New Year - 2013

I recognize that as a Christian I have a rosy outlook on life and that is due in part to my lot in life.  If I have the blessings of health, and a job with income coming in to support my family with a home and food, all is well.  It tends to give me a sense of self-worth and satisfaction that I am working for a greater good.  And it also helps me to recognize that God does listen and answer my prayers when I come to Him.  This in turn brings contentment. 

  

1 Thessalonians 5:13  (NLT)  Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

God brings about the situation of a man’s life to challenge the soul and to test the spirit.  This is not for God’s benefit, but for man’s benefit.  I find this doctrine missing in many of the Christian circles I have encountered lately.  I used to think as a young Christian that this testing was tantamount to punishment, but now with many years of maturity behind me, is see these times are the times of discipline/testing or proving grounds.

Hebrews 12:11-13 (NIV)  ¹¹ No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. ¹² Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ¹³ "Make level paths for your feet," so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

Oh how much God wants us to trust Him, even to the extent of placing us in extremely difficult situations so that He can demonstrate how much He wants us to trust Him for our entire sustenance, not just for our health, money, housing or food but for our entire sustenance.  Our entire confidence in His sufficiency alone.

No matter what anyone tells me, that concept is a tough thing to get my head around, mainly because of how I have been raised to believe in self-sufficiency.  I like Paul have these struggles in the flesh.

Romans 7:14-21 (GWT)  ¹⁴ I know that God’s standards in Moses’ Teachings are spiritual, but I have a corrupt nature, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I don’t realize what I’m doing. I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶ I don’t do what I want to do, but I agree that God’s standards are good. ¹⁷ So I am no longer the one who is doing the things I hate, but sin that lives in me is doing them.

¹⁸ I know that nothing good lives in me; that is, nothing good lives in my corrupt nature. Although I have the desire to do what is right, I don’t do it. ¹⁹ I don’t do the good I want to do. Instead, I do the evil that I don’t want to do. ²⁰ Now, when I do what I don’t want to do, I am no longer the one who is doing it. Sin that lives in me is doing it.  ²¹ So I’ve discovered this truth: Evil is present with me even when I want to do what God’s standards say is good. ²² I take pleasure in God’s standards in my inner being. ²³ However, I see a different standard at work throughout my body. It is at war with the standards my mind sets and tries to take me captive to sin’s standards which still exist throughout my body. ²⁴ What a miserable person I am! Who will rescue me from my dying body? ²⁵ I thank God that our Lord Jesus Christ rescues me! So I am obedient to God’s standards with my mind, but I am obedient to sin’s standards with my corrupt nature.

But God put His own desire in us so that we would trust Him, and be obedient to Him alone.

Romans 8 : 1-4 (GWT) ¹So those who are believers in Christ Jesus can no longer be condemned. ² The standards of the Spirit, who gives life through Christ Jesus, have set you free from the standards of sin and death. ³ It is impossible to do what God’s standards demand because of the weakness our human nature has. But God sent his Son to have a human nature as sinners have and to pay for sin. That way God condemned sin in our corrupt nature. ⁴ Therefore, we, who do not live by our corrupt nature but by our spiritual nature, are able to meet God’s standards in Moses’ Teachings.

It is amazing that this truth comes up again and again, and it probably will until the day I die.  The finished work of Jesus Christ dying on the cross that paid the ultimate penalty for our sin so that we would not be beholding to sin in our mind or body any longer.  We are free to realize that God has a place for us to occupy in His Kingdom, this freedom comes from God Himself as He witnesses to our spirit that it is true.  

If there were a New Year’s resolution that I would truly desire to keep, it would be that I would always keep that truth in the forefront of my mind as I walk out this Christian adventure.  It’s truly not about me, it’s about Him!

Here is a song I had heard early in my Christian walk called Discipline, I still refer back to it for personal encouragement.

Click on the red & white arrow in the center to listen

Hebrews 12:10-13 (NIV)

 ¹⁰ They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.¹¹No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

¹² Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ¹³ “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.