Spiritual Food for Women

Part 1- Aren’t we supposed to be united?

Why does it seem like everything in the world demands unity except religion? Unity is defined as a state of being joined as a whole. It is also referred to as oneness. Other words that are interchangeable with the word unity are, harmony, agreement, accord, cohesion and many more. In the Bible, unity is referred to as like-minded, of one accord, all speaking the same thing, and simply just being one. 

In our careers and workplaces, we must “be a team player” or we won’t have a job for very long. I am a teacher and I teach reading intervention to kindergarten through 5th grade students. I work together with another lady in this position and we are like-minded in our purpose, which is to serve our children to the best of our abilities. We share all our materials and ideas. We do our lesson plans together. We respect each other as educators. There is no jealousy or competition between us. We just simply work to serve our children by building relationships with each child, working to instill confidence in each of them, and helping each of them improve in their reading skills. We also work closely with an interventionist assistant with whom we share everything. She also is united in purpose with us. It is the best working environment I could ask for. In the bigger picture, we work together with the classroom teachers to help them as well. Could we be an effective reading intervention team if we were not like-minded? In sports, division between players is not tolerated. There are five players on the court in a basketball game. Just imagine if three of the players were performing the coach’s game plan, but the other two were just doing whatever they wanted to do and paid no attention to the coach. This would be a disaster on the court. What about in a marriage? Do both husband and wife need to be on the same page about finances? What about disciplining the children? The answer is yes!! If husband and wife are divided on how money should be spent, then this causes friction between them. If they are divided on how to raise their children, then this not only causes friction between them, but it causes confusion for the children. So if unity is so important in all of these situations, then it must be important in religious matters and in the church. 

Is unity important to God/Christ? What does God/Christ say about unity? Jesus spoke of unity shortly before his arrest in John 17:20-21. “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.” God and Jesus are one. Jesus performed the will of God because He was one with God. Their purpose was the same, to save mankind from sin. Jesus humbled Himself to perform that will of God by coming to earth to carry out God’s plan of salvation for all of us. Jesus told the Pharisees when He was accused of casting out a demon by Beelzebub that “every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” (Matthew 12:25) If we who are in His kingdom, His church, are going to be like Him, then shouldn’t we all be one in Him? Of one accord? Like-minded?

And if we are all to be one in Christ, doesn’t this unity need to be based strictly on God’s word and not man’s opinion? I’ve heard people in the religious world say that everyone interprets the Bible differently, but this is not what the Bible teaches. No one says this about any other book that has ever been written. I can’t take a math book and come up with my own system of mathematics/numbers that is different from everyone else’s. I can’t say that two plus two isn’t four anymore just because I don’t want it to be. Math is math. The Bible is no different my friends. The Bible is the Bible. We either believe every word of it or we believe none of it. We either follow all of it or none of it. And the things that the religious world today differs on, are things that simply can only be interpreted one way. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. (1 Corinthians 14:33)  2 Timothy 3:16-17 is such a powerful scripture because it completely authenticates the scriptures as being inspired and complete, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” If the scriptures are so perfect, then how can they be interpreted all these different ways? God is perfect, therefore His word is perfect. Notice this says “all scripture” not “the scriptures we want to follow”. It also says that scripture is “profitable for doctrine”, singular, not doctrines, plural. We should only have one doctrine according to 2 Timothy 3:16-17. And all scripture is given for the purpose of the man (person) of God to be complete and able to perform every good work. God’s word is not of any private interpretation. (2 Peter 1:20) I feel that I would be showing disrespect for God’s word if I say that it can be interpreted in all these different ways. Why would God want that for His creation? He doesn’t want all of us disagreeing. He wants us to study and find the whole truth. He wants all of us to go back to Acts 2 and study what happened then, when the church was first established. What were they told to do to be saved? He wants us to study all Paul’s epistles that He wrote to the early congregations of the Lord’s church to see how things pertaining to worship and the church were conducted, so that we can follow that same pattern of worship as closely as we possibly can in our assemblies today. He wants us to go back and study the old testament and see God’s personality and how He dealt with the children of Israel when they did not follow Him. Do we think He has changed? Friends, He is unchanging. (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17) Jesus is unchanging. (Hebrews 13:8) God’s word is unchanging. John 1:1-2 says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” Now let’s look at John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” These verses plainly say that God, Jesus and the Word, which is the Bible, are one and the same. This is why the Bible has stood the test of time. Throughout history, people have tried to destroy it, prove it to be false, and change the meaning of it, but God will not allow His word to pass away. (1 Peter 2:25, Matthew 24:35) God’s word is the only pure truth we have in this life. (John 17:17) Proverbs 30:5 says this so beautifully, “Every word of God is pure; He is a shield to those who put their trust in Him.” Why would the most important book in the history of the world be allowed to be interpreted any way man wants to interpret it? 

This leads me to try and answer a difficult question. Why is there division in religion? What has caused it? The cause is really simple. It’s the “why” that is difficult for me to understand. Someone simply decided to go away from the original pattern. The original pattern being the church that was established on Pentecost in Acts 2. That was the beginning. Then men wanted to put their own ideas into the church and this caused division. It’s still happening to this day. Someone simply decides to go away from what the Bible says on a subject. It can be any subject. Here are just a few subjects folks in the religious world are divided on:

What is baptism? Is it sprinkling infants, pouring water on a person’s head, or is it fully immersing someone in water? Is baptism essential for salvation? Are we saved before or after we are baptized? When and how often are we to take the Lord’s supper? What kind of music should be included in the worship? What day of the week do we assemble for worship? Whose name should the church wear? What does the Bible say about divorce and remarriage? Is drinking alcohol something a Christian should engage in? What does the Bible say about modesty? Are alternative lifestyles biblical? Is it ok to live together outside of marriage? Is it really necessary to attend all the Bible study and worship services? Are there spiritual gifts in this day and age, such as speaking in tongues, miracles, prophesying, etc?

These are only a few things that people disagree on and there are many more. Personally, all I can say about all of these questions is this, I never want to try to guess what God is ok with or not ok with. God tells us what he wants us to do in his word, either by command or by showing us an example or a pattern. I also never want to think that just because it makes me feel good that God is ok with it also. Oh have I been guilty of this in my past, guilty of trying to justify sin. Nor do I ever want to twist the scriptures to make them mean what I want them to mean to suit my particular lifestyle or someone in my family’s or friend’s lifestyle. Again, guilty! It’s easy to get caught up in the world and become accepting of man’s ideas of right/wrong and acceptable/unacceptable instead of using God’s word to determine these things. This happens if we allow ourselves to be more influenced by the world than by God’s word. I have been there. I know how easily this can happen. So my advice from experience is this, start spending more time with God each day. Keep yourself grounded in Him. I promise you that the more time you spend in God’s word, the more time you will want to spend in it. The desire for His Word grows. It becomes such a joy if you put your heart into it. It will become nourishment that you want and need daily. You will look forward to getting into God’s word each day and you will look forward to worship and Bible study services with your brothers and sisters in Christ all the more because you have been in the Word daily. It doesn’t matter how much time you spend in God’s word each day. Obviously, everyone has more time some days than others. But whatever the time you have, it will be quality time with God. What matters is you are in it, you are focused, and you are letting it guide every step you take. 

Now obviously, I am not going to address all the above questions that people are not unified on in this post. Each one of those questions would have to be a post all its own. However, I ask you to get into God’s word yourself, with an honest heart, and search for yourself. Go search those subjects that I listed above and see where the Bible stands on them, honestly and with an open heart. When you go to your assembly on Sunday, look into God’s word and see if what you are doing was being done in the first century church. That church should be our pattern. Listen and discern what you are being told to see if it is actually the truth, the whole truth of the gospel. If you aren’t in the habit of attending an assembly for worship, please find one that lines up with God’s word. If you need help with this, please reach out. I can help you or I can put you in contact with someone who can help you. With only love in my heart, I ask you not to just assume what God wants or take a person’s point of view without truly testing it to see if it is scriptural. Humans have no authority to add to or take away from God’s word.

Can we add what we want and take away what we don’t want from God’s word? The Bible is very clear on adding to and taking away from God’s word. In Deuteronomy 4:2 God says, “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.”Also, Revelation 22:18-19 plainly says, “For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” So the old and new testaments both have scriptures condemning adding to and taking away from God’s word. What else do we need? Not adding to and taking away from God’s word must be super important because it is some of the last inspired verses we have in God’s word. It is a stern warning and it’s scary to me. Why take chances? Friends, I’m going to end with that question for this week.

 I will post part 2 of “Be Like-minded” next week. Please come back and read the rest next week. This started out as one post and turned into two once I got into it. This subject has weighed on my heart for a really long time. I write all my posts out of love for others in all walks of life. Hope everyone has a wonderful Lord’s Day and a wonderful week! Thank you for reading!

1 Corinthians 16:14 “Let all that you do be done with love.”

Friends, here is God’s plan of salvation for anyone who needs to hear it:

• We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 
• Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 
• Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 
• Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 
• Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47)
• Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)

What is the relationship between what we think and what we say? The Bible speaks of our tongue being a fire in James 3:6. It says that our tongue can be a “world of iniquity”, and it can “set on fire the course of our lives”, and finally our tongue can be “set on fire by hell” if we do not tame it somehow. Basically this is saying that our tongue can ruin our lives and the lives of others while we are here on this earth and it can cause us to be lost for eternity.

But where do our words come from? Nothing can come out of our mouths unless we first think about it, and then let it take up residency in our minds. Now this can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what we allow our minds to dwell on. Can we control what pops into our minds all the time? No, we can’t. Sometimes we think things that we should not think. Maybe someone hurt us and we get bitter towards that person. Maybe we watch something on TV or in a movie that we should not watch and it causes us to have impure thoughts. Some of these images are sometimes very hard to get out of our heads. This can even lead to an addiction. Maybe we get jealous of another person’s success and this causes us to think negatively about that person simply because they have something that we don’t. And……..by the way, these negative and destructive thoughts can be about ourselves for various reasons…… negative words people say to us, negative or even traumatic things from our past, or things we have done in our past that we can’t seem to forgive ourselves for. Personally, being negative towards myself has been a major problem for me. It became a habit for me at a young age. It was a very hard habit to break and I have to keep myself in check at all times or I’ll slip back into that negative self-talk again. It could be a number of things that cause us to get negative or destructive thoughts in our mind. We are only human. However, we can’t allow those thoughts to dwell in us and become a permanent part of our thoughts. When we allow those types of thoughts to set up camp in our minds, they turn us into someone that God does not want us to be. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he”. So how does all this relate to our tongue?  Is it a safe assumption that if we let thoughts such as jealousy, hatred, envy, filth, and such like, make a home in our minds, that they are likely to eventually come out of our mouths at some point? Of course they are! The only way to control our tongues is to first take control of our thoughts. 

So James 3:6 has established that our tongue can cause us to be lost. How about our thoughts? I mean if I don’t let it come out of my mouth, I should be fine, right? Can our thoughts cause us to be lost? Absolutely! God sees our thoughts whether we speak those thoughts or not. Proverbs 21:2 says “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the hearts”. The word heart here actually means mind. And Psalm 139:2 says that God “understands my thought afar off”. We can’t hide our thoughts from God. And one more, Psalm 94:11, “The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are futile”, meaning that compared to the thoughts of God, our thoughts are useless. Remember Genesis 6:5, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” We know what happened to the people during Noah’s day because of, not only their wicked ways, but their wicked thoughts as well. It was so bad that God decided to basically start over, with Noah and his family being the new beginning of mankind after the flood. Let’s also remember that Jesus spoke about people in Matthew 15:8 who “draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me.” He said many times in the New Testament that he knew people’s thoughts. (Luke 9:47, Matthew 22:18) Since Jesus was God in the flesh, it makes sense that he could know people’s thoughts. We have examples from the Old and New Testaments of God the Father and God the Son knowing people’s thoughts.

