THE FIRST POSITION OF THE BELIEVER
Greetings in Jesus:
If you have not as yet; take the time to pray with me before we start! Father: we give you glory and praise for what you are about to begin to deliver to us in the Spirit and heart of your Son Jesus. I ask Lord that you will open up our minds and hearts to your Spirit today. Help us to receive the nourishment needed from this word to strengthen us to stand by your side and to take actual part in defeating the enemy in this world. I pray this will begin to draw us closer together as a body in Jesus so that we can actually stand and be one with you in all things...Amen.
If you are like me when I first came to Christ I had a concept of things being completely different in life after I came to Christ. In fact when I gave my life to Jesus at first I did have a since of weight being lifted from my shoulders that gave me a feeling of great freedom. I can still feel that freedom today, but it has taken on a completely different sensation from what it was at first. I remembered things like I needed to give Him all of my burdens, and so I started giving to Him all of the things I could think of that laid all around my life that felt like I needed to deal with. I can remember going down that shopping list of things that I wanted from God like a child making up a Christmas list. I can also remember that I didn't really seek to get into the word of God all that much because I didn't want to run into something that was too hard for me to deal with. Instead I would tend to sit back in church and absorb what ever came my way
What I did not see at first was that the things I was doing so well at giving to God were all surface things that were simply laying around me, but that was to be only the beginning of what God would require of me. When we begin to build our relationship with God it is like any other relationship in that it must be built upon our ability to trust. The problem is that unlike any other relationship we have we cannot see God in the way we can see others around us so the problem is we cannot see His face or see His reactions to what we do and say. We also fail to realize that God needs to be able to build up trust in us like we build in Him. Most people don't realize that from the start we very quickly look on our relationship with God in terms of it being long distant instead His presence right beside us. We tend to treat God at best like a long distance pen-pal instead of someone dear and very close to us. If we could see God's reactions with our own eyes how much better could we relate to Him?
The real problem is in developing trust between us, and on our part that comes simply by testing His word for our lives. That is how my journey started with Him, because at that point I had such a horrible trust issue with anyone else in life. I gave my heart to Christ at the age of 13 officially ( in church) but I had a relationship with Him in some respects since I was 5. My life has changed so dramatically over the years that I had gone from the innocence of being a friend to God to the crushing realization I needed salvation. After that I went through my service years, and had my beliefs crushed by the world around me by the deceit of what I was taught to be the values that God had instilled in all men. By the time I was in my mid 20's all that I had held onto had been shattered and I was left to hold on to the pieces laying at my feet. What I had found is that all of the training I thought I had was for nothing when I continued to hold to a doctrine from a denominational view. For me I had to start again from scratch to rebuild from the rubble of my life. By that time I had nothing but rubble in my life both physically and spiritually so it was fairly easy to start over. As I questioned everything around me I came back to the question of whether or not God's word was still true to my life, so I began to challenge that idea. I approached God differently than I ever had before; it wasn't in trust but in the need for proof that He could be relevant to my life.
In order for me to do that I had to come out of hiding from God, and that terrified me, because this time I knew that it wasn't the same old games with church that I had been playing all of my life; this was going to be between me and God. I began to look around me for things that I could do without in my life as a beginning place to trust God's truthfulness with, and I spent a few years building up a trust within myself to continue to give God those things that bothered me...I found once more that His word was trustworthy, but that did not cause me to trust Him. Every time I was able to give some small part to Him and found that He was faithful to me it drew me a little closer to wanting to know more. You see deep within my heart I wanted a real relationship with Him because I knew I needed something solid in this life to believe in, but at this point I could no longer trust myself either. It was at this time of my life God's Spirit began to teach me about the pieces of our lives being given to Him so that our lives could be changed completely. I realized that salvation is not the same process as the church is teaching that has you making a statement of faith in Christ and then never dealing with it again. It is the beginning of a life long journey that continues to pull you deeper as Christ controls more of who you are. What are these pieces of our lives and how does God use them to build with? Join me next time to find out what happened to me. May you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
If you have not as yet; take the time to pray with me before we start! Father: we give you glory and praise for what you are about to begin to deliver to us in the Spirit and heart of your Son Jesus. I ask Lord that you will open up our minds and hearts to your Spirit today. Help us to receive the nourishment needed from this word to strengthen us to stand by your side and to take actual part in defeating the enemy in this world. I pray this will begin to draw us closer together as a body in Jesus so that we can actually stand and be one with you in all things...Amen.
