Walking With God Chapter I, Part III

This week we get back on track with walking with God…and more specifically, different types of power sources. I want to explain some things first though.

First off, why is the knowledge of different power sources important?

1) We have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:15-16). This essentially means that God has given us the ability (although it has to be grown into) to discern all things (including people around us). Why do we want to do this? When we figure out what’s going on we can show them the love, teaching, and reproof necessary specific to them, to show God to them so that God may be glorified and the person be…encouraged.
2) Piggybacking off of number 1, all things that they do will flow from the power source they come from. Think about it. The fruit (or works) of the flesh are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders,[drunkenness, revelries, and the like (Galatians 5:19-21, KJV) while the fruit (or works) of the Spirit love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). See the stark contrast between Spirit and flesh?

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Why human reasoning? Because all those things seem pretty humanistic when we think about it. Every time someone in the Bible (or throughout history) was left to their own devices some sort of humanism came up. Well there are two essential kinds of human reasoning, and they are as follows:

Secular humanism: Secular humanism is a mindset of human reasoning that disallows God to show up in the business. They don’t desire God, but view humanity as “basically good” but has to work up a few flaws. What’s the flaw in this system? When someone goes back and works through the same set of flaws over and over again in humanism, they find themselves “broken” and immediately go into circles that would lead them to justify their behavior or allow them to blend in or fit in.

Religious humanism: Religious humanism is much different (and more dangerous than) secular humanism in that many operating out of religious humanism think they are connected to God. Based on that trip to the judgment seat after we die (Hebrews 9:27), that’s going to be a rude awakening for these folks. Why? Because religious humanists take a “god”, any “god”, and they use this “god” to justify their behavior patterns (to again say they are “basically good”). God has a set of Standards (Exodus 20:4-18, the Ten Commandments) and Matthew 22:37-39, but yet we can never meet them (Romans 3:23, Romans 7:7, 1 John 1:8-10). We must rather make our behavior submit to God, as opposed to the other way around…and have the appropriate God as represented by His Word (2 Timothy 3:16-17). In other words, the Word is designed to both uplift AND convict.

Godliness/The Spirit/Kingdom: The Kingdom says that humanity is no good and needs a Savior. It also says that those who received this Savior (Jesus Christ) will have everlasting life and have a guarantee at the judgment seat (John 3:16, Ephesians 1:13-14). The Law (see above) shows us how much of a “joke” we are next to God’s Standards. Even Adam, who had direct fellowship with God, couldn’t maintain his dominion over all things around him (this was the first commission Genesis 1:28-29, and the first commission to have self-control, Genesis 2:16-17). So thanks to Adam, we shall surely die…unless we get some Christ in our lives and plug into the Power.

Next week I will discuss how the different power sources orient us next to walking with God. Have a good week folks!!

Walking With God, Chapter I Part II

This week I want to go into 4 (not all the) really base fundamentals of our spiritual walk...

First of all….what is the spiritual walk? Well to put it simply, it is the day-in and day-out activities we have with God…whether it be us spending altar time with Him (altar time to be discussed later), prayer, fellowship with Him, fellowship in general, or anything we do that we freely allow God’s Order and Standards to penetrate our minds and shape our imagery, and thus, our behavior patterns. So how do you keep a solid spiritual walk? Later units will discuss more rote details of this process, but here are the four basic fundamentals.

1) We must know precisely where we are in our walk. The Word of God is designed to uplift and convict. If it’s only doing one or the other then we must look deeper into ourselves. The purpose of doing this is to know the very nature of our fellowship with God and get the most out of it. We have to freely let this be guided by God based on His Word (for example, the 10 Commandments in Exodus 20, or Christ’s Commandment in Matthew 22:37 [see previous unit about godly love]). Unless we comprehensively know both our strengths and our weaknesses, we cannot truly edify the Body and know our role in the Kingdom. Therefore we must examine ourselves at the time of fellowship, and there is no greater (as in more intimate) fellowship with God than Communion, which gives us the very charge to make this examination. (Ref: 1 Corinthians 11:27-32)

2) Know that whatever we do, it’s not enough. We inherited our default nature and bodies from the 1st Adam. We all know how that piece turned out…he was so focused on what God had given him (Bone of my bone flesh of my flesh anyone?) that he lost sight of what God wanted him to do. Genesis 3 God sets out the first punishment for sin after the first sin has been committed. And taking a closer look at the Bible, EVERY “great figure” fell (but Christ). Abraham (went into his concubine), Moses (lost his faith), David (slept with another man’s wife), Solomon (had a harem)…and the list goes on. Christ walked the ONLY sinless walk in recorded history, which makes sense because he’s God the Son. The rest of us? Well Romans 3:23 says we all have sinned and have fallen short. So no matter what, so long as we inhabit our physical bodies our PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS says “We a joke and we need Jesus”.

3) Know that it’s “okay”. No God doesn’t want you to sin. But He knows it’s going to happen…probably a lot. Our God is a long suffering God and gave us His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Salvation comes by Grace through Faith in Christ (John 3:16-18). We shouldn’t be sinning but even if we do, we have a mechanism of forgiveness to re-establish fellowship (1 John 1:9, to be discussed in several weeks). However, beating ourselves us is just as deceptive as the sin that brought us to that point. Romans 8:1 explains that there is no condemnation for members of the body (those in Christ Jesus). So we shouldn’t sweat that we sinned beyond comprehensively examining the sin and putting it and the cares that brought us to it to God. And thus we shall receive the power to defeat our iniquity by getting empowered by the Spirit (Romans 8, Galatians 5:22-23, Philippians 4:8)

4) Seek out God for everything that we do. Have you ever heard that term “What would Jesus do?” As cliché as it sounds, that should be our default setting. It clears up a lot of our insecurity and gives us a lot of insight. God is a faithful God and He gives grace and knowledge to those who genuinely seek Him out (Psalm 119:1-40). The very charge itself made by Christ is to seek out the Kingdom and its righteousness. (Matthew 6:33). A similar charge is to let our let so shine (Matthew 5:16) As any given Kingdom is a representation of the King, this is how we get close to the King.

Next week I'm going to talk about different power sources. Have a good week, and pardon the late send!

Walking With God, Chapter I Part I

I will start off with just with a brief introduction. Do you know what it means to be a powerful and productive believer? More important, did you know that this is what God wants for us all? Did you know that God wants us all to produce after Himself How do I figure? Let me show you.

There are two great commissions that God discusses in the very first chapter of the Bible. To go out and do two things: subdue/take dominion, and to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). God is the wisest thing He knows, and as we already discussed, God is love. So God loves us enough in order to give us these things that He knows in order so that we reflect His Image (Hebrews 1:3) and Likeness (Galatians 5:22-23). However, in order to do these things we must walk with God and defeat the things in our business that separate us from Him.

If we take a look at 1st and 2nd Corinthians, as well as many of the epistles, Paul takes a deeper look at the mechanism of things that separate us from God….you know, sin. However, we sin because our belief is not fortified in Him. Why do I say that? Because Philippians 4:6-7 tells us so. When we worry, we lose security (faith) in Him, so that leads us to sin, but when we go to seek Him out and defer the totality of our business to Him, then we get that peace that empowers us to go do whatever it is we need to do (Philippians 4:13). Let me just take a moment to give you a bit of a nugget to munch on. When reading Phi 4:13 in the amplified version, it says that my sufficiency is in the sufficiency of Christ (paraphrase).

Check it out on www.biblegateway.com if you don’t have access to an AMP Bible. It’s some good stuff to know that Christ is all you need.