Becoming God’s Man

Temptations beyond you can handle – 1 Corinthians 10:13

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No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide a way out so that you may be able to bear it. 1 Corinthians 10:13 CSB

 

God will never give you more than you can handle. The people that claim this usually reference this verse; but is that what is really being said right here? Let’s take a look and see just what Paul is stating.

 

“No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity.” First we see that all temptation we face is nothing new, any temptations and trials we encounter are essentially just the same as they faced thousands of years ago. What this means is that what you struggle with in regards to temptations is no different than what the first century Christians faced, or even the ancient Israelites. This means even sins that are related to issues that seem to be modern issues, like sins related to the internet, are just the same old sins just with new packaging. So what does this mean? It means that there are no sins that we will be tempted with that will surprise God.

 

The next part is where the concept of God not giving us more than we can handle comes in. “But God is faithful; He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.” If we were to just leave it at this then yes God will not give us more than we can handle in regards to temptation. The thing is with the next part, “but with the temptation he will also provide a way out so that you may be able to bear it.” In other words God expects us to turn to Him when we face temptations, that is why Paul can state God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able. God wants us to rely on Him, to keep our eyes and focus on Him in all circumstances; just look at Peter when Christ was walking on the water, as long as Peter kept his eyes on Christ he was okay but once he lost his focus Peter started to sink.

 

So will God give us more than we can handle? If we keep our focus on God then no we will never encounter more than we can handle because we are relying on God; but if we are relying on ourselves and doing things in our own power then we will constantly finding ourselves in situations where we are encountering more than we can handle.

The Greatest Commandment – Matthew 22:38-40

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Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:38-40

When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was He answered by stating it was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” He then followed it up with “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Stating that the Law is summed up by these two commandments.

When you look at the Old Testament Law and more specifically the Ten Commandments you can see that the motivation and driving factor is all wrapped up in love. The reason for the Jews to keep the law was not to make them righteous but to express their love for God who had declared them righteous and set them apart from the other nations.

The laws and commandments dealing with our relationships with others illustrates the concept of having love for our neighbor, to treat them as we would want to be treated. If we are of a healthy mind we wouldn’t want others to lie to us, steal from us, hurt us in any way in the long term. The concept of love for our neighbors fulfilling the law is much deeper than this however. When we love our neighbors, we are essentially showing our love for God. John tells us that we cannot love God if we don’t love our brother, and Jesus states that keeping His commandments is how we show our love for Him. In other words to love God with our whole being we first need to love our neighbors. This is why Jesus gave the two commandments when asked about the greatest commandment, because you can’t fulfill the greatest commandment without the other.

Are You A People Pleaser? Matthew 6:3-4

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But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Matthew 6:3‭-‬4 ESV

What’s your motivation? Why do you do what you do? Are your actions done so that others’ may see what you are doing and so you get praise for it, or would you rather not be recognized for what you do?

In these verses placed within the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is touching on this subject. You see the religious elite of the day were known for publicly displaying their righteousness. If people were watching they made sure to make themselves look good. They would pray elaborate prayers, throw large sums of money into the offering, if it would get the people to look at them and comment on how “good” they are they would do it. In Matthew 6:1-2 Jesus steers the people away from this thinking, telling them not to act this way, but rather as mentioned in verses 3-4 to do it in secret.

What Jesus is getting at here is not to do the seemingly impossible of keeping one part of your body from knowing what another is doing, but rather our actions should be done in such a way that glory and praise is focused on God. The pharisees were all “look at me, look at me!” While Jesus tells us that we should be going “look at God, look at God!”

Jesus states that those seeking the praise of the people already have their reward, that is because rather than seeking God’s glory and God’s favor they are seeking the praise of the people and to have their egos stroked. So they have gotten exactly what they are seeking; but those that seek God’s favor, those that do good in secret, will receive God’s grace as a reward.

So I ask again what is your motivation? Do you seek the praise of others or do you seek to please God?

Christian Fellowship – Hebrews 10:24-25

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“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” Hebrews 10:24-25

Why is fellowship important? What is the purpose of being a part of a local congregation? I remember hearing R.C. Sproul telling the story of a pastor that while at a church picnic talked to a member of his congregation that rarely attends. The guy told the pastor that he didn’t need the church, he was part of the universal church and doesn’t need the local fellowship. The pastor then took a white hot coal off the grill and set it aside. Ten minutes later he told the guy that that coal was white hot, but now since it was not with the other coals it has cooled off and become ineffective in it’s duty.

