PRIDE

One of the most destructive sins a Christian deals with is pride. If you are a Christian thinking that you don't deal with it.... just no. You do. We all do. 
Pride looks comes in all different forms. It isn't something with a single definition. It's something that sneaks up on us in many different ways where we least expect it.

Some great verses warning us about pride are:
"Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before stumbling." Prov. 16:18
"Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation." Rom. 12:16
"For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes, and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say "You sit here in a good place," and you say to the poor man, "You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool," have you not made a distinction among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives?" James 2:2-4
"But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble." James 4:6

What does pride look like? The most basic type of pride that I would dare say every Christian has dealt with, is dealing with, or will deal with is the kind that thinks we have it all together. Just when we think we have the Christian life down and figured out, is when we are about to fall. It is unpredictable, meaning we MUST be depending on the Spirit every day.

The next type of pride is the kind that thinks we are better than others. This may be counting ourselves as more righteous than others or judging others for not being like us. I think the temptation for many people in the United States (especially women) is to judge based on appearances. A) Why does it matter what someone is wearing or how they fix themselves up? and B) Who are we to be the ones to determine what is in or out of style? Appearances aside, this kind of pride makes us think very highly of ourselves in general. The danger here is that when we serve god, we give the glory to ourselves. Here's the thing. God will not use someone to do his work if they are doing it for their own glory. 

The last kind of pride I want to mention is the kind that keeps us from admitting when we are wrong or have messed up. We all know that stubborn person who never admits they are wrong. Don't be that person haha.  On a more serious note, when we act like we have everything together and ignore our mess ups we miss out on God's grace! God gives grace to the humble, and is opposed to the proud. As Christians we are to boast in Christ in ALL things. When God has blessed us with something or given us an opportunity to serve Him, praise Him by thanking Him and by telling what he has done for us. On the other hand, when we mess up God welcomes us back to Himself with open arms! Praise Him by telling others what He has done!

This is where people may disagree with me. I think a majority of the time the church is so concerned with "keeping a good testimony" or a "good witness" that we hide the fact that we all mess up and are human! Now I do NOT want this to sound anti-church, because I want to promote unity in the church, not cause people to leave it. The church will never be perfect because it is made up of a bunch of sinners, however, we do worship a perfect God. Anyways, with that being said, the church is supposed to encourage one another and work together keeping each other accountable. How are we to keep each other accountable if we all act like we have everything together? We keep a good testimony by living by the Spirit and living a life consecrated to Him. Everyone makes mistakes though.We belittle God's grace when we hide what He is doing in our lives because we don't want to admit our struggles. I'm not saying we go around waving every mistake we've ever done like we are proud. We do, however, relate to those dealing with sins we have dealt with in the past, be open about asking for prayer over current struggles, and NEVER lie about things of the past. To act like something that God brought us through never happened is to rob Him of His glory! Praise Him for using sinners like us to display his mercy, love, and grace!

Legalism or Surrender?

What is the biggest issue hurting the church’s testimony today?

In my opinion, legalism and those who excuse their sin in trying to flee from legalism.

Matt Slick defines legalism as “the excessive and improper use of the law (10 commandments, holiness laws, etc).  This legalism can take different forms.  The first is where a person attempts to keep the Law in order to attain salvation.  The second is where a person keeps the law in order to maintain his salvation.  The third is when a Christian judges other Christians for not keeping certain codes of conduct that he thinks need to be observed.”

Now even though legalism is a really big problem in the church. I’m not going to be addressing the issue itself. I’m going to address the problem I see more in my generation—people saying I can go party, drink, watch dirty movies, read filthy novels/magazines, have sex or close to it, listen to whatever music, and fill my head with whatever I want BECAUSE it’s legalistic for me to get rid of those things to work my way to God.

While YES it is legalistic to do those things just to work our way to God and merit righteousness, WE ABUSE GOD’S GRACE WHEN WE LIVE BY OUR FLESH.

Galatians 5:16-26 16 says, “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery,[a] fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.”

This passage really says a lot about living by the Spirit, so don’t just read it as a list of do’s and don’ts. First off in verse 16 when it says “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh”, the word lust has a different connotation in Greek then we have. We say it with an evil connotation, but in Greek lust of the flesh refers to the desires of the flesh (music, entertainment, works of do-gooders, etc.) There are many things which themselves are not evil, but they take the place of spriritual things. Secondly, after the list of the works of the flesh it says “those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” This implies continuous actions. Christians are not perfect and will mess up, so don’t think that messing up one or two times is going to send you to hell. Draw near to God and thank him for his grace when you mess up and flee the sin you are struggling with by the power of HIS Spirit. Next, notice that it says, “the FRUIT of the Spirit is..” Fruit in this passage is singular! That means they are wholistic. We cannot say well im doing good with love, but patience is a little iffy. They all run together under love. We cannot earn them. The Lord must prune us and make the fruit grow in us. J. Vernon McGee says, “The problem is that we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice, but when the altar gets hot, we crawl off. We are to ABIDE in Christ if we are to produce fruit.” Now let’s look at verse 25 when it says, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” Walk in this passage is stoichomen in Greek. This word is the basic, elementary meaning “to proceed or step in order”. It means to learn to walk. Just as we learn to walk physically by the trial and error method, we are to begin to walk by the Spirit—it is a learning process. Lastly, this passage ends with “Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” Don’t let the Christian walk be a competition. Don’t evaluate your life by comparing yours to other peoples. It’s God’s place to judge, not ours. J. Vernon McGee comments, “We are not to challenge and envy one another. We are to get down from our high chairs and start walking in the Spirit. The Christian Life is not a balloon ascension with some great overpowering experience of soaring to the heights. Rather it is a daily walk; it is a matter of putting one foot ahead of the other, in dependence upon the Holy Spirit.”

