Do you tremble when faced with hardship? Do overwhelming odds cause you to run, or look for a place to hide? Do you surrender to sin, or to the unrighteous because you don’t see any way to be victorious? Well, if your cause is good and within His will, and if you believe that God can never be defeated, then you should not fear, or lose heart. God gives us certain victory.
If you have proclaimed your love for God, and Jesus Christ, then don’t make peace with evil, and don’t come to terms with sin. There is no room in your life for a peaceful coexistence with the very thing that desires to destroy you.
Are you resisting the urge to get on your knees today and ask Jesus to truly come into your heart because you don’t feel worthy? Have you toyed with believing, and tried to lead a good life so that one day you might make yourself good enough for Him? Well faith in Christ does not have perfection as a prerequisite, and walking towards Him is not a self-help endeavor, Jesus didn’t give His life for the perfect, He gave it for the lost, the sinners, the imperfect. He gave it so that you could ask for forgiveness and receive it by grace.
How do you love God? Do you love Him like you say you love the taste of an apple, or some other sweet fruit? Maybe you love Him like that good book you read the other day? I hope neither of these is a true comparison of how you love God because we are to love God as He loves us... like Jesus loves Him.
As Christians we are a people set aside, and endowed with a special and remarkable view of each other, authority, and the world. We live apart from the natural order of the world around us, and yet we are able to coexist with it, and function within it, until our savior Jesus Christ returns. We do this by taking on the Spirit, and character, of God, and Jesus Christ. Are you succeeding in remaining Christ-like in the midst of the world’s chaos?
Where do you make your spiritual home, and what do you do in service of the King... our God? Sometimes those whose job seems menial on the surface are of great value to God. Those who do things that are of value to the Lord live in many places, but those that serve His personal needs such as the servants that set His table, and prepare the meals, live with the King. However, the Lords who manage His lands live elsewhere... scattered across the Realm. So do you serve God, and if so where do you dwell?
Do you wrestle within yourself for the prize, which is your soul? Are you at constant battle with your worldly nature, and Satan for possession of your soul? Well, be of good cheer, because you have a champion that goes before you who is mighty, and wins every battle... Jehovah Nissi!
In faith, like in our daily life... we move from dawn to dusk and back to dawn again as we move through our days. God created light in our lives, and thus separated it from the darkness. Are you currently walking in the light of day, or enduring a night? Both are natural, and although we are much more comfortable in the light, we learn to lean on the Lord in the dark, and we trust in His comfort and protection as we sleep.
When you have conversations with God, how do you pray? Do you have long and repetitive talks where you repeat yourself over and over again, do you concoct an ornate prayer, or perhaps you use demanding language as if trying to corner God by using His own word and promises as legal documents? My advice this morning is to be humble, considerate of who we are talking to, reverent, concise, and most of all do not turn your prayer into a show.
Have you conquered the bold sins in your life, but still have those little nagging sins that seem to fly under the radar? You know the ones... those seemingly insignificant habits like white lies, and occasional gossiping, that just don’t feel bad enough to be concerned about. Besides, you have come so far, and cast off such large sins! Well friend, the little or subtle sins can destroy all the progress you have made... they are the enemy within.
Do you make excuses for sin? Do you make room on the seat beside you for sinful people? Do you find it noble, or gracious, to greet sin with a smile and a handshake? So often today we hear excuses made for allowing ourselves to coexist, tolerate, or even fold sin into our everyday lives. How do we approach sin in our lives? At what point does it stop being tolerated, and begin to influence our lives?
Do you feel the tug of the Holy Spirit against your heart? Perhaps you think of it as a subtle yearning, or even a curiosity that you can’t resist. However it is that you initially experience it, this is God reaching out to you, and Jesus softly saying “Follow me.” It is the same for each of us, whether we are wealthy or poor, tall or short, thin or plump, sick or well, but it always finds us the same... as sinners, and the promises are the same also... salvation, righteousness, glorification, and eternity...
Today is Memorial Day, and is a federal holiday in the United States; it is a day in which we remember those who have fallen in military service to our country. It is appropriate on this day for us to read or recite Psalms 91 which is known commonly as the soldier’s prayer. On this day my mind wanders to a different kind of soldier as well, the Christian soldier, and the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers”. It is hard to separate soldiers from their faith in God... it is so deeply called upon in the heat of battle... both physical, and spiritual.
Do you carry around a heavy load of stress, and anxiety that comes from all the problems you have in your life? Do you keep repeating “The Lord won’t put any more on me than I can endure.” as if that were scripture? Yet, the problems keep mounting and you are about to break? Well that saying isn’t scripture, and the Lord never intended that we solve our own problems, but rather that we bring them to Him. We were not created self-sufficient; we were made to need God, to love Him, and be worshipful of Him.
Are you a driven person? Do you run at everything you do whether it is work, play, friendships, relationships, or even your faith? Are you known by monickers such as hard working, industrious, unrelenting, or other such descriptions? Being driven is a personality trait that often gets in the way of our faith. It is valued by society because we are creatures bound by time, and it lends well to works, but to God the true value is in perfection, purity, righteousness, and holiness. How do we reconcile these two ways of approaching life, faith, and eternity?