We are creatures of both natural and spiritual construction. It is God’s desire that our natural selves be disciplined, and come under the authority of the spiritual, but that wild and unschooled nature is not a passive student in this transition. Have you gained control over your natural self? Are you waiting for God to make this choice for you? Well, He has His desire, but the choice remains yours.
Have you given up everything you are to Jesus Christ? It is easy to lay down the sin, and bad things in our lives, but have you also laid down the good? Abandoning those things that we naturally identify as good is the most profound test of our faith. Being able to leave behind anything that is contrary in order to immerse ourselves in God’s will for us is the epitome of faithfulness and obedience.
We don’t enter into heaven to live an eternal life because we deserve it. That kind of thinking is based upon our own vanity and arrogance. Our salvation and everlasting life is sealed by covenant, and that covenant comes by God’s acceptance of the death of Jesus Christ as our blood sacrifice. Only through Him can we be redeemed, perfected, and sanctified. Only through Him can we claim the covenant of grace.
Do you feel grief today before God? Is your heart breaking within you for some sin that convicts you unrelentingly? I am not speaking about a superficial knowledge of having done something wrong, but rather the deep understanding of a sin that emanates from your very soul. Are you seeking repentance for wrongdoing that has brought you to godly grief?
Are you in a covenant relationship with God? Have you accepted the blood of Jesus Christ as the offering that sealed your covenant with the Lord? Has God’s forgiveness of the world’s sin through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus become your covenant? Many of us see the cross and say “this is the covenant”, but it is only a sign. We see the rending of the temple curtain and say “this is the covenant”, but it is also a sign. Then we see the empty tomb and say “this is the covenant”, but it too is only a sign. The covenant is forgiveness, and the blood of Jesus is the offering that seals it. Is His blood upon you? Are you forgiven?
Do you have your body under control? Have you let yourself separate your spirituality from the physical manifestation of that faith by which your body represents itself? By this I am not asking if you treat yourself as a narcissist, but do you do those things that are godly and good with yourself, and treat your body as a temple of God? Our spiritual and physical portions walk hand in hand in faith, and in our bodies we find the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
Are you concerned because you are constantly at war within yourself? Does it bother you that there is a struggle going on inside you between good and evil, holy and unholy, or salvation and damnation? Well, take heart because although this conflict is the natural state of man, we have a champion who not only helps us realize the good within ourselves, but helps us to achieve victory over the evil by having already defeated sin for us.
Do we depend solely on our own intellect to search out the wisdom of God? Do we study and ponder His Word ourselves in search of truth there, or do we use our intelligence like a shovel to feed our spirit God’s Word, while it works hand in hand with His Holy Spirit to seek and sift through it for those things that are of great spiritual value? When we depend upon our intellect alone it brings us very few of those wonderful revelations that we recognize as being of Him, but when our spirit is engaged with the Holy Spirit, it mines the most fantastic treasure for us from the glorious depths of God, and we encounter those wonderful “Ah Ha” moments of faith.
Are we approaching our faith through study and hard work to further perfect ourselves each day? Every evening during our nightly prayers do we kneel before God and tell Him of our academic progress? If this is so, and it is all we do, He will speak words similar to these back to us...”Yes, but when I walked in the garden where were you?” or, “As I love you, do you love me?” God wants our journey towards perfection to be more than memorizing scripture, or blind obedience. He wants the true manifestation of our studies to be a loving relationship with Him. Our academic perfection is not His ultimate goal for us.
For a God who created the universe, breathed life into man, and on more than one occasion raised him from the dead... what is death? We are so small, and our experience so limited to this body, and this existence, that all of our judgements have become founded on this little slice of physical reality that we inhabit. Because of this limited view we have of life and death, as if through a drinking straw, we convince ourselves that we know what it is… but do we? Let’s take a higher level look at death.
God works in us each and every day. He brings us to the doorstep of His will, and then perfects us as our efforts join with His in accomplishing it. However, none of this achievement is possible without His efforts in us, and none is possible by our own doing. So when His will is done, in some manner, how should we respond to others when they acknowledge it in gratitude or amazement?
Do we understand that Jesus Christ had to die in order to secure our redemption, or do we think He was just a mythical character meant to describe morality to us in a how-to book called the Bible? Friends, the account is real, and not a story; it is the single greatest event to occur since creation, and is complete with all the miracles, wonders, suffering, awe, and yes, death. The Bible is the one true account of faith, and the never ending story of God’s love and creation that continues today.
Are you one of those people that will give someone the shirt off their back, but you won’t accept a gift yourself? Does it make you uncomfortable when someone does something for you; so much so that you have to repay them in some manner before you can rest? Then grace is probably your worst nightmare!
Do we think that by withdrawing from the world, by separating ourselves, that we will become more pious and that this will help us consecrate ourselves by removing all temptation? Well this is a false hope, and if we look at Jesus we understand that He inserted Himself fully into the world. He didn’t run from it, no, He overcame it.
When we first meet Him, God doesn’t just rush into our lives, He treats us much like I learned to treat stray or feral dogs and cats when I was a boy. Whenever I would meet an animal for the first time I would approach it very slowly, then when I was close I would stop, stoop down very slowly, and in a humble voice, talk to it reassuringly until it realized that I was there as a friend.