So can we as humans control our thoughts and tame our tongue? James 3:8 says that no man can tame the tongue and that it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. The things we say can be poison to other people around us. Our tongue can cause others to be lost along with us. So is it hopeless? I mean, the inspired writer, James, just said that no man can tame it. The key phrase we need to focus on here is that he says “no man” can tame the tongue. If we are truly in Christ, then we have the mind of Christ, according to 1 Corinthians 2:16. Therefore Christ controls our thoughts and our tongue if we let Him. We cannot do it without Him. Will we still fail sometimes? Yes we will! Like I have said before, negative thoughts pop into our minds. Our brains work so fast that we can’t control incoming thoughts. This is just something that happens sometimes before we can stop it. The fact is, we have to live IN this world, and because of this fact, sometimes by no fault of our own, we are exposed to things that cause us to think negative, destructive, or even impure thoughts. And sadly, we sometimes make the mistake of allowing ourselves to be exposed to these things by choice. But as Christians, we are not OF the world. (John 15:19) We are OF Christ and His kingdom/His church. And because of this, Satan works very hard to make sure we struggle with our thoughts and words. He wants to put temptations in front of us so that he can take over our minds through negativity and impurity. This is an area where he knows he can get to us if we are not diligent to take care of our minds. So how do we take care of our minds? Well first we have to be in Christ to truly be able to get our minds right. If we are in Christ, we can train ourselves to immediately replace that negative thought that Satan wants us to hold on to, with a truth from God’s word. We can capture that thought before it makes a home in our mind. I present to you 1 Corinthians 10:5, “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” This verse gives me such hope and encouragement because it tells me that through Christ, I can capture every thought that shouldn’t be there, if I’ll just recognize those unhealthy thoughts. Notice, it doesn’t say that we shouldn’t ever have these thoughts because we will have them. It is impossible not to have them because we are human. However, it says we can capture them and replace them with God’s word. When we do this, we bring our thoughts in submission to the “obedience of Christ”. Then, those thoughts never have a chance to come out of our mouths and hurt others or bring shame on the Lord’s church.

Ok, so how do we replace these thoughts that come across our minds so that we can, in turn, control our tongues? Well first, we MUST have our daily spiritual food if we are truly going to battle against Satan and these potentially destructive thoughts. We have to get in God’s word each day. We need several “go to” verses either in our minds or on our person for when these thoughts/battles come. I actually have a spiral book of index cards in my purse with my “go to” verses in it. It helps me to have them readily available. If you would rather have them on your phone, you could make a google doc or put them in the notepad app. How do we find these “go to” verses? A very common verse that most of us raised in Sunday school memorized as children is 2 Timothy 2:15, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” We need to know the Bible to battle Satan for control of our thoughts and words. We have to make time to listen to God through reading and studying His word, even if we only have a few minutes some days. Some of us spend lots of time on our phones and watching Netflix. I know I do. Could we all discipline ourselves to cut back on those things for time with God? I’m not at all saying that it is wrong to enjoy these forms of entertainment as long as we are making time for God each day, and as long as our form of entertainment doesn’t allow Satan to take control of our thoughts. Because that is exactly what he wants……..control of our minds and our mouths. When Satan can get in a member of the Lord’s church’s mind and get him to influence other members in a negative way, can you imagine what a victory that is for him? Satan already has the world in the palm of his hand with no work at all. He is concentrating on getting a hold on us in subtle ways that we don’t realize, through our thoughts. Let’s never forget, one minute Satan is a roaring lion seeking whom he can devour (1 Peter 5:8) and the next minute he can make himself look like an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). 

Am I guilty of negativity? I am so guilty. It breaks my heart to think about all the ways I’ve been a negative influence in my past to friends outside of Christ and even to my family, including my husband and children. Satan had a hold of my thoughts for a time. But I’m working on keeping those thoughts out of my mind and focusing on my future in Christ. No more beating myself up. I can’t change the past but I can decide how I will behave in the future.  God has forgiven me, so it’s time to forgive myself. We will all have slip ups. I had one this past week. I let something negative come out of my mouth. I felt it immediately………the guilt and the feeling of failure. I have been in God’s word so much lately that I immediately knew I had messed up and let a negative thought come out of my mouth. You see, if we aren’t in God’s word enough, we won’t recognize our negative thoughts and words as clearly and quickly and we may not even realize that we need to make it right. I immediately went back to the two people I was with when I said it and apologized, then came home and renewed my mind with God’s word, and prayed and asked Him to forgive me and help me to do better in the future. I love Romans 12:2 because it says we can transform and renew our mind, “And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” I could not let those negative thoughts I was having continue to take up residency in my mind. I had to capture those thoughts and replace them with truth from God’s word.  Oh and I’ll mess up again. We all will. We wouldn’t need a Savior if we were perfect. Thank goodness for Jesus’ love for us. It’s how we handle our “mess ups” that matters. Do we let them build up in our minds and make us feel defeated? No! We have God’s word to renew us and Christ’s blood that cleanses us daily. We have His cleansing blood as long as we have completed God’s plan for salvation and been baptized for the remission of our sins and are living faithful to Him. (Acts 2:38, Revelation 2:10) Romans 8:37 lets us know who we are through Jesus, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” We are “MORE than conquerors” friends! We can conquer those negative thoughts and, in turn, conquer our tongue through Jesus Christ our Savior. When God’s word says we are more than conquerors if we are in Jesus Christ, then there is no reason to feel defeated when we make a mistake. We just renew our minds with God’s word, pray to Him for forgiveness and resolve to try and not make that mistake again.

In closing, our ultimate goal as Christians is to do our best to help God’s kingdom here on earth, the Church, to grow so that more and more people can feel the “peace that surpasses all understanding” that will “keep (guard) our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus”. (Philippians 4:6) Christ will keep/guard our minds if we allow him to. What a comforting THOUGHT!! Every sin starts with our thoughts. Everything that comes out of our mouths begins in our minds. Thoughts can lead to words and words can then lead to positive outcomes or negative outcomes. Will we allow Christ to control our thoughts or will we allow Satan to control them? Will we train our brains through studying God’s word so we can capture those negative/destructive thoughts and replace them with God’s truth, before they take up residency in our minds and then come out of our mouths? To everyone who reads this, I believe in you! You can do this! Positivity in life is so much more satisfying and joyful than negativity! And the world needs to see us, members of Christ’s church, being positive in our words and actions as much as possible. We want them to want what we have. Friends, I leave you with this verse to ponder and dwell on, Philippians 4:8, “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy-meditate on these things.” Capture the bad and throw it out! Meditate on the good! If we follow Philippians 4:8 in our thinking, then those are the types of words that will roll off of our tongue, and that will be a victory for God, Christ, His church and for us. 

Thank you for your support of my blog!! Hope everyone has a wonderful Lord’s day tomorrow and a blessed week ahead!!

Friends, here is God’s plan of salvation for anyone who needs to hear it:

• We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 
• Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 
• Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 
• Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 
• Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47)
• Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)

Colossians 3

Key Verse of Focus- Colossians 3:17 “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

This is one of the verses that has caught my attention just in the last few months. This verse is more than just a verse. If I dig in and really study this verse, THIS VERSE IS THE CHRISTIAN LIFE!!! The more that I am in God’s word, the more that I take notice of verses and what they mean to my life. I keep reiterating this in my posts, because I used to struggle so much with Bible study. I could not stay consistent. Some days I still struggle. So if you struggle with staying consistent in Bible study, you are not alone. I think it requires each person to figure out what works for her/him as far as studying goes. Writing helps me study. I love connecting verses with other verses and ideas with other ideas. Writing about Bible verses and what they mean to my life, helps me to work through them, research them, and understand them. I can look at my life and see if I’m putting into practice what I am reading and then write about ways to better myself. And I figure if I’m struggling with something, then chances are, some of you are struggling with it as well. It really doesn’t matter how you study as long as you set aside time for it. And it really isn’t about quantity. It is about quality. One person might read the Bible for an hour and not be able to tell anything about what they have read and get nothing out of it. Another person might focus for 15 minutes on one verse and glean so much more. I started this post out by talking about personal Bible study, because as you will see as we go forward, we cannot do what Colossians 3:17 says for us to do without personal Bible study. So with all that being said, I have some questions for myself and for you, my friends.

Do I do what the verse above says? Is everything I say and do, said and done in the name of the Lord Jesus? And what does this actually mean? Also, can I live out this verse if I am not in God’s word on a regular basis?

To understand our key verse of focus we will need to look back at Colossians 3 as a whole. First of all, just a reminder, Paul is writing to the “saints and faithful brethren in Christ who are in Colosse”. (Colossians 1:2) He is writing to all Christians, past and present. I am writing about these verses as if they are written to us today, because they absolutely are written to us today!! The first nine verses of Colossians 3 are focusing on putting off the old man of sin after we are raised with Christ. Paul starts this chapter by saying, “if then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above”. This is a direct correlation to baptism, because we are raised with Christ when we come up out of that watery grave of baptism. So if we are truly Christians, raised with Christ from the watery grave of baptism, then we have to put off our old person and put on the new person, that being the image of Christ. In Colossians 3:2, Paul encourages Christians to “set your minds on things above, not on things of the earth”. We are to be spiritually minded, not worldly minded. And then in Colossians 3:3, Paul really gets my attention. He says, “For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God”. We died to our old life of sin when we were baptized into Christ and we rose to walk in “newness of life”. (Romans 6:4) This verse explains this beautifully, “Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.” We left our old sinful self in the watery grave. Just thinking about how we are “hidden with Christ in God” makes me feel completely safe and secure. John 1:18 says that Christ is in “the bosom of the Father”. So that means we are with Christ in the bosom of the Father in complete security. This is so comforting!! However, Paul doesn’t sugarcoat things for the Christians at Colosse or for us today!! He makes it plain that in order for us to set our minds on things above, like verse 2 tells us, we have to put away a whole list of sinful practices found in verses 5, 8 and 9. These include, fornication, uncleanness, evil desires, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language and dishonesty. These Christians at Colosse had “once walked” in these ways before putting them off. (Colossians 3:6) Some people were probably still hanging on to some of these sinful practices after baptism, and this may be why Paul was addressing this. We have to leave those worldly sinful practices behind after we become Christians. And we all struggle sometimes to keep our old sinful ways out of our lives. Sometimes they want to creep back into our lives. I know I have struggled with my own temptations. We all do in one way or another. But God made a way for us to be forgiven. He sent Jesus, His own Son. I’m so thankful every day to Him for loving all of us so much. If we are in Christ, we need only ask for forgiveness and His blood cleanses us immediately. Then of course, we try our best not to get caught up in sin again. However, when we stumble, God will take us back an infinite number of times. What an awesome God we serve!! So my Christian friends, according to the first eleven verses of Colossians 3, in order to do what verse 17, our key verse, tells us to do, we must put off the sinful man with all those sinful practices, and set our minds on things above “where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God”. (Colossians 3:1)

