obedience

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?

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?

Galatians 5:22-23

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“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 (ESV)

 

This is one of those verses that almost every Christian knows, but is probably one in which many of us don’t fully understand. There is often the question that some will ask of how many fruit are there, or some people may state that they don’t understand why fruit is singular. If you were to ask me I think the reason why it is singular is more to indicate how these 9 qualities are part of a whole. If fruit was plural indicating multiple fruit of the spirit then we would want to pick and choose which fruit we wanted, much like with a fruit plate if you don’t like strawberries or pineapple you can just ignore them and eat the blueberries, bananas, and cantaloupe.

 

I think that is why many of us look at this verse and want it to be talking about multiple fruit. Some of the qualities are easier to exhibit than other, so we want to pick and choose which qualities we exhibit ourselves. I mean often times kindness, goodness, and faithfulness are easy to exhibit, and depending on the person we can probably show love with no problem. It is when you look at the qualities of patience and self-control that it becomes hard. We at times want to say can’t we just focus on five out of the nine? Isn’t that good enough?

 

How we should look at the fruit of the spirit is more like one fruit with these nine aspects. Take a Fuji apple for instance; it has a specific taste, sweetness, tartness, texture, smell, nutrition value, etc. It has a number of characteristics and aspects that differentiate it from a strawberry or even a Red Delicious or Granny Smith apple. So much like the different parts that make up an apple, the fruit of the spirit are the different aspects that make up our spiritual life, that as they are brought to fullness we become more of the person God has created us to be.

 

So you see there is a reason why Paul said “the fruit of the spirit is” and not the “fruits of the spirit are;” because it is basically all or nothing. As a believer each of these nine qualities that Paul mentions should be expressed in our lives as it shows the Holy Spirit working in and through us. It is a litmus test of sorts for a changed life, I mean an unbeliever might be able to exhibit many of these qualities, but a believer will exhibit them all. I mean a Jolly Rancher is sweet and often tastes just like different fruit; and a plastic fruit may have the shape, color, and general look of real fruit; but they are imitators and not the real thing as they do not have all of the qualities that make up the fruit they are made to taste or look like.

 

So examine yourself, ask God to come and help develop all aspects of the fruit of the Spirit in your life, to help you grow spiritually into the person He has created you to be.