Live Life With God
Most people are thrilled that they can just survive in today’s world. Between working to provide for their family and fighting sickness or disease, I hear from friends who struggle to just get by. They love God and want to do His will but feel hindered by their circumstances in trying to follow God. Can you relate to this?
What I see happening and what I have done is to do more for God. In my mind, I must be thinking if I do more, God will love me more and the circumstances will change. When my doing does not change the circumstances the potential to become bitter, cynical, and blame God increases. It can become a mad cycle that spirals out of control and causes us to lose our faith. All due to the doing for God instead of allowing God to show us what is really going on.
As believers, it may start something like this:
1. I/You come to faith in Christ Jesus believing what the Bible says. Life seems different because it is. A supernatural work took place as I/you confessed Jesus as Savior and Lord. We kicked ourselves off the throne of our hearts and put God there, the rightful King.
2. Satan moves in with fear and doubt right away. Sometimes he uses others to cause that doubt, sometimes he causes circumstances and sometimes we get in our own way. It may look this from others or yourself:
a. You are the same person saying the same things, you are no different!
b. Your car breaks down, you get sick, your family mocks you!
c. Can it really be true, that God loves me after all I did?
3. Now we are at a crossroads. What are we going to do? Move forward or go back? The Israelites complained and wanted to go back to the food in Egypt, forgetting all about the forced labor and deaths they experienced while slaves. Their body and soul went completely against what they knew in their hearts that God had said.
4. Here is where we embrace God’s Word. Because we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose… and for Whom He foreknew (that is you and me) He also predestined, (what we are to do) to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8).
5. We must decide what and who we will believe, others or God? As we read God’s word, and hear others teach God’s word, we decide to renew our thinking from what it used to be and what it still might be to what God intends for it to be.
We have made a decision that we will believe God’s Word. That is faith in action because our spirit says Yes to God who is Spirit. The account in Mark reveals the need to believe!
Mark 9:23-24 – Jesus said to the man, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!”
6. As we stand at this crossroads, we decide to follow Jesus. Why would we turn back? Jesus asked His disciples; “Do you also want to go away?” They answered, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life (John 6:67-68).
7. As we sit with Jesus, the Holy Spirit reveals to us more and more of the nature of God. We learn to dwell with Him, letting Him into the crevices of our hearts. We embrace that we are human beings being transformed into the image of Christ.
8. Out of that transformation we get marching orders and do the things He shows us to do. Much of the do is in the Word of God. As we do for others, we are doing for Him, further strengthening our relationship with God. For example:
a. As we sit with Jesus He develops His character in us. When we do things for others, we are like Jesus, kind, loving, and patient.
b. When we are presented with a choice of what to do about something, we consider what the Bible says. Yes, What Would Jesus Do?
c. We think God’s thoughts and our words come out seasoned with salt and grace to the hearers.
We are (to be) different therefore what we do (our actions) is different.
Paul declared in the book of Colossians that Christ in Us is the Hope of Glory (Colossians 1:27). Not our own glory, that is pride and what the enemy did and continues to do, but God living through us as His Son, bringing glory to the goodness of God through us. It is a fulfillment of the Lord’s Prayer, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Sometimes looking back helps us in going forward. There were two trees in the garden that Adam and Eve were told about:
The Tree of Life and The Tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we come to Faith in Jesus we eat from the Tree of Life – That is Who He is.
The picture you see, by Lysa TurKeurst, says it all! How do we live our life with and for God? It is in the being, not the doing. Learning to live our life with God, means feeding on One Tree, Jesus, His Word, and learning His Ways. This is how we live our life with God.
Until next time, remember that the matter of the heart is the heart of the matter.
Dr. Michele
July 21, 2024