So what do we replace our old man with? What practices do we put in place after we are risen with Christ? What does Colossians 3:17 mean? Christian friends, it is only logical that we are to put off a whole list of sinful practices when we put off our sinful self. But……it is also logical that we should put on some new practices when we put on our new self, that being the image of Christ. After all, we are to be Christ-like now that we are Christians. We exchange the bad for the good. In Colossians 3:12, Paul calls us “the elect of God, holy and beloved”. This means we are chosen by God, set apart and dearly loved. When did we become the elect of God? We became the elect of God when God added us to His church after we chose to be baptized for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:47) Wow! Shouldn’t we be so honored that the Creator of the universe has chosen us? We should never take this for granted, my friends. Because we are the elect of God we are to “put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, and longsuffering”. (Colossians 3:12) These take the place of all the sinful practices we put off. But that is not all. We as a Christian family are to bear with one another and forgive one another as Christ forgave us. (Colossians 3:13) Forgiving others is not an option. The words Paul uses are strong. He says, “so you also MUST do”. (vs 13) This can be tough sometimes when someone does us wrong, but God does not expect us to do things that we are not capable of doing. He does not give us more than we can handle. (1 Corinthians 10:13) Therefore we can do it, even if it is hard.  Especially….. since we have the mind of Christ, which we do if we are in Him. (1 Corinthians 2:16) This brings up questions for us. Can we lose the mind of Christ? How do we lose it? How do we keep the mind of Christ? To answer these questions, yes we can lose the mind of Christ when we become unfaithful and when we become more a part of the world than of Christ, when we set our minds on things of the world instead of things above. We keep the mind of Christ by remaining faithful to Him and not forsaking the assembly for worship and bible study. (Hebrews 10:25) This is a command for all Christians. But that’s not all. Let’s go back to what I started this post with, we have to be in God’s word daily if we want to have the mind of Christ. Personal bible study is so important to our spiritual growth. It is also a command. Without it, we will be stagnant. (2 Timothy 2:15)  Studying God’s word will help us have the mind of Christ and then, in turn, help us to fulfill Colossians 3:17. 

So what is the one thing that Paul mentions that we have to “put on” that is above all of the others? It is love. Why is love above everything else? Because without love, none of the other words mean anything. Without love, there is no mercy, no kindness, no longsuffering, no forgiveness, or any other fruit of the spirit. This is probably why love is mentioned first among the fruits of the spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. Nothing we do matters without love. 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 makes this idea very plain, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Love is everything when it comes to being a Christian. We have to speak the truth to others in love. We have to love other people, the saved and the lost, so much that we are willing to tell them the truth even when it hurts. Would I rather them get mad at me for not just agreeing with them or them be lost for eternity? You’ve heard the term tough love? Paul says, “But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.” (Colossians 3:14) Love is the foundation for everything in the bible and do you know why? Because God is love. 1 John 4:8 says, “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Also 1 John 4:16, “And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” If God wasn’t pure love, we wouldn’t have Jesus. Love is the reason Jesus came to earth and died so that we can be saved if we choose to obey Him and live our life for Him. Paul calls love the “bond of perfection”. (vs 14) Love is what bonds we who are in the body of Christ, the church, together in perfection. Love makes it all complete. Love is the glue that holds everything else together. If God is love and Christ is love, then shouldn’t the church be love? No matter what good deeds we do in our congregation or personally in our own lives, they have to be done in love and humility. Not to be seen by men or to look better than someone else. This is not love. We are concerned with saving souls if we are doing things in love. This is our purpose and the reason we are the “elect of God”. (vs 12) Therefore, because we are truly in Christ, we can have peace from God. (Colossians 3:15) If we have put on Christ in baptism and we have put on love, we have nothing to worry about. Everything will fall into place in our Christian walk. Think about it. If we truly love others, then we will do all those things in verses 12 and 13. Love brings peace to our lives. It is the greatest feeling of peace to know that I am a child of God, that I am chosen by God, and that God wants me with Him. 

Verse 15 also says we are called in one body, which means one church, and for us to be thankful for that. I am so thankful that I am in that one body, the body of Christ, the church. This leads into Colossians 3:16 which is a super important verse concerning the church and worship. Because we are members of Christ’s body, the church, we are to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly in all wisdom. I need to know the Bible so well that it is in me and in everything I do. The word of God should “dwell in me” continually and “richly” or abundantly. How can this happen if I don’t dig into the Bible? The phrase “in all wisdom” means unto all wisdom. To have true wisdom, I have to dwell in God’s word. Since Colossians 3:16 may be a verse that I write more about in another post, I will be straightforward. It says we are to teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and to sing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. (Colossians 3:16) Where would the teaching and admonishing one another through singing be happening? Obviously, this would be in the assembly of the Lord’s church. We are, of course, singing praises to God, but we are also singing to teach and admonish one another. I love the word admonish. It means to put in mind, to caution, to reprove gently, or to warn. Isn’t this what the psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs do for us if we are truly focusing on them?

So how does this chapter lead into our focus verse, Colossians 3:17? Everything that we do in our Christian lives from how we are saved to how we formally worship and even to how we go about our daily lives should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, with God in mind. Our repentance and baptism has to be in the name of the Lord. Acts 2:38 says, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And repentance and baptism are only the beginning of our commitment. When we pray, we pray in Jesus’ name because He is our Savior and mediator. Everything we do in our worship to God has to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus. The prayers, the preaching of the Word, the Lord’s Supper, the singing of praises, and the giving of our means is to be done according to God’s word if it is to be done “in the name of the Lord”. If something we are doing in worship is not authorized in the Bible, then it can’t be “in the name of the Lord Jesus”. 

In our daily lives, we need to make decisions about what we get ourselves involved in and base those decisions on the name of Jesus Christ. Is this pleasing to God? Is this what God wants from me? Am I glorifying God? While we are here on earth, we have recreational/secular things that we enjoy, such as sports, music, vacations, concerts, exercising, art, cooking, movies, etc. We also have secular jobs in the world. It is perfectly fine to enjoy these activities, as long as they don’t become idols and interfere with our Christian walk. We have to guard against that at all times. If we are making good choices, then we can glorify God in whatever we are doing simply by how we conduct ourselves in every situation we are in and by how we treat other people. Of course, we need to make wise choices in our Christian walk about where we go. But we don’t have to completely hide ourselves away. The world needs to see us making the right choices wherever we go. The world needs to see us showing love to others and putting God first. The world needs to see Christ in us. We need to let our light shine!! We separate ourselves from sin, but let our light shine for the world. (Matthew 5:16) We are also to be thankful to God in everything we do and know that everything good in our lives, including all of our favorite places, our favorite activities, our hobbies, our talents……all of it comes from God. Everything fun that we enjoy has come about because God has given someone the ability to form the idea and create it. On a personal note, God allowed someone to come up with the sports of basketball and tennis and I am so thankful for that because I enjoy them so much!! I love certain genres of secular music that God gave man the talent to create!! God also created the beach, my favorite place to vacation!! God wants us to enjoy our lives in front of the world, so that they will want what we have……which is peace in Jesus. 

So, back to the questions we started out with:

Do I do what the verse above says? Is everything I say and do, said and done in the name of the Lord Jesus? And what does this actually mean? Also, can I live out this verse if I am not in God’s word on a regular basis?

Hopefully we can answer these questions with honesty and sincerity in our hearts. I soooo needed this study. Let’s look at Colossians 3:17 in a new way, my Christian friends, and let our words and actions be done in Jesus’ name for the world to see. Let’s show everyone how blessed we are!!

Hope everyone has an awesome Saturday, a wonderful Lord’s day and a great week ahead!! Thanks to everyone for reading my blog!! 

Friends, here is God’s plan of salvation for anyone who needs to hear it:

• We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 
• Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 
• Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 
• Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 
• Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) 
• God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47)
• Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)

Part 3- Waiting on the Lord

Lamentations 3:21-26

21  This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.

22  Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.

23  They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

24  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

25  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.

26  It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.

In part one, I focused on verse 21 and the hope that Jeremiah found in God when he was in terrible grief. Last week in part two, I looked at verses 22 and 23 at God’s mercy, compassion and faithfulness. The hope that I find in Jesus Christ is new every morning as I continue in my daily Christian walk. God’s mercy, compassion and faithfulness are new every morning as I am given another day to serve Him and give my life to Him. Now I would like to look at verses 24 through 26 and begin with “The Lord is my portion, says my soul, Therefore I hope in Him!” Look at the expression that Jeremiah uses at the end of this verse. An exclamation mark shows Jeremiah’s excitement and true hope in his God and Creator!!

So what does Jeremiah mean when he says that the lord is his portion? Jeremiah is counting on God to be his “portion”. In the old testament everyone got a portion of the inheritance except for the tribe of Levi. They were the tribe of the priesthood and were not a part of the inheritance divided between the tribes, however their needs were taken care of by all the other tribes put together. Jeremiah was of the priesthood so he did not have an earthly inheritance so to speak. And since God’s people were either killed or taken into captivity by the Babylonians at this time, there was no one left to take care of the needs of anyone much less the priests. Jeremiah is again reaffirming his hope in God. His portion is God and he remembers this at his low point. His remembrance of this fact begins to bring him out of his depression. Deuteronomy 10:9 reminds us that “Levi has no portion nor inheritance with his brethren; the Lord is his inheritance, just as the Lord your God promised him.” We can apply this concept to us today. We have a spiritual portion if we are in Christ. We are joint heirs with Christ which is an amazing thought to me!! It’s hard for me to wrap my head around that!! We are children of God. Jesus was God’s son so that makes us joint heirs to all God’s blessings with Christ. Listen to Romans 8:16-17, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.” And I have to mention Galatians 3:26-29 which explains this beautifully, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” If we are in Christ, we are heirs with God’s Son, Jesus Christ!! We are in Christ if we have been baptized into Him for the remission of our sins. So just like Jeremiah, God is my portion!! And He is my hope through Jesus Christ because I am in Him. What a blessing! How absolutely perfect!

