faith

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.

Galatians 1:10 – Who do you try to please?

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Galatians 1:10
For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Are you a people pleaser? Do you plan out your actions regarding how others will see you? Do you resist doing certain actions because it may offend someone? How about do you think if your actions will bring yourself pleasure as a priority? This is the opposite of how we as Christians should be. Now I am not saying that we should intentionally offend others, but our actions should be based off will this be pleasing to God, not will this be pleasing to someone else, not even ourselves.

The issue here comes down to pride. What I am getting at here is that when we look at how we can please others, to try to gain the approval of man, we are looking at how we can make ourselves look good in the eyes of others. So in other words we are placing ourselves at the center of our lives. You see when we try to please others our motivation is often to make ourselves look good to the people around us, think about it would you rather have someone tell you what you want to hear or tell you the truth? Would you rather be told that you look good in that suit, or would you rather be told about the tear in the pants around the back pocket? We don’t like it when people are trying to just please us, so why do we often try to please others by avoiding to temporarily hurt them.

You see when we focus on God and are motivated to please Him, others may eventually thank us. That is because when we share God’s truth it may cause some discomfort to people, because of the conviction of sin, but it is a temporary discomfort if it eventually leads them to the foot of the cross. I have heard it said somewhere, and I believe it does hold true, you have to really hate someone not to be willing to share the Gospel with them because when you refuse to share the Gospel you are acting as judge and jury convicting them to eternal punishment. So you see when you try to please others, while temporarily pleasing them, it ultimately hurts them. So which would you rather be a people pleaser or a God pleaser? Do you want to give people temporary pleasure, or would you rather offer them eternal hope?

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?

1 Corinthians 3:10-11 – What is your faith built upon?

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According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 3:10-11

What is your faith built upon? When you build a building the first thing that needs to be done is to have a proper foundation laid. One you don’t go and build a wall here, place furnishings, or set up the roof until the foundation is laid. That is because the foundation is what everything else rests on. Without a foundation it is like the man who built a house on the sand where it is not able to stand up to the elements. The same can be said about a faulty foundation, if the proper foundation is not set for the environment and type of house that is being built again the building will eventually fall due to structural problems.

Our faith works much in the same way. We need to be careful on what we base our faith off of. It needs to be firmly placed in Christ and rooted in Biblical truth. There are many teachings out there where we can hear it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. Then there is also the thought that all religions ultimately lead to God, or that since God is love He won’t send anyone to hell. The problem is that these teachings build a faith that is on an inadequate foundation, much like having a mansion built on a fault line, an earthquake comes and that house will eventually fall. When Christ returns if our faith is not right, if we aren’t rooted in Christ and Christ alone then what we have our faith placed in will eventually fall as well. So what type of foundation is your faith built on?

 

Table Talk – Episode 97 – Who in Whose Image?

Posted on by chgruver


June 16, 2017: This week we went deep and touched many topics but most importantly do we make a god in our own image or do we live like we are made in God’s image?

Table Talk is a weekly gathering of men in the Pinellas Park area from different denominations and backgrounds. We meet every Friday morning from around 6:30-8:00 at the Egg Platter restaurant. It is located at 6767 US Highway 19 North in Pinellas Park. If you happen to be in the area feel free to come out and join us for a time of fellowship and Bible study.

John 3:36 – What is Belief?

Posted on by chgruver

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Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.
John 3:36 ESV

I will admit this is a tricky verse to look at, because in many translations the word obey is also translated into believe. I will say that in my opinion trust would be a good word to have in both places although believe and obey is the better option. You see our Christian faith is a combination of belief and obedience that stems out of our trust in God. What I mean is that our belief in God goes beyond just the intellectual to a deeper trust in God that leads to obedience. For example let’s look at our regular relationships, when we were kids I am sure we all scraped our knees at one time or another. Now often our parents would tell us that we would be okay and that we would live while in that moment we would feel like our world was coming to an end, but because we believed in our parents, we trusted them, we knew what they were saying was true and it would help comfort us.

We do this because we know that our parents have our best interest in their mind, even when they are disciplining us they are doing it out of love. Even though we may not like it at the time our belief in our earthly parents has us obeying them because we trust that they have the best intentions for us in the long run. God is the same way, we may not like what we are going through or may feel like obedience to God is killing our fun, but in the long term obedience to God will lead us to eternal life. Our pride will often say that intellectual belief is enough, that obedience is not needed, but remember we are told many times that our belief and obedience goes hand in hand. So how deep is your belief in God, is it the surface level intellectual belief or is it the deeper trust that leads to obedience?