Now that we’ve broken down Galatians 5:16-26 im going to kind of switch directions.

Because of the lack of Christians living by the Spirit, I think many of us have become discontent with the Lord. Our hearts have turned from Him to our flesh for satisfaction.

Sinclair Ferguson says, “Contentment is the direct fruit of having no higher ambition than to belong to the Lord at His disposal.”

If the main focus of our life is to have fun, get a good job, find our soulmate, and live the American dream then we will never find contentment. Our hearts must be fixated on Christ with furthering the kingdom of God as our main objective. The battle for the placement of our hearts is real and we are often oblivious to it. Ephesians 6:12 says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Satan and his forces are working at all times to steal our contentment. This is where living by the Spirit comes back in. Don’t let Satan choke our your contentment by giving in to partying, drinking, watching movies and listening to music that feeds your flesh, reading an erotic novel.. It’s a cheap trade and those things WILL leave you empty. We don’t give up these things to earn our own righteousness, for we know that Christ has imputed us with His righteousness! BUT we stay clear of these things to guard our hearts and starve our flesh. It is not legalistic to guard our heart. Proverbs 4:23 commands us to do so. It is being wise.

1 Timothy 6:6 says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.”

So let our prayer be that we find our contentment in Christ alone. Pray that God will open our eyes to any judgemental and legalistic bone in our bodies. Pray that God will show us where we are feeding our flesh. Pray that God will prune us and grow us in Him, and spend time abiding in Him. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.

Abide, Rest, Wait

"He made us with a capacity for the highest enjoyment. He made us with a capacity to enjoy Himself. There can be no joy higher. Because there is no one higher than God."- Eugina Price

God made us for Himself, and He alone can satisfy the longings that He created us to have. Also, not only is He the only one who can satisfy, but he is also the only one who can do the work that he asks of us. I think many times christians try to serve their way to satisfaction in Christ, and while that does bring joy to our hearts, Jesus is the only one who can make us truly satisfied. As humans it is our natural tendency to talk about our works and our salvation, but unfornuately we emphasize these things and the blessings of God more than we do about our actual Saviour Himself!"

"We trust him for the initial process called salvation then we try to grow, increase our faith, abide, and be peaceful while Jesus Christ stands reminding us with the simplicity and majesty of God himself that 'without me ye can do nothing'" -Eugina Price

The only way for us to grow in the Lord, serve the Lord, and experience His blessings, is for us to simply abide in Him. Nothing more. Nothing less. We have complicated things by talking so much about what is expected of Christians rather than talking about Jesus Christ. When we try and be good by ourselves, it is an epic fail, and im sure you don't need me to tell you that. We oftentimes look at the Bible and Christianity in general as a list of rules and standards to live up to. We are trying to fight off our sins and work our way to heaven while Jesus has already said "It is finished". Now we have the freedom from worrying about making sacrifices to pay for our sins like the old testament christians had to do. We can just abide in Jesus, and if we are truly abiding in Him, we WILL become more and more like him. This is the key to being sanctified (being made holy like Christ), to abide in Him.. not to work our way to Him. John 15:4-7 says,

"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you."

These verses say it plain and simple. We cannot do anything apart from Christ, but if we abide in Him we will bear much fruit!

We ask God for safety, prosperity, peace, growth, and many other blessings, but how often do we ask God just for Himself? Do we want Jesus or His blessings? Yes, His blessing are great and He wants us to enjoy them, but it is a package deal. For instance, let's look at peace. This is a gift the entire world is begging for. How do we experience peace? We can't just think our way to peace. We must trust got to get rid of the enemies of peace. God is a holy God and cannot dwell where sin is. Therefore, when we are living in sin there cannot be peace in our hearts. The only way to stay out of a lifestyle of sin is through Jesus Christ. There is no way to go around Jesus and straight to his blessings. He is the door.

"Fellowship with God is something one dare not cover, for it smothers to death."

So I encourage you to open up your Bibles and spend time in prayer this week, not asking only for God's blessings, but asking that He reveal Himself to you. Spend time abiding in Him, dwelling on who He is and what that means for your life. Spend time resting in Him, resting in the freedom we have received through Jesus. And spend time waiting on Him. Don't lose hope in what he has in store for you. God has perfect timing that we most of the time do not understand. So just focus on abiding in Him and He will lead you where He wants you to be. Everything will fall in place.

“I can of myself do nothing to glorify thy blessed name, but I through grace cheerfully surrender soul and body to thee.”