In verse 25, Jeremiah continues to reassure himself that God is good. He tells himself that if He seeks God and waits patiently for His will, that everything will work out for the good. It’s like he is saying, “God is with me. I got this. I will get through this.” It’s hard to wait on something that we want so badly though, isn’t it? We want all the good things to happen just when we want them to happen. However, nothing in this world is on our timetable. It’s God’s timetable that everything is based on and has been since the beginning of time itself. We always need to remember that God’s timetable is perfect. He allows His will to unfold according to his eternal plan. Our minds can’t comprehend his timetable. Jesus himself said in Acts 1:7 before His ascension into heaven, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.” This was after Jesus had been asked by His disciples if He would at that time restore the kingdom to Israel. (Acts 1:6) So even at that time, they were not told everything. They were told only what God deemed important for them to know. It is this way with us. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know God holds the future. And as we wait on the Lord we just have to remember Romans 8:28. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” This verse is one that helps me let go of worry and anxiety about the future. It also helps me to know that everything is in God’s control and if I just love and obey God, then I can get through any trial that I have to face. This is what Jeremiah is saying also. He knows that God is good to those who seek Him and wait on Him. In order to wait on the Lord, we have to have faith. Hebrews 11:6 says this so beautifully, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” To wait on Him means that we have faith that He will do everything He promises, and that He will make everything work out for the good no matter what happens. But we can’t ever forget that we have to seek Him. How do we do that? Romans 12:2 tells us how to do that. We “renew our minds” with God’s word daily. We are not seeking Him if we are not in His word. I remind myself of this all the time. We find God in His Holy Word. Jeremiah 29:13 says it all, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for me with all your heart.” Whoa!! Now I ask myself, am I seeking Him with ALL my heart? Jesus says in Matthew 7:7-8, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” But we have to seek Him with all our heart and soul! (Deuteronomy 4:29) I can say I am seeking God, but am I truly seeking Him? And if I am seeking God through His word, then I can’t forget the verse in Matthew 6:33 that tells me to seek first the kingdom of God which means seek first His church, Jesus’ church, the one He died for. Seeking God cannot be taken lightly friends. I am soooo a work in progress in all of this! On a side note, let’s think about this question. When are we closest to God? I believe that we can all agree that we are closest to God when we are going through trials. It is natural for us as humans to cling to God in our deepest despair and darkest times. Look at Jeremiah. He was clinging to God for dear life during this time in his life. Look at David in Psalm 51. He was on his knees praying for forgiveness, begging God to forgive him and to spare the life of his child that he had with Bathsheba. I have done the same thing in my own life. When I have lost loved ones or when I have gone through times of depression when dealing with something difficult, I have looked to God’s word to comfort me. I think of the times I have gotten myself caught up in the world and in sin and had to ask for forgiveness privately and publicly. I was holding on to my Father in heaven for dear life during those times. But what about in the good times? Do we give God as much attention during our happy times when everything is smooth sailing in our lives? I really am working on this because I feel like I have fallen short in this terribly. Let’s ask ourselves why we are having happy times? Why are things going so smoothly in our lives? It’s because of God. God is allowing us to have these good times and we need to make sure we cling to Him in those moments as well. We need to have a heart filled with gratitude every day that we live, in good times and in bad. We cling to Him for comfort in hard times, but we should also cling to Him during the good times because we know they come from Him. Ecclesiastes 7:14 (NKJV) says, “In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: Surely God has appointed the one as well as the other, so that man can find out nothing that will come after him.” I really like the way the New Living Translation says it, “Enjoy prosperity while you can, but when hard times strike, realize that both come from God. Remember that nothing is certain in this life.” This is basically saying that we should never take anything that God has done for us for granted. We need to cling to God in one way or another every day that we live. And remember that we do not know our future here on this earth. We can’t know it. This is why we cling to Him in both prosperity and adversity. This is what He wants from us.

 However, we CAN KNOW our eternal future if we have obeyed Him and if we are being faithful in our daily Christian walk. Our eternal future is really all that matters. Our eternal soul is precious to God and He wants us with Him. Christian friends, let’s cling to Him every day that we live. Just think about all He has done for us. And just think about how well He knows each one of us. Our very hairs are numbered! (Matthew 10:30) That just boggles my mind, friends! He knew us before we were conceived, when we were “yet unformed”! (Psalm 139:16) Go read all of Psalm 139 and you will see how intimately God knows us. So if He knows us so intimately and personally, isn’t it only natural that He would want a close relationship with each one of us? That He would want us to cling to Him in times of trouble and cling to Him in gratitude for all the good things in our lives? This is just something I thought of while studying these verses, food for thought!!

Let’s move on to verse 26 which talks about waiting quietly. Jeremiah says that it is good that we should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. The hope that Jeremiah has in God and His promises is the reason why Jeremiah is able to wait on the Lord. The verse says to wait quietly. This means that I should wait without complaining. This is a gut punch because I am not good at waiting without complaining. I am working on this as well. What good does it do for me to appear to be waiting on the Lord if I am complaining about every little thing that doesn’t go my way while I am waiting? I certainly don’t want to be like the Israelites and be a complainer and a whiner, but let’s face it, sometimes I am! So how can I fix this problem of complaining? How can I learn to wait quietly on the Lord? Wow, I love the perfection of God’s word and how everything fits together so beautifully and perfectly. I know what to do to fix it. I have written about it. I need to be in God’s word. I need to pray to God for strength in times when I feel like complaining. I need to become the “living sacrifice” that Romans 12:1-2 calls me to be and “transform” myself by the “renewing of my mind” so that I can “prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Complaining goes against everything we read in the Bible. We are told to be content and how can we be content if we are complaining and having a negative attitude? Complaining is conforming to this world which we are told not to do in Romans 12:2. Now don’t get me wrong. When I say complain, I am not talking about expressing our feelings in a constructive and helpful way. We can talk about our feelings as long we do it and still remain Christ-like. Look how Christ expressed His feelings of anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane before He was taken to be crucified. He knew what was going to happen to Him. He prayed to God, His father, for Him to let this cup pass from Him if it was possible, but then we know what He said next, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will”. (Matthew 26:39) Jesus wasn’t complaining! He was venting His feelings to His father! There is a difference between complaining and simply venting about something that may be stressful, scary, or just plain annoying. We have to vent sometimes to let our feelings out. Our mental state has to have this type of venting to remain healthy. However, there is a fine line and we have to guard against complaining in an unproductive way. Unproductive complaining includes placing blame for things that happen on someone else whether it be on other people or on God. It is when we don’t take responsibility for our own actions. It is when we are never content with anything we have or anything that is done for us. Everything is always someone else’s fault. Does this sound like the children of Israel? And yes, I have to ask myself, do I do this sometimes? Does my venting go too far and turn into complaining, placing blame, or being ungrateful for what I have? 

On the flip-side, sometimes our complaints are warranted and productive. This is minor but here is an example. I go to a restaurant and I ask for my steak to be well-done and it comes out rare. I politely give a complaint to the waitress and she takes it back and corrects the order. This is a warranted and productive complaint. My feelings are acknowledged and the problem is resolved. In everyday life sometimes there are honest mistakes that need to be corrected. And then sometimes we need to voice our feelings when we are truly being treated unfairly, but we must do this in the right way, with the right attitude, in a Christian way, with honesty, integrity and class. We have the right to defend our Lord and Savior, ourselves, our loved ones, and our beliefs. However, we don’t have the right to complain about everything we don’t get our way about and act in a way that is not Christ-like. If we are Christians, we should definitely not be complainers. Complaining is worldly. Paul tells the Christians at Philippi in Philippians 2:14-15, “Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world….” If we want to “shine as lights” in this dark world, we have to do things without complaining. 

So what was Jeremiah waiting quietly for? Christian friends, what are we waiting quietly for? I know that when I pray for things, I have to wait on God’s timetable for the answers. I have to wait without complaining and wait in contentment. But what am I ultimately waiting for? I am waiting on the same thing Jeremiah was waiting for, Jesus Christ. Jeremiah knew someone was coming to bring salvation to the world. Anytime salvation is discussed in the old testament, this is a messianic prophecy. Jeremiah was waiting for God to bring salvation into the world through Jesus Christ. He knew that God would preserve His people. He knew that God would keep that promise no matter what terrible things were happening at that time. Is that not what we all are waiting for? The only difference between us and Jeremiah is that we are waiting for Jesus Christ to come back a second time and take us home to heaven with God our Father. If we are in Christ and are living faithful, then we have nothing to fear! 

To sum up this series of lessons, we should always remember that God is our spiritual portion through Jesus Christ. We have a portion of a spiritual inheritance with Christ. Let’s never forget that our hope is a living hope through Jesus Christ. Let’s always remember that God’s mercy, compassion, and faithfulness are infinite and they are new every morning. And finally, let’s use Jeremiah’s example and remember to wait quietly on the salvation of the Lord. Christian friends, Isaiah 40:31 is such a beautiful verse of hope as we wait on the Lord, “But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” This paints such a beautiful picture of us, God’s children, as we wait on God’s timetable. 

I’m asking myself these questions as I end, do I feel the way the apostle Paul felt? That to live is Christ and to die is gain? (Philippians 1:21) Do I truly know that nothing on this earth can ever compare to heaven? And while I am here, is my purpose to do my best to help others know how to get to heaven?

Friends, I hope this helps in your Christian walk this week. Everything that I write is always written straight to myself first because I am such a work in progress and have so much I need to work in my Christian walk. I am so thankful for those of you who take the time to read my articles. It is so encouraging to me. Hope everyone has a wonderful Lord’s Day and a blessed week ahead!

Friends, here is God’s plan of salvation for anyone who needs to hear it:

• We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 
• Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 
• Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 
• Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 
• Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) 
• Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)

Copyright 2023, all rights reserved.

Part 2- God’s mercies, compassion, and faithfulness

Lamentations 3:21-26

21  This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.

22  Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.

23  They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

24  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

25  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.

26  It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.

In my last post, we looked at the hope Jeremiah found in God in such a dark time in His life. In verse 21, we see him finally seeing some hope, some light, in the darkness of this time in biblical history. So……..why do you think that Jeremiah was able to find hope? What did he know about God that gave him hope? How does God give us hope? 

Verse 22 tells us why Jeremiah could find hope. “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.” This is why Jeremiah had hope. He had seen God show mercy and forgive His people over and over. God took them back every time they repented. Look at all the times the people turned away from God to worship idols and our great God just kept forgiving them. Now let me be clear, this wasn’t without consequences. The people still had to face the consequences of their sin. Sin brought consequences on the people. Sin brings consequences on us today. But……God will forgive us of our sin. Jeremiah knew about the covenant God had with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Jeremiah 33:26) He knew about God’s covenant with Israel when they were in Egyptian bondage. (Jeremiah 34:13) He knew the history of God’s people and how often God had shown mercy on them. God was dedicated to preserving His people so that Jesus Christ could be born from this lineage. God has been dedicated to preserving US through His Son!! Jeremiah 33:14-16 are prophetic verses promising the coming Messiah, “Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will perform that good thing which I have promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah: In those days and at that time I will cause to grow up to David, a branch of righteousness; He shall execute judgment and righteousness in the earth. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell safely. And this is the name by which she will be called: The Lord Our Righteousness.’” God had said that Jerusalem would dwell safely. So even though things were terrible at the time of Jeremiah’s distress, he knew that God would keep that promise. He also knew from those same verses that someone was coming to “execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.” He didn’t know who was coming, but he knew God was sending someone to set things in order on earth. In Isaiah 55:7 we read, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.” This verse plainly says that God will have mercy on the wicked and pardon them if they will turn to Him and obey Him. All they had to do in Jeremiah’s day was turn to Him with a sincere heart. As Christians, that is all we have to do today. We have to turn to Him AND obey him. In times of distress for us, we can know that God is still in control and will keep his promises to us. Like the verse above says, His mercies will not allow us to be consumed. As Christians, no matter what happens in our lives on this earth and no matter how many times we fall short, as long as we turn to God with a sincere heart and ask for forgiveness, everything will work out according to His will someday. When we ask Him for forgiveness, we are admitting that we are sinners and that we need our savior, Jesus Christ.

Isn’t it wonderful that we can go to God anytime? What a blessing!! Hebrews 4:16 assures us that we can go to God anytime we need him. ANYTIME! Listen to these words, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We get to not only come, but come boldly, with confidence that we will be heard and listened intently to!! God wants to listen to us. We are not insignificant to God! Our concerns, problems, needs, heartaches, etc. are never insignificant to God! He cares about all of it! Just like He cared for Jeremiah when He was in such grief, He cares for us in ours. We can be in a horrible place in our own personal lives like David was at one time. David had hit rock bottom when he wrote Psalm 51. He had committed adultery and murder. David was away from God, but He came back on his knees begging God to forgive him. Psalms 51 has been a go-to chapter for me to pray through at times when I have not been right with God. This chapter helps us know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we can go to God with anything. In Psalms 51:1-2 David writes, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.” Skip down to Psalm 51:10-11 and it reads, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” God knew David’s weaknesses and He knows ours today. If God forgave David, then He will forgive us when we fall short. Jeremiah and David were both lamenting. They were both in anguish. Their reasons were very different. Jeremiah was in anguish over failing to get the people to repent. David was in anguish over his own sin. The point is, it doesn’t matter what we come to God with, He will be there for us. We can lay it at His feet. AND……… if we look to His word, we will find the solution to whatever our problem is or we will find comfort in whatever is grieving us. 