This is what the author of Hebrews is talking about here. You see when we are part of a local congregation the fellowship with other believers helps to make us effective in doing God’s will. I like how some translations will say that we are to provoke one another. You see when we are in fellowship with other believers we are constantly pushing and challenging each other to further deepen our relationship with Christ. Our faith should be such that when those around us encounter us they want to better their faith, which in turn gets us to want to do the same; a sort of one up manship in regards to deepening our faith, or a faith feedback cycle where our faith spurs on that of those around us and their faith spurs us on. So which are you like, the useless piece of charcoal off to the side, or part of the community fulfilling its purpose?

Romans 12:1 – Who takes first?

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I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Romans 12:1

What is worship? How are we to worship God? Looking at Romans 12:1 we see that worship consists of being a living sacrifice. What does this mean exactly, what does it look like to be a living sacrifice? A lot of it comes down to the concept of humility. I know it seems like humility is something that is mentioned constantly, but that is because it is central to our faith. The concept of being a living sacrifice means we are not just day by day but instant by instant laying aside our will and our desires and looking towards God to receive His will and His desires. This means in order to be a living sacrifice we take ourselves out of the equation and place God first in our life.

You see worship is what we place our energy, priority, and focus on. What we worship is what we place first in our life. The problem though is that we often make a list of things in our lives and rank them by priority, yet just like a golf leaderboard something in second place still has the chance of becoming first. You see God wants not just to be first in a list of priorities but He wants to be our everything. This is offering ourselves as a living sacrifice, we take our leaderboard of things in our life and place God at every single ranking. In other words we throw out the leaderboard, throw out the rankings, and seek out God alone.

So do you have a leaderboard of priorities in your life? If so I challenge you to first place God firmly in that top spot, then work on making God fill all the spots, as that is what spiritual growth is.

Psalm 119:9 – Why is Bible Study Important?

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How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.

Why is it important to study the Bible? Well if you were to ask the psalmist, he would tell us that it is to keep us focused on God and to help keep us from falling into sin. The more time we spend in the Word the more we see how we should be living and acting. We see how we should keep our focus on God as He is the only one worthy of our worship; and whatever has our focus, whatever takes our priority is that which we worship. Spending time in the Word keeps our mind and hearts centered on God, guarding our way and keeping it pure.

The best illustration of this in practice is when we look at the temptation of Christ. After Christ was baptized He went into the wilderness for forty days at the end of which Satan came and tempted Him. We see in the narrative that with each temptation Christ countered Satan by quoting Scripture.. But now here is the thing, it is not just enough to know Scripture, we can’t just memorize verses and just quote them at times of temptation; we need to understand what the verse actually means so we can use them appropriately. We even see this with Christ’s temptation, in one instance Satan, seeing Christ countering him with Scripture, used Scripture to try to get Christ to sin by twisting the intended meaning of the verse to suit his purpose. Someone not grounded in Scripture might look at it and think, “you know you’re right,” but because Christ knew His Scripture, He was able to say, “you’re wrong and according to Scripture here’s why.”

So have you been finding it hard to stay on track in your faith? The first thing to do is look to see if you have been neglecting your Bible, and start digging into His Word.

Psalm 37:4 – Where do you take delight?

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Delight yourself in the Lord , and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Psalms 37:4 ESV

I have once said it before, “God wants you happy…but not in the way you think.”

Psalms 37:4 is an interesting verse to look at, as I believe we tend to focus on the wrong words and thus develop a misunderstanding of what the psalmist is actually saying. Some people will look at this verse as one that shows God being like a genie. They see that if we just delight in God, He will give us everything that we want. They look at this verse and think God will make them rich, or God will make them successful, healthy, never have them encounter any hardships, and so on.

The thing is I don’t think this is what the psalmist was getting at. Rather than God giving us what we want, He starts to change our wants to line up with His will.. You see when we start to look to God and take our joy in Him, we ourselves start to change. This is the Holy Spirit working in the lives of the believer, we tend to find that as we grow in our faith our desires actually start to change. The things we once desired and wanted to get no longer hold the same appeal that they once did.

Now with talking about the last half of the verse, I don’t think that is where we should be focusing at all. You see the focus of this verse should not be on the receiving of the desires of our heart, regardless of which way you look at it, but where it states we should be looking to. We are to delight ourselves in God. This means we are to place our focus on Him, to put Him first and look to Him as the source for everything in our lives. I have said it before and I will probably say it again, but when we do this, when God becomes our priority everything else will fall into place. We are not to look to God to give us what we think will make us happy, but rather find our happiness in God’s presence. So where do you look for happiness? In the things you desire, or in God Himself?