is singing anything other than hymns taboo?
My devotional reading this morning was about learning and unlearning from a Christian perspective, and it brought back memories of those things in my life that I had to let go of as I relearned them by replacing them with the truth that the Word of God shows us to be true. Sometimes we advance in faith by being willing to let go of what we thought we knew.
Do you find yourself to be at war within? Are you in the midst of a battle between your mind and your body, between the weakness of your flesh that is so often made to kneel before God, and the spirit which actually worships Him? We never have to look far as we seek to understand if there truly is both a physical and a spiritual world, because we live with one foot in each, and this tenuous stance threatens constantly to destroy us as our spirit works to tame the man of flesh who walks towards sin.
We can’t earn our salvation by doing good works, and yet we are saved, and as a result of that salvation we are meant to do good works. This sounds rather confusing doesn’t it? Well on the surface it may appear so, but it is really quite simple. Our admission to eternity is a gift, but once we receive it there will be good things for us to do... not because we must, but as a result of our conversion, and the desire that love instills in us.
We wait on God for those things we ask of Him in our prayers, the healing, the provision, the protection, and sundry other requests, but even more than those, do we wait on Him to reveal and return His Son Jesus Christ to claim us? Do we pray every day, throughout the day, for the return of Christ, or are we perfectly satisfied in this life? Certainly we have daily needs in this world to pray for, but none greater than the homecoming of our Lord Jesus.
Are you in synch with God? Do you ever hear His voice giving you something to do, and then ask Him if He is certain that you should be doing whatever it is? On occasion the Lord can ask us to do things that seem so bizarre, and as a matter of fact appear to defy logic. Why was Jesus asked to tarry until Lazarus had died before He went to Him? Wouldn’t it have been much easier and made more sense to heal Him before he died? God has a purpose and a plan for us, and although it might appear impossible to to us, or even unwise, in the end it makes perfect sense.
You claim you are a child of the one true God, and you have accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, you may have even been born again in the spirit, but are you really living a spiritual life? Have you crucified your old self, or does that you of the past continue to haunt and dominate who you are? Your answer might be that you pray every day, but heathens can string words together... only when you are living a truly spiritual life, and your old self has been left behind, can you walk spiritually, and pray with the power you have been promised!
Have you ever received a divine healing, or perhaps known someone who did? When this occurred did you praise and glorify God? If not, why? Have you heard tell of people who were miraculously healed, and yet you were skeptical, or doubted they were ever sick in the first place? If so, then why? In our modern society, we are reluctant to acknowledge God when healings occur... why is this so? It is because our faith is under attack by unbelievers and we have succumb to their influence. It is Fear in some form.
Are you being a disappointment in your faith, and a worry to God? This is one of those questions we should ask ourselves from time to time. Ephesians 4:17-32 contains guidance for us pertaining to the new life we are living in Jesus Christ. Our question then becomes, are we living it fully as the Holy Spirit reveals and teaches us, or are we causing our God to worry over us?
When you sit at the feet of Jesus are you teachable? Do you humble yourself and listen intently to every word He says, or are you a know it all, and keep interrupting with your own two cents? Jesus was gentle and humble when He taught, and we are to be this way as His pupils. How do you approach your spiritual instruction? Think about how you enter into your lessons and ask yourself “Am I teachable?”
How are you walking through this life? Are you doing so while loving your family, perhaps some folks at church, and a few friends, but simply tolerating everyone else, or maybe even disliking some? We divide ourselves into groups... we belong to this church and not that one, we are from this town and not that one, we believe this and not that, we are this race and not that one, and the list goes on, and on. We love some, tolerate others, and dislike or even hate the rest. Does this describe you? Step back and take a good look in the mirror; be honest because your salvation depends on it.
What does it mean when scripture tells us to rest, be quiet, and trust the Lord? How does it sit with us when it says that this is our strength, and our salvation? To us this sounds so foreign because we feel like there must be something that God would have us do. We want to be actively involved like the young David who used his sling to slay Goliath. Yet in many scriptures we are told that by just sitting in the presence of God, and waiting we will experience our greatest strength... yet we resist this.
Does waiting on God seem tedious to you? Perhaps it has become this way because you have the idea that He is doing nothing while you wait, and that He continues on doing nothing until at long last, in a moment suited to His good pleasure, He suddenly cares enough to act. Well nothing could be further from the truth, and waiting should be an active effort on our part in which we watch Him at work.
When we have fully accepted the Holy Spirit to reside within us we are declared to be a child of God... not by human birthright, but by power which comes through the resurrection of Jesus. It is at that moment in which our spirit receives the entirety of the power promised to us. Are you prepared to submit fully to The Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and our Father’s will?