The only reason, and I mean the ONLY reason, our world is still standing today is because of the mercy and compassion of God. Because of His mercy in preserving His people and sending His son, we are here today, we are called Christians today and we are His church today. We have today to live right before God, ONLY because of God’s mercy. If we haven’t obeyed the gospel yet or if we are not living up to our commitment to Christ by living faithful, we have today, ONLY because of God’s mercy. We are not promised tomorrow. I have learned from my daddy to pray for time in my personal prayers. He has always prayed for time for more people to be saved, for more people to see the truth. I have started doing this as well. I pray for time for as many people as possible to see what they need to do to gain eternity with God and His Son. The thought of anyone, especially those I love so much, being lost just hurts me to my core.

Are compassion and mercy the same thing? The verse also says that “His compassions fail not”. Mercy and compassion are different. When God shows mercy on us, it means He forgives us when we fall short. He tells us to forgive others if we want Him to forgive us. God has compassion on us when we are struggling in our lives with sickness, problems at work, problems with our children or in our marriage. He is concerned about us. This is compassion. We can know His compassion when we open His word and read about it and we can feel that compassion towards us. We know what it feels like to show compassion to others. God feels that same compassion for us. Think about all the times that God showed compassion on the children of Israel when they were wandering in the wilderness and they were some pretty ungrateful people. He sent manna and quail from heaven for them to eat. (Exodus 16) He brought water from a rock twice when they were thirsty. (Exodus 17:1-7, Numbers 20:2-13) This is only a couple of examples of the compassion He showed His people. 

Jesus was God in the flesh and we saw Him showing unlimited compassion for people when He was on earth. The Bible says that Jesus had compassion on them and healed their sick. (Matthew 14:14) Jesus also was moved with compassion on people at one time because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. (Matthew 9:36) Jesus is our ultimate shepherd. And let’s not forget when Jesus had compassion on the multitude because they had been with Him for three days and had no food. This is when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fish. (Matthew 15:32) God and his Son have unlimited compassion and mercy on us when we obey them, when we lean on them, and when we make them the center of our lives. 

On this earth, God’s compassion falls on the just and the unjust according to Matthew 5:45. He takes care of all of us regardless of what we believe or how we act which says a lot about God’s character. He loves every soul He ever created, born and unborn, and wants all to be saved.  However, on judgment day, His mercy/forgiveness will only be on ones who are in Christ and have remained faithful until death. (Romans 6:3-4, Revelation 2:10) We have to be in Christ for Him to be our mediator for us with God the Father at the judgment day. (1 Timothy 2:5) Paul does a beautiful job of explaining baptism in Romans chapter 6. To be in Christ, we have to have been baptized into Him through water baptism for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38) Acts chapter 2 is where the gospel was preached for the first time and the church was established for the first time. People were only added by God to the church after they gladly received the words that the apostles preached. (Acts 2:47) What were those words? Look back at Acts 2:38 to see how Peter answered the people whose hearts were pricked after they heard about what happened to Jesus. They asked in verse 37 “what shall we do?”. They were pricked in their hearts. But more had to be done. If those people at that time were commanded to be baptized to have sins forgiven, then why wouldn’t this commandment be the same for us today? This is not me saying this to offend anyone who believes differently about baptism. I’m simply saying what the Bible says verbatim, because I love all people’s souls too much to say anything else. According to God’s word, we have to come into contact with the blood of Christ to have remission of sins. Acts 22:16 says that plainly as Ananias tells Paul what to do to wash away his ugly past. With an open heart I ask you to listen to the scriptures, not me. I talk about baptism more in depth in another article I wrote a couple of weeks ago. I ask you to be like the Bereans in Acts 17:11. Paul bragged about them because they searched the scriptures of old to see if the things Paul and Silas were preaching to them about Christ were true or not. Never take my word for it in these articles I write. Please go look in the Bible at the verses I provide and make sure I’m right in what I’m saying. I would never want to say anything other than the truth and I am only human. Let’s all be careful to listen to God’s word and make sure that what someone is telling us lines up with God’s word. Why take chances? Why not just do what the Bible tells us to do? This is just food for thought. 

And now comes the most beautiful thought that Jeremiah had as he looked up into heaven and realized that God was still there…….in control. He says that God’s mercy and compassion are “new every morning”. What a beautiful thought!! Every morning when we open our eyes, God’s mercy has given us another day of life, another chance to serve Him, another chance to help someone else on their journey. Every morning God’s compassion allows us to have everything we need to survive the day. We all have struggles in our lives, but we are taken care of by God. Our physical needs are met for the most part. We have to work to make money to buy what we need. But who gave us the health, ability, and talents to work and do the specific jobs we do? And then the work that we do, in turn, helps other people in their lives to have the things they need to survive. I’m a teacher and I hope that I have used my talent to help children in their school journey so that they can grow into confident, productive, hard-working adults who contribute to society. But God is the reason that I have the ability to teach. He gave me the calling to do the job I do. We are all able to survive because God gave us all unique abilities to help each other make it through this life. It is amazing when you think about it. God’s mercy and compassion are new every morning. I love it. 

So Jeremiah then exalts God by saying, “Great is Your faithfulness”. Jeremiah is simply recognizing God for being so faithful to His people throughout all their ups and downs. What does it mean to be faithful? Let’s use marriage as an example. In a marriage, we vow to be faithful to our spouse for the rest of our lives. Husband and wife are loyal to each other and trust each other completely. You are one with each other when you are joined together in holy matrimony. Song of Solomon 2:16 says this beautifully, “My beloved is mine, and I am his.” You belong to each other.  Each person puts the other person’s needs ahead of his/her own needs and is dedicated to their spouse for a lifetime. The wife is to submit to the husband and the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. (Ephesians 5: 22-25) I can guarantee that no woman would ever have trouble submitting to her husband if the husband loved her like Christ loved the church. Let that sink in. Christ gave up His life for the church. This is how a man should take care of His wife. He should be willing to give up His life for her. Life I said before, submission would never be a problem if all husbands would put their wives ahead of themselves. And we wives should show respect and love to our husbands and put them ahead of ourselves. Our number one goal in our marriages should be to help each other get to heaven and to serve God together. We might not need divorce lawyers anymore if we would follow these simple verses in God’s word and keep our marriages Christ-centered. So how is God faithful to us today? Well for one thing, He gave us Jesus. He made a promise that Jesus would be born of a virgin, grow into a man, go about preaching and performing miracles, be rejected by mankind, be beaten and humiliated, and finally crucified and killed on a tree. And all of this happened just like God foretold through the prophets in the old testament. Isaiah 53 tells all about Jesus Christ and what he would go through for us. But that is not all!! God also promised that Jesus would not stay in the grave, but that He would rise from the dead to conquer death and Satan. And He did!! David prophesied about it in Psalm 16:8-11. And Jesus himself told of His own death and resurrection in Mark 9:31. I encourage you to go read those verses. God has kept every promise that He ever made to us, except one. He has promised that His Son would come back to earth someday and take home the faithful that are in Christ Jesus.  1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 explains it so beautifully, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” This is the promise that we who are in Christ are waiting for, and we fully believe in the faithfulness of our great God just like Jeremiah did when he spoke of it in Lamentations many years before. The faithfulness of God is everlasting. I’ll end with Psalm 36:5, “Your mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” 

Always remember the mercy, compassion, and faithfulness of God. We are so lucky to have an almighty Creator who cares so deeply for us and desires to have us with Him for eternity. All we have to do is follow His plan found in His word. His plan is simple. It starts with hearing. We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47) Lastly, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ and His church until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)

I am really enjoying the blessings I am finding in God’s word through this blog! The treasures in God’s word are new every morning for me. I hope this helps everyone who reads it want to search the scriptures daily. I hope everyone has a blessed Mother’s Day tomorrow and a wonderful week ahead!! I will post part 3 on these verses next week. 

Copyright 2023, all rights reserved.

Part 1- Hope

Lamentations 3:21-26

21  This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.

22  Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.

23  They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.

24  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”

25  The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.

26  It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.

Lamentations is a book of grief and anguish. It is about the anguish of a man who had done all He could to warn God’s people against coming judgment, but to no avail. They had not listened to him. By not listening to him, they in turn were not listening to God. Jeremiah was called by God to warn the people. He was given a job to do and I’m sure he felt like he had failed. These verses in the middle of the book of Lamentations are so beautiful and comforting, especially considering what the author, Jeremiah, was going through during this time in history. Most of the book of Lamentations is very sad and you can tell that Jeremiah is as depressed as he can be throughout it. He had tried so hard to warn God’s people of His coming judgment if they didn’t repent and turn back to Him…….and they didn’t. This led to God bringing judgment on the city of Jerusalem by allowing its destruction. Many were killed and the ones who lived were carried away into Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah laments throughout the whole book. The word lamentation means the passionate expression of grief or sorrow. It is expressing grief, not holding it inside in the least. However, we see some light in the darkness in these verses. We see a glimpse of the future for God’s people in these verses and we know that God did preserve His people through all the turmoil they brought on themselves. Through all the ups and downs of God’s chosen people, the Israelites, God kept His promises to them and showed mercy on them when they repented. God had a plan for His Son to be born from this line of people at the time of His perfect will. He did this so that all people everywhere could have the opportunity to be saved. This time in biblical history is dark, but Jeremiah had not lost his faith that God would make a way for His people. Let’s look at Jeremiah’s words in the above verses and see how we can relate these to our lives today. 

Imagine a dark room with no light at all, so dark that we can’t see our hand in front of our face. Then we light a candle with this tiny flame. It’s tiny, but it allows us to see. This is what our life may feel like sometimes when we go through hard times. Everyone’s hard times are different. Each one of us knows what this feels like in one way or another. At the time, it seems like nothing will ever get better. Time goes by so slowly in those moments. Then…….we decide to get on our knees in prayer, and open God’s word and suddenly we have some hope……some light, like a candle in a dark room. Once Jeremiah had gotten through some grief and possibly even some anger over all that had taken place, we see him finding that little bit of hope, that light in all that darkness. These verses give me so much hope. Hope in his Creator kept him from giving up. That same hope keeps us from giving up. Remember my last post, AT HIS FEET? Because of our hope in Christ, we can lay everything at His feet.

In verse 21, after Jeremiah had been in darkness and had wept and lamented for a time, he allowed God to shed some light on the situation and give him some hope. It is like he couldn’t see any hope for a time. He was going through a grieving process so to speak. Jeremiah was human just like us. We do the same thing. Sometimes something is so traumatic/upsetting/annoying, whatever the emotion is, that it brings on a reaction so suddenly that we can’t even get our thoughts together to turn to God in that moment. But when we finally get to where we can process, we turn to God and He begins the healing process. Now I have no idea what Jeremiah’s physical appearance was, but I can picture him raising his eyes to heaven in the midst of all this grief and thinking, but………..”This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.” He finds hope in God. This is what we as Christians have to always remember. In all our turmoil, whatever it is, God is with us with the candle burning, with our hope for the future when we are ready to see it. Jeremiah 29:11 reminds us what God’s thoughts were toward his people and what they are toward us today, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” Does this sound like God wants bad things to happen to us? Of course he doesn’t. Sometimes others’ bad choices can cause trials for us. But that does not mean that we lose hope in God and His promises. His plan for us never changes. We may do things that change the course of our own lives, but His ultimate plan for us will never change.