If you are like me when I first came to Christ I had a concept of things being completely different in life after I came to Christ. In fact when I gave my life to Jesus at first I did have a since of weight being lifted from my shoulders that gave me a feeling of great freedom. I can still feel that freedom today, but it has taken on a completely different sensation from what it was at first. I remembered things like I needed to give Him all of my burdens, and so I started giving to Him all of the things I could think of that laid all around my life that felt like I needed to deal with. I can remember going down that shopping list of things that I wanted from God like a child making up a Christmas list. I can also remember that I didn't really seek to get into the word of God all that much because I didn't want to run into something that was too hard for me to deal with. Instead I would tend to sit back in church and absorb what ever came my way
What I did not see at first was that the things I was doing so well at giving to God were all surface things that were simply laying around me, but that was to be only the beginning of what God would require of me. When we begin to build our relationship with God it is like any other relationship in that it must be built upon our ability to trust. The problem is that unlike any other relationship we have we cannot see God in the way we can see others around us so the problem is we cannot see His face or see His reactions to what we do and say. We also fail to realize that God needs to be able to build up trust in us like we build in Him. Most people don't realize that from the start we very quickly look on our relationship with God in terms of it being long distant instead His presence right beside us. We tend to treat God at best like a long distance pen-pal instead of someone dear and very close to us. If we could see God's reactions with our own eyes how much better could we relate to Him?
The real problem is in developing trust between us, and on our part that comes simply by testing His word for our lives. That is how my journey started with Him, because at that point I had such a horrible trust issue with anyone else in life. I gave my heart to Christ at the age of 13 officially ( in church) but I had a relationship with Him in some respects since I was 5. My life has changed so dramatically over the years that I had gone from the innocence of being a friend to God to the crushing realization I needed salvation. After that I went through my service years, and had my beliefs crushed by the world around me by the deceit of what I was taught to be the values that God had instilled in all men. By the time I was in my mid 20's all that I had held onto had been shattered and I was left to hold on to the pieces laying at my feet. What I had found is that all of the training I thought I had was for nothing when I continued to hold to a doctrine from a denominational view. For me I had to start again from scratch to rebuild from the rubble of my life. By that time I had nothing but rubble in my life both physically and spiritually so it was fairly easy to start over. As I questioned everything around me I came back to the question of whether or not God's word was still true to my life, so I began to challenge that idea. I approached God differently than I ever had before; it wasn't in trust but in the need for proof that He could be relevant to my life.In order for me to do that I had to come out of hiding from God, and that terrified me, because this time I knew that it wasn't the same old games with church that I had been playing all of my life; this was going to be between me and God. I began to look around me for things that I could do without in my life as a beginning place to trust God's truthfulness with, and I spent a few years building up a trust within myself to continue to give God those things that bothered me...I found once more that His word was trustworthy, but that did not cause me to trust Him. Every time I was able to give some small part to Him and found that He was faithful to me it drew me a little closer to wanting to know more. You see deep within my heart I wanted a real relationship with Him because I knew I needed something solid in this life to believe in, but at this point I could no longer trust myself either. It was at this time of my life God's Spirit began to teach me about the pieces of our lives being given to Him so that our lives could be changed completely. I realized that salvation is not the same process as the church is teaching that has you making a statement of faith in Christ and then never dealing with it again. It is the beginning of a life long journey that continues to pull you deeper as Christ controls more of who you are. What are these pieces of our lives and how does God use them to build with? Join me next time to find out what happened to me. May you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
Comments
Post a Comment