The Psalms have many wonderful verses about hope. Psalm 33:22 says, “Let your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, just as we hope in you.” This verse ties God’s mercy to our hope. Because of God’s mercy, we have hope, just like Jeremiah did in the verses above. Psalm 71:14 ties hope with our praise to God. Because of the hope we have, we praise and exalt God, “But I will hope continually, and will praise You yet more and more.” In Romans 12:12 the apostle Paul instructs Christians to rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, and be constant in prayer. Do you think God wanted to let Israel be taken into captivity by Babylon? Of course not. But God had to get their attention! In order for His plan to save mankind to unfold at the proper time, He had to allow these things to happen. He didn’t want to!! Remember Deuteronomy 5:29? This is one of my favorite verses that shows the personality of God toward His creation, “Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!” This is it! This is why He allowed them to be taken into captivity. It was a wake up call!! Don’t we realize that all of His people were not doing evil. Think about the children (young men) that were carried away that stayed faithful to God while in captivity, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo. They did not deserve this, but God used them while in captivity as examples for us today in keeping the faith and standing up for the truth of the gospel. Remember the lions’ den and the fiery furnace? These are stories from our childhood Sunday school classes, but they are just as important for us to remember as adults. God also worked through Daniel and gave prophecy about the coming kingdom (the church) in Daniel 2:44, “And in the days of these kings (kings of the Roman Empire) shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.” God’s kingdom is here today. In the midst of all the religious confusion in the world, the Lord’s church is still standing. I love that I can go into any assembly of the Lord’s church and there is no division. The truth is being taught and glory is being given to God. We are all of one accord everywhere the world over. (Philippians 2:2) This is why God kept on punishing and forgiving His people over and over in the old testament. He had to bring about the establishment of His kingdom here on earth, the church, through His Son at the perfect time. This was his plan from the beginning.

God’s timing is perfect. It was perfect during the time of Jeremiah and it is today. Jeremiah had hope in God’s promises in the darkest of times and we can too. In the old covenant, God exercised His judgment immediately and there was no mediator between man and God. In the new covenant, God will exercise judgment at Christ’s second coming. There will be a separation between the sheep and goats. (Matthew 25:31-33) The sheep will be His followers who worship Him in both spirit and truth. God is looking for His people who do this. John 4:23-24 says, “But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.” And we now have Christ as our mediator between us and God if we are in Him. (1 Timothy 2:5, Hebrews 9:15)  His sacrifice on the cross made this possible. This is why we and our future generations and generations past have hope. Without Him as our intercessor, we would have no hope. This is to my fellow Christians, never forget that our hope is new every morning in Jesus, no matter what we have to face each day. As I have said in my earlier posts, be in God’s word daily and pray daily and our Father will keep our hope alive if we abide in Him.

Hope this helps us in our Christian walk friends. I write because it helps me study. It is how I study best. Blessings to everyone in the coming week!!

Copyright 2023, all rights reserved.

At His Feet

Do you ever feel overwhelmed to the point where you don’t know where to start? Do you ever feel down on yourself because you feel like you have let things in your life pile up and you feel like you are drowning? Or maybe you just feel like you are not doing enough spiritually, but you don’t know what to do to change it? You feel spread so thin that one more thing might break you. You are in a rut and you want to get out of it so bad!! This has been me more times than I can count. I have been a roller coaster in my life. Some days I feel like I can accomplish anything and other days I do good to get my shoes tied. I just roll through my day doing everything I have to do and at the end of the day I am thinking………what did I do today to take care of myself? Did I connect with my heavenly father today? What did I do today to feed myself spiritually? And the answer was nothing. I didn’t do anything for myself spiritually today. And after several days of this, I begin to feel insignificant no matter what I’ve done. It’s because I begin to feel disconnected from God. And this feeling carries over into every other facet of my life. I don’t feel like I am the wife or mother or any of the other hats I wear daily, that I should be. Most of all I don’t feel like I’m the Christian that I should be. We all have days where we just don’t feel motivated. We feel so far behind that we think we will never get caught up. Physically and mentally, we may be drained. It may be stress at work, stress at home, or it could be our hormone changes ladies. From taking care of young children, to chauffeuring older children for all their activities,  to taking care of elderly parents and other family members, to keeping our home somewhat in order, to juggling our careers if we have a secular job, we women are multitaskers. God made us this way because He knows we can handle doing more than five things at one time!! However, when things get too overwhelming, we can feel powerless and out of control. We may simply have too much on us at times. We may need to take something off of our plate if that is possible. But……sometimes that is just not a possibility. We often probably wish we could clone ourselves. We may have people depending on us for a number of reasons and we feel paralyzed and wonder………where do I even begin?  

Well friends, we begin by dropping to our knees in prayer and laying everything that is overwhelming us, everything that is worrying us, everything that has hurt us, everything that is causing us to feel out of control at God’s feet. That has become my mantra recently………at His feet. Saying this to myself over and over some days is what gets me through tough days. I simply pray in my mind to my heavenly Father and say to Him, “Father, I am leaving this at Your feet. I trust you to work your will with this situation. I know that everything happens in your time, not mine, and I’ll try my best to wait and be patient for your perfect will. Whatever your will is for this, I accept it.” Then I take a deep breath and I feel better for a while. It’s not a one-time thing though. Like I said, sometimes it is a constant recording on repeat in my brain when I am really struggling. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Before we turn to anything or anyone else to help us cope with anything in our lives, let’s immediately remember these verses from Jesus and connect with our Father in prayer. God will strengthen us and will never put more on us than we can handle. He knows our strength. In Isaiah 41:10, God says, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” But if we never open God’s word for guidance or never go to Him sincerely in prayer, then He can’t help us. We tie God’s hands when we turn to worldly ways to cope. 

So what about coping mechanisms? There are many unhealthy ways to cope. Some obvious ones are alcohol and drugs. I think we all realize the dangers of alcohol and drugs as coping mechanisms. Destruction of marriages and families, health problems, addictions, and untimely deaths have stemmed from using alcohol and drugs to cope with problems. From my experience, the majority of the time when people abuse these substances, it is because they are trying to forget something unpleasant/traumatic, relieve stress and anxiety, or both. They are trying to numb the pain through self-medication. As Christians, using any of these substances instead of going to our Creator is definitely not going to help us. It will harm us physically and harm our relationship with God. Not to mention, it is not glorifying to God, and makes us look like we belong to the world, which at that point we do belong to the world. However, there are other unhealthy coping mechanisms that are more subtle. Overeating and bingeing-eating have always been one of my unhealthy coping mechanisms. It’s harmful to me and in no way glorifies God when I do it. It’s a struggle that I’m continually fighting daily and with God’s help I will win the battle!! 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 reminds me, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” God has given me this body and I should be a good steward of it. Turning tothings other than God, especially behaviors that are unhealthy, can turn into really bad habits or even addictions. And let me just say, even seemingly healthy things for us can interfere with our relationship with God if we turn to them instead of God. Exercise can be one of those things. I speak from experience with this. Of course I firmly believe in exercise for our physical and mental health. It is so good for us if it is not turned into an idol. Exercise used to be something I really overdid, and put as my top priority every day. Nothing else mattered more to me than getting that workout done. It was my main focus at one time in my life when I was much younger. I used to beat myself up terribly if I ever missed a day. Exercise in itself is a wonderful thing and I try to make it a priority for my physical health, but my daily Bible study and prayer have to be my top priority every day for my spiritual health. My physical or mental health won’t get better until I am healthy spiritually. I realize that now. I wish I had figured this out a long time ago when I was much younger. Hint, hint to my younger readers. However, it is never to late to turn things around and get things in order no matter what age you are. I am 52 and I am trying to turn certain aspects of my life around. We can do it with God’s help!! I also tend to turn to television shows or movies to take my mind off of troubles and trials. Personally I really have to fight this. Some turn to social media. In themselves, these are not wrong, but if we do these activities in place of or ahead of Bible study and prayer, then they can become wrong. We must have balance. These activities are entertaining and enjoyable but they do not help our problems go away or help us deal with them, any more than drinking alcohol or taking drugs or overeating/bingeing, or exercising until we drop, or anything else. These are all just bandaids, not cures. Our Savior, the Great Physician is the only “cure”. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Let me repeat, I’m not saying that watching movies, TV shows, or looking at social media is wrong in itself. I love movies and shows as long as they do not influence me in a negative way and affect my Christian walk. However, anything that we turn to in order to cope with our trials in this life other than God is only a quick fix. Our trials will still be there and we will feel even worse because we haven’t turned to our Creator and our Father to help us. We will have a void in our lives that we will never fill with earthly activities or things. God has to fill our void or we will always be searching for a way to fill it. Whether it is healthy or not, it is still a quick fix and will not fill our void. There will always be times when we will feel physically and mentally drained. But if we are spiritually alive with God through prayer and through His word, then that feeling of being drained is so much easier to handle. God wants us to put everything weighing us down on Him. He wants us to trust Him with our lives. Just listen to Ephesians 2:4-5……..”But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)……” He is telling the Christians at Ephesus, who had already fully obeyed the gospel in baptism, that He loved them when they were sinners…..dead in their sin and He made them alive when they made the choice to be baptized and have their sins washed away. God still feels this way about us and has that same  great love for us today. If he loves us so very much, why would we want to turn anywhere else for help or comfort if we are Christians? He’s got us!!  

Everyone has their own trials. Trials are meant to draw us closer to Him if we let them. James 1:2-4 says “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” It’s really hard to find joy in trials, isn’t it? God knows we are human and He knows that trials do not make us happy, however we can still find joy because we know that God has got us in the palm of His hand if we are turning to Him. Let’s not forget that being happy and having joy are two separate things though. There is no place in God’s word where God tells us we will be happy all the time. But He does promise us joy, but only if we are abiding in Him. If we abide in Him always, we will find joy no matter what is going on in our lives. How do we abide in Him and find joy? Jesus tells us plainly how we abide in Him in John 15:10-11, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” 

We will find joy in trials if we truly lay everything at Jesus’ feet. Let’s do that friends. Life will still be hard at times, but laying our trials at our Savior’s feet and then going to His word for guidance will help us navigate through them in a healthy way and will help us grow as Christians.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Saturday and blessed week to come!! Thank you for reading!!

Copyright 2023, all rights reserved.

Part 3- Transforming and Renewing Our Minds and Lives

Two of my favorite verses in the Bible are Romans 12:1-2. 

1. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 
2. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

In my last post, I looked at the first part of Romans 12:2 where we are told not to conform to the world. If we are Christians, we are to be conformed to God’s purpose for our lives, not the world. Let’s continue on from last week’s post and finish up Romans 12:2. 

Before I dive into the rest of Romans 12:2, I want to remind everyone that this letter is written to the members of the Lord’s church in Rome. (Romans 1:7) These are people who have already obeyed the gospel and become Christians. They have repented, confessed, and been baptized for the remission of their sins and been added by God to the church of Christ. (Acts 2:47)
The first thing that we are told in Romans 12:2 is “do not be conformed to this world”. We cannot present our bodies as a “living sacrifice” as Romans 12:1 tells us to, unless we do this. Instead of conforming to the world, the verse says we are to “be transformed”. So this means we have to change, or go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. The word transformation means a dramatic or radical change. And this is not a one time thing. When it says “be transformed” it means continually “be transformed”……stay “transformed” because remember, Paul is talking to Christians who had already begun their transformation when they obeyed the gospel. But I need to continually transform daily after I obey the gospel. And that takes effort on my part every single day to stay transformed into the image of Christ. I fall short so often in this, but I will never stop trying until my last breath.

Before I go further into the verse, I would like to go a little deeper into the transformation process for those who need to hear this information. So the question is…..how did these Christians to whom Paul is talking in Romans “transform” to begin with? How do we? Well, first we have to repent. (Matthew 4:17, Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) When we repent of sin we are deciding at that point that we want to transform or change. We are not just saying we are sorry only to turn around and go back to the sin we were in. We actually want to go through a metamorphosis and leave our life of sin forever. Then we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) We are confessing the name of who we want to transform into the likeness of which is Jesus Christ, our Savior. We are telling everyone that we believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Then, we are buried with Christ in baptism. (Romans 6:4, Colossians 2:12) When we are baptized, we bury our “caterpillar”, our old and sinful self and we leave the world behind. We come into contact with Christ’s blood through baptism and our sins are washed away. (Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16)  Baptism is how we “call on the name of the Lord”. (Acts 22:16) Ananias told Paul in the verse I just referenced to “arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.” After baptism, we don’t belong to the world anymore. We belong to Christ. We cannot belong to both the world and Christ. We come up out of the waters of baptism and we are a beautiful butterfly so to speak, a new creature in Christ who is walking in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4, 2 Corinthians 5:17)  Is there magic in the water? No, the water is not magic. It is the obedient act of baptism that puts us in Christ and at that point, our transformation has begun, not before. We are not saved until we come up out of the water a new creature. Christ commanded his disciples in Matthew 28:18-20 to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” How do we become a disciple of Christ? We are baptized into Him.  I am reminded of the account of Naaman in 2 Kings 5:1-19. Was it the muddy water of the Jordan River that cured Naaman of his leprosy? No, it was the obedient act of washing in the river seven times that caused Naaman’s transformation from being sick to being well. In the same way, the obedient act of baptism begins our transformation. It is obedience, not the water!! Naaman would not have been saved from his leprosy had he not obeyed and we will not be saved from sin if we don’t obey. Baptism saves us from our sins (Mark 16:16) and God adds us to His church after we are baptized. (Acts 2:47) 

So……….are we through when we come up out of the water? Are we completely transformed when we are first baptized? No, we are new babes in Christ. If we were finished after baptism, we would not need Paul’s message in Romans 12:1-2. We have to grow into maturity and we continue to grow every day that we are physically alive. And as I said before, it is different for everyone. Sometimes we let our old “caterpillar” show through and we have to get ourselves back on track. It is tough out there in the world with all those temptations that Satan throws at us. We are bombarded every day. So…..how do I get back on track and cover that caterpillar that is trying to show through? Because, I definitely cannot look and act like the world and still transform myself into the image of Christ. So how do I continue to transform after I’m baptized into Christ? How do I stay a beautiful butterfly? How do I keep my old sinful self, or as our comparison is, our “caterpillar” from coming back?  The next part of the verse tells us that we are transformed “by the renewing of your mind”. But what does that mean? It means that we renew our minds with God’s word. The more we renew our minds with God’s word, the more we will transform into the image of Christ. If we don’t renew our minds with God’s word after we are baptized, then we won’t continue to transform. We won’t grow. We will look more like the world than Christ, and our beautiful butterfly will eventually be gone. We will belong to the world again, because we have not let Christ continue to transform us through His word. If we want the blessing of being in heaven with God and His Son someday and have that crown of life, we must be faithful until death. (Revelation 2:10) To truly be faithful, we must transform and renew with God’s word. We must seek first the kingdom of God which means we must seek first His church and things pertaining to it. (Matthew 6:33) His church consists of His people. We are to put God and our brothers and sisters in Christ first in our lives.

If I have the right mindset and attitude, worship and Bible study attendance will help me to grow and stay transformed into the image of Christ. My attendance also helps my brothers and sisters in Christ to grow and stay transformed which goes back to Matthew 6:33, seeking God’s kingdom, aka, the church, aka, my brothers and sisters in Christ first. Do we see the connection? It is encouraging to others if I am there at every service. And vice versa, it is encouraging to me to see others at every service. Hebrews 10:23-25 says very plainly, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Regardless of what the world tells us, assembling for worship is a command. But what about Sunday night service? What about Bible study on Sunday morning and Wednesday night? In the Lord’s church, we normally have two worship services on Sunday. We also assemble for Bible study on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. Hebrews 10:25 says, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. It does not specify whether it is assembling for worship or Bible study. The way that I take this verse is that if our congregation is assembling, we should be there if at all possible. We should want to be there. It will be uplifting to us and to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes we have circumstances out of our control that keep us from coming and I’m in no way talking about those types of things. Evidently, according to Hebrews 10:25, there were Christians who were “forsaking the assembly” back at that time just like we sometimes do today. It must have been a problem because the Hebrew writer felt it necessary to tell the Christians back during the time this was written and, in turn, tell Christians today not to be people who forsake the assembly. I know that I have fallen short in this area at times in the past, but I am striving very hard to do better. I don’t want to ever let the words come out of my mouth again or have this thought enter my mind again…….. “I don’t have to go on Sunday night or Wednesday night because I went Sunday morning”. I am not punching a clock. I am ashamed to say that I have had that attitude in the past. Let’s ask ourselves, would we miss anything happening on any other night of the week? My kids were heavily into basketball and sometimes we would have basketball games a couple of nights a week. Then, Wednesday night bible study rolls around and we are all a little tired. I had to ask myself a question. Would I miss my kid’s game just because I’m a little tired? Do I want to teach my kids that we can make it to everything else during the week except Bible study and worship? No matter what our congregation is assembling for, whether it’s worship, Bible study, gospel meeting, vacation bible school, or anything else that we have the opportunity to attend, let’s all make the effort to be there and support each other and support the wonderful work being done by our bible class teachers and our preachers. Not to mention, with our attendance and focus while we are there, we are letting our Creator know that He is number one in our lives and we want to know more about Him. I know that I can’t earn my way into heaven with attendance at Bible study and worship. Jesus has made the way for us to get there. I know that with all my heart. But, because of what God has done for me through Jesus, I want to be there. I can’t tell you all how bad I have fallen short in this in my life at different times. I never missed anything that my children were ever involved in. I was there if at all possible, because I loved them so much. I should feel this way about the church that Christ died for. I love God and His kingdom here on earth so much that I don’t want to miss anything if at all possible. I have grown to love Wednesday night Bible study. In a busy work week, it keeps me grounded in what is truly important and “renews my mind” so that I can make it through the rest of the week. It is great to be with my brothers and sisters in Christ who are “of the same mind” in the middle of my work week. (Philippians 2:2)

However, even if we are going to worship and Bible study every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, our growth can still be stunted if we are not living out our faith daily, doing our own personal Bible study, and praying to God each day. I know from personal experience that you can be at services every time the doors are open, yet be disconnected from God and feel lost. I was simply going through the motions and that is just as bad as not being there at all. I wasn’t studying on my own. My prayer life needed major help. Until I started making time for Him every day, I struggled to stay on track spiritually. And we all struggle some days, simply because we are human and life can be overwhelming. But what better way to deal with being overwhelmed with life than to pray to God and ask Him to help us, tell Him everything going on that is overwhelming us, and then open God’s word and let Him soothe our souls? And Christians, even though we lead busy lives, let’s not lose sight of our purpose on this earth which is to bear fruit for God, to help teach others how to be saved. And how can I fulfill my purpose to teach others if I don’t study myself? It’s not easy some days. Some days we have more time than other days. It is about putting forth effort and putting Bible study and prayer as a top priority each day. We can do it my friends!! It is soooo worth it!!

Ok…..on to the last part of the verse, “ that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” This means that through renewing our minds with God’s word, we will learn what is good and acceptable to God. We learn that God’s will for our lives is perfect simply because He is God. We may not always understand God’s will but this is where trust comes in. We just have to trust Him. Romans 8:28 assures us with these words, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” May we never forget that his ways and thoughts are higher than our ways and thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9) How would we ever know what is good and acceptable to God without renewing our minds with His word? How would we know his perfect will for our lives without studying His word? Obviously, we can’t know every detail of God’s will for our lives. It wouldn’t be good for us if we knew everything that was going to happen to us. God knows what we need to know and He has given us all we need in His word. Some things are just not meant for us to know right now. However, we can know God’s ultimate will for us and that is a home in heaven with Him and His Son. We just have to sincerely dive into God’s word and follow His plan to get there. 

Transformation does not happen overnight and it is different for every person, because we all have different life experiences, different upbringings, different things that tempt us, etc. God never promised us that it would be easy. In fact, Jesus told us in Matthew 10:22 that we would be hated by all (meaning the world) for His name’s sake, but He also assured us that if we endure to the end we will be saved. What a comforting statement from our Savior!! So we run the race with endurance and never give up. (Hebrews 12:1) God never gives up on us as long as we are enduring in the faith and when we do fall, and we all do, He is there with open arms to take us back if we only take that first step towards Him. We gain more and more endurance the more we give of ourselves to Him through forming good habits of worship and Bible study attendance, daily Bible study, and daily prayer. Transformation is a process that we all continually work on. I am a work in progress. And I have a long way to go. We all do actually. I have been a teacher for thirty years. As an educator, I have always set the bar high for my students, because I want them to have something to strive for, and I want them to know that I believe they can accomplish anything they want in this life. I want them to have the confidence to try and reach that bar. Setting the bar low does not challenge anyone. My students will not grow with low expectations. I did the same with my own children. I set the bar high because I wanted them to know that I loved them and I believed they could achieve anything. Well God does this same thing with all of us. His expectations of us are high. Is it even logical that He wouldn’t set a high bar for His children? He’s God, our heavenly Father. He knows what each of us need individually to make us better people if we will truly trust Him and let His word guide every aspect of our lives. He knows that without a high bar to strive for, we would not be the kind of people He wants in heaven with Him. We can never reach that bar, but God expects us to strive for it. The world makes it out like God has set the bar low, or that there isn’t even a bar at all, and that we don’t really have to put forth any effort and it is really sad. That is how Satan has twisted people’s minds through false teaching. I pray every day for more people to see the truth and for doors to open so that I can help others. Friends, I know I have spent lots of time on Romans 12:1-2, but I found so much inspiration from diving into just those two verses. Just think about how much inspiration we can get from the entire Bible!! It is a book of endless inspiration. I pray that we all continue to transform and renew daily through God’s word and strive to reach the bar that God has set for us………which is to be like our savior, Jesus Christ. 

Have a blessed week ahead and thank you for reading my blog!!

Copyright 2023, all rights reserved.

Part 2- We Can Not Conform to This World

Two of my favorite verses in the Bible are Romans 12:1-2. 

1. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 
2. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

In my last post, I had planned to break down Romans 12:1-2, but the depth that I found in verse one alone prompted me to turn last week’s post into two parts, possibly three. I would like to pick up where I left off and dive into Romans 12:2.
After telling us in verse one that we, as Christians, are to present our bodies as living sacrifices that are holy and pleasing to God, verse two expounds on this and tells us how to accomplish this. Where do we start? After we are baptized into Christ, we have to pull away from worldliness, as it says in verse two, “do not be conformed to this world”. 1 John 2:15-16 ties in with this idea very well, “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world–the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life–is not of the Father but is of the world.” Obviously, if you love the world, you will most likely conform to the world. This statement to not conform to the world may seem plain and simple on the surface, but it is difficult to do and something we all have to continuously guard against. It takes spiritual maturity and training of the brain to do this and everyone’s maturity timeline is different depending on their individual circumstances and life experiences. Just as we don’t all physically mature at the same rate, we don’t all spiritually mature at the same rate. There isn’t a magic number or age when we just all of the sudden become spiritually mature. Some of us, like myself, are late bloomers. But let’s not ever forget that we are to never stop growing and maturing spiritually for as long as we live. And obviously, if we are faithful in worship and Bible study attendance, in daily Bible study, and in prayer, we will get closer to spiritual maturity than someone who is not doing these things faithfully. Being in God’s word on a daily basis is going to help us mature and then, in turn, help us to conform to God’s purpose for our lives instead of what the world thinks our purpose should be, which is living for the moment and living for self. But wherever we are in our spiritual journey, let’s always remember this, that God loves us and wants to perform a good work in us and complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6) 

Let’s compare our dedication to God’s word with the dedication that the sports of basketball and tennis require. These are my two absolute favorite sports. Let’s start with basketball. I grew up playing basketball. I practiced every day. Because of this, I matured as a player. I got better every year that I played. It took dedication and training on my part to become a solid, intelligent player. It was the sport of my youth and I still love it up to this day. I also coached basketball for many years and I took the time to study the game more in depth so that I could teach the kids on my team (and my own two children) the fundamentals of the sport and help them grow as players. I bought books to read about coaching and researched offensive and defensive sets to see what would work best for my teams. I sought out new drills to keep my practices fresh and new for the kids. I put a lot of time into coaching and I wouldn’t take back a minute of it. It was so much fun watching the kids grow and develop and improve. It took dedication and training on my part, as a coach, to help my team develop and succeed. Tennis is my new sport that I play in my “older” age. I absolutely love it. I played a little in my younger days, but I didn’t really have any dedication to the sport or training in it back then. My best friend and I try to play as much as our busy lives will let us, usually a couple of times a week. I also watch videos to learn more about how to be a better tennis player. It’s good exercise and it makes me feel great to be involved in a sport again as a player, and I have improved a great deal since I started playing a few months ago. I have dedicated myself to training and improving in the sport. So, if dedication and training help us mature in things such as sports, then think about what dedication and training in God’s word will do for our spiritual maturity. Let that sink in, because I sure am!! I am stepping on my own toes here!! We are told so many times in the Bible to meditate on God’s word. Joshua 1:8 says “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” Meditation means to think deeply or carefully about something. The Psalmist says it this way in chapter 119, verses 15 and 16, “I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate (think profoundly and at length) Your ways. I will delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.” How do we not forget God’s word? Study and meditate!! Studying (2 Tim. 2:15) is a commandment for a reason. God knows that being in His word and applying His word to our lives will help keep us out of the world and out of trouble!! 
Something else that helps us to “not be conformed to this world” is to surround ourselves with people who will help us in our spiritual walk. Proverbs 13:20 says, “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” We have to watch who we are spending our time with. 1 Corinthians 15:33 reminds us, “Do not be deceived: Evil company corrupts good habits.” We want to have people in our lives who want to help us get to heaven and who encourage us in our talents for the Lord. We don’t want to spend our time with people who feed on our weaknesses. They only want to be around us when we are at our rock bottom weakest and they don’t want us to try and better ourselves spiritually. So let’s all be careful and on guard. Satan can get to us through people who we think are our friends. Let’s remember what Proverbs 12:26 tells us, “The righteous should choose his friends carefully, for the way of the wicked leads them astray.” Whether they are members of the Lord’s church or not, the friends we choose to spend time with should be a positive influence in our lives. I have wonderful friends that are members of the Lord’s church and wonderful friends that are not. And they are all such a blessing to my life and I hope that I am a blessing to them as well. Actually, I have two sisters in Christ who encouraged me to do something more with my writing. I have always loved to write and journal, but never had the confidence to put my writing out there for everyone to read. I wrote things for my husband and children to encourage them, but no one else. I let these two precious sisters in Christ read some things I had written and now I am writing for anyone who wants to read it. Through these two sisters in Christ and the encouraging feedback they gave me, I have grown spiritually through this blog and my hope is that, with God’s increase, others will be encouraged by it. Honestly, it’s the beauty of God’s word that is behind it all. It is all because of Him!! I wouldn’t have anything to write about if I wasn’t writing about God’s word!! The more that I am in it, the more beauty I find!! Psalms 119:105 says that, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” That is so comforting to me. I picture the paths in my brain just lighting up when I am reading and studying God’s word. To sum this part of the verse up, if we discipline ourselves to be in God’s word daily and be in prayer daily, and we surround ourselves with good people who are positive influences, we will be less likely to conform to the world. We won’t want to!! 

 So…….if I am a Christian, I am not going to conform to the world’s standards of how to be saved, how to live, how to worship, how to be a good wife, how to raise my kids, and the list goes on and on. God’s word and God’s word only will be my standard.

Again, I have found so much inspiration in these verses. I decided to break the post I had written about Romans 12:2 into two posts because it was extra long. Thanks to everyone for reading my blog! I hope everyone has a blessed coming week!! 

Romans 12:2 Part 3 –

Transforming and Renewing Our Minds and Lives coming next week!!

Copyright 2023, all rights reserved.

Part 1- We are Living Sacrifices

Two of my favorite verses in the Bible are Romans 12:1-2. 

1. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 
2. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Wow, such a wealth of spiritual guidance packed into these two verses. These two verses actually sum up the Christian life and how we are to live it. Let’s dive into these treasures from God’s word and break down verse one to start with.

First of all, in verse one Paul, the apostle,  says “I beseech you therefore, brethren”. Beseech is a powerful word in itself. It means to beg and plead!! It means to ask someone to do something with urgency!! So Paul is begging and pleading in verse one. Who is Paul pleading with? He is pleading with his brothers and sisters in Christ, hence the term “brethren”. Paul is writing to Christians, people who are members of the Lord’s church in Rome, who have repented of their sins and been baptized for the remission of their sins. (Romans 1:7) (Repentance and Baptism-Acts 2:38) 

Up until this point in Romans, Paul has been focusing more on what God has done for his people, but in Romans 12, he begins to move into discussing what God expects of his people. Most of the world believes that God doesn’t really expect anything from his people, but if we believe His word to be true, we can’t escape the fact that God has expectations of us and He sets the bar high. Honestly, the bar that God set is Jesus Christ. How He lived when He was on this earth is our bar that we are always striving to reach. And let’s always remember that Jesus knows how we feel as Hebrews 4:15 tells us, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin”.  Of course, we can never reach that bar of living a sinless life, and that is why Jesus sacrificed His life for us. Paul tells us to “present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God”. How can we read this verse and still think that we can just live however we want to live? Christ was the ultimate sacrifice as He shed His blood for us on the cross, but in this verse I am called to be a “living sacrifice”. That means I am to live my life or as it says sacrifice my life for Christ. Paul says in Philippians 1:21 that, “to live is Christ, to die is gain”. I think we can all agree that Paul’s life was a “living sacrifice” to God. Earlier in the book of Romans in chapter 6, verses 12 and 13, he uses some of this same type of language by saying, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” I have to give up some things after I become a Christian if I want to be “holy, acceptable unto God” like the verse says. 1 Peter 1:15-16 says it this way, “but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy’”. I have to live a holy and sacrificial life that is pleasing to God for the world to see. When people see the word holy, they tend to shy away from it. The word holy simply means dedicated to God or sacred. We are sacred if we are in Christ. Are we supposed to act “holier than thou” because we belong to Christ? Absolutely not! Not if we want to be Christ-like. We should never look down on others or be puffed up because of who we are. We do not want to be like the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day. We will never fulfill our commission to bring others to Christ if we act in this way. We must love the lost and never forget that we were once lost. I am an imperfect sinner, no different from anyone, and I mean anyone else in this world. God is no respecter of persons (Romans 2:11) and all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23) The only difference is that I belong to Christ. I am in Christ. I have given my life over to Him including all my imperfections, and there are many! We are not spiritually dead in our sins anymore after we are baptized. We are spiritually alive in Christ!! This is what sets us apart. 

On a personal note, I am so grateful that I was born into a family with parents who raised me to know the truth. So many are not this fortunate. Did I fall away? Yes I did. I have made a wealth of mistakes. More than once, I have had to come crawling back and ask God and my brothers and sisters in Christ to forgive me and pray for me. When I was younger, I know I didn’t truly appreciate my upbringing the way that I should have and I took it for granted. Everyone doesn’t have parents and grandparents who always try to put God first and who set a good example for them. We all mature spiritually in our own time, and we have such a patient and loving Father. I am so thankful for God’s patience with me. I need it daily. I am definitely a work in progress.

Why should we offer our lives as a living sacrifice that is pleasing to God? “By the mercies of God” is the reason Paul gives for exhorting us to live a sacrificial life that is pleasing to God. God has been so merciful to us and shown so much love for us by sending His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. I think Titus 3:4-6 explains God’s mercy so beautifully, “But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior”. So it’s not anything we have done to deserve it. We will never deserve it. But God loves us anyway and has shown abundant mercy to us through His Son. God made the way for us to be saved through His plan, not man’s ideas. Without following God’s plan, we are dead spiritually and lost for eternity. 

So is it even a question that we should live for Him?  Absolutely, we should! As the verse says, it is our “reasonable service”. It is only logical that a creation will submit and obey its creator simply because He created us. But He did not only create us. He didn’t just leave us here to die in our sins and be lost. He created a way for us to be saved. Why would we want to listen to anything the world says is acceptable? What other way is there to really live? God created everything and everyone. He created the Bible through inspired writers so we could know His will for our lives. Contrary to what the world thinks, God only created one way to be saved. It is through Jesus Christ. Ephesians 4:4-6 is clear as it says, “There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” How many times does Paul say the word “one” in those verses? God decided how we are to be saved and live for Him, not the world. AND God dictated what behaviors and actions He considers to be sin, not the world. So….it is a reasonable request that I live this kind of life and be this “living sacrifice” that my Creator has asked me to be. Is it easy? No, it is not an easy thing to do. And I fall short on a daily basis, however, God expects me to keep trying. The Bible is clear on that. God sees every effort I put forth and He sees every time I slack. I leave you with two verses that I think will encourage all of us to stay the course in our Christian lives and be the “living sacrifices” that God wants us to be. Hebrews 12:1-2 sums it up so beautifully, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Our life is a race. 1 Corinthians 9:24 says we all need to run our race “in such a way as to get the prize”.  That prize is to be in heaven with God and His Son. What other prize is worth more than that?

When I started writing about these two verses, I realized that I needed to make this a post into two parts because there was so much I wanted to say after I got started. But that is how the Bible is, isn’t it? I love how deep I can go with one verse. This post is about Romans 12:1. I will continue with Romans 12:2 next week!! Thanks so much to everyone who is supporting my blog and please share it with your friends!!