October 26, 2008
Motivated Spirituality
Last Sunday we started on the topic of Motivated Spirituality. We discussed the different motivators that effect a believer in our decision making process; why we do the things that we do.
We discussed that there were two different types of motivators; vertical and horizontal motivators.
We discussed that the vertical motivators were worldly or temporary concerns… such motivators like:
- Fear of loss can motivate you
- Guilt can motivate you
- Pride can motivate you
- Hope of personal gain can motivate you
- Reputation can motivate you
- Prestige can motivate you
- Pleasure can motivate you
All of these temporary motivators can cause you to make a decision that is outside of the will of God. All of us have issues with one or all of these vertical motivators.
John 3:30
He must increase, but I must decrease.
If you find yourself struggling with any of these issues then the problem is you are having trouble decreasing and allowing Him to take full control of your life.
You see when we are motivated by these motivator we somehow believe that we can resolve our issues or that we can do something that will make us look good.
Galatians 2:20
(20) I have been crucified with Christ, and I live; yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me. And that life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith toward the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself on my behalf.
I gave you a list of the Horizontal Motivators. These motivators are of a biblical response to situations and/or how we handle different issues and circumstances. The horizontal motivators are:
- No other options
- Fear
- Love and gratitude
- Rewards
- Our identity in Christ
- Purpose and hope
- Longing for God
I covered No other options and Fear last Sunday.
In a nutshell we talked about No Other Options as a motivator as when we realize that He is our provider… He is all we need. We don’t have any other options, we are inadequate to understand what is best for our lives therefore we rely on Him.
We talked about how Fear can be both a positive and a negative motivator. Fear of consequences is the negative… fear of God is the positive.
This morning briefly I would like to discuss the third motivator which is Love and Gratitude.
Let’s talk about love as a spiritual motivator first.
John 3:16 – For God so loved the world!!
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”.
Sin separated us from God but God loved us so much He made a way for us to be redeemed back to Him through His Son Jesus Christ. That is real love!
But how is this supposed to motivate us. Again… we get our answers from scripture.
1 John 4:19 says “we love, because He first loved us”.
We can have the ability to love because He first loved us!
Now that we have the ability to love let me go to these verse.
John 14:15
"If you love me, keep my commandments".
Jesus said, “If you love me then keep my commandments”. That is a sign of loving Jesus when you keep His commandments. That is a sign, your fruits (your attitude and actions) show that you are abiding in Christ and He in you.
When we dwell in His unmerited love, we begin to see that his commandments are not burdensome but liberating.
As we grow in our spiritual journey… and if you are a Christian you need to be growing… the love of Christ will begin to control your life more and more. 1 Corinthians 5:14
You will find that because you love Christ so much that you will not make decision without consulting Him first.
The more you love Christ the more you will obey Him… why because you love Him. In Him you have everything you need. When He is the center of your life then you are on your way to being motivated by His love.
You say Dwayne… how can I know if I’m headed in the right direction in my walk with Christ? You can ask yourself a few questions.
1. Do you love God more for Himself than for His gifts and benefits?
2. Are you motivated to seek His glory and honor more than you are to seek your own?
These are questions that need to be asked often by every one of us. If you can not say yes to these questions please don’t feel defeated because you can ask yourself a third question.
3. Do you want your answer to be yes?
Now… you may not be able to honestly say yes to the first two but do you want to be at that level spiritually where you can say that you love God more than His gifts or benefits… you seek His glory more than your own.
But there is a fourth question that must be asked as well.
4. Are you willing to pay the price?
“If you love me you will keep my commandments… he who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who love me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will disclose myself to him”.
“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him”.
These are words that Jesus spoke about love and commitment.
Kenneth Boa said:
“The cost of obedience will take many forms, but if we commit ourselves to loving Jesus he will give us the needed grace”.
I also want to talk to you about another study series we can do after this one.
Our Awesome Lord – it has a teacher’s book and student’s book. It is more of a study and it will be something for you to study and learn from as well. You can look through your work books and do the exercises and we can have a lesson and discussion the following Sunday.
That is how you grow… by reading and studying the Word!
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Temptation
We are having revival services at Pikes Crossroads PH Church with Evangelist Brian Rogers.
Theme for our revival services is "A New Beginning of Obedience to the Lord".
Here are my notes from his sermon for October 13, 2008 service.
Preaching text is from:
Luke 4:4-11
(4)And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
(5)And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
(6)And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
(7)If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
(8)And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
(9)And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
(10)For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
(11)And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Points:
1. The anointing that you expect is the anointing that will increase and flow in your life.
- We have to be obedient to the Holy Spirit.
- Partial obedience is still disobedience.
- Jesus Christ is the anointed one.
2. The anointed power of God can conquer any obstacle that arises in your life.
- Isaiah 10:27
(27) And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.
3. You always posses something in your life God wants to anoint.
- What is God anointing in my/your life?
4. The anointing will bring forth Divine revelation.
- He will put you in the place you need to be.
Theme for our revival services is "A New Beginning of Obedience to the Lord".
Here are my notes from his sermon for October 13, 2008 service.
Preaching text is from:
Luke 4:4-11
(4)And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
(5)And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
(6)And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
(7)If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
(8)And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
(9)And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
(10)For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
(11)And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Points:
1. The anointing that you expect is the anointing that will increase and flow in your life.
- We have to be obedient to the Holy Spirit.
- Partial obedience is still disobedience.
- Jesus Christ is the anointed one.
2. The anointed power of God can conquer any obstacle that arises in your life.
- Isaiah 10:27
(27) And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.
3. You always posses something in your life God wants to anoint.
- What is God anointing in my/your life?
4. The anointing will bring forth Divine revelation.
- He will put you in the place you need to be.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Exchanged Life Spirituality Part 2
God’s Plan to Meet Our Needs
We are going to continued to talk about the Exchanged Life Spirituality this morning. I just could not get a way from it. And the title of this lesson is God’s Plan to Meet our Needs.
Now… once we are in Christ, we automatically become members of a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple.
It is through this new identity of whose we are in Christ that God can satisfy our deepest needs.
What I hope and pray that we take away here today from this lesson are two things.
1. An appreciation of God’s plan to meet our deepest needs through our participation in a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple.
2. Encouragement to respond to God’s gracious plan by knowing, reckoning, and yielding.
An appreciation of God’s plan to meet our deepest needs through our participation in a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple is our first item we want to look at this morning.
Without Christ, we have not fellowship with God. We have no communion with God because God does not have fellowship with sin. It is only through Christ that we can have fellowship with God.
Without Christ life is all about self, and we are driven to use people, things, and circumstances to meet our needs. In Christ, we have fellowship with God. For us believers, life should be all about the One who has already fully met our needs.
A Spiritual Family
If you are a born again believer then you are apart of a big spiritual family. Guess who is the firstborn of that family?
Colossians 1:18
(18) And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He may be pre-eminent in all things.
Christ had to be the first born in order that we may be born again into the family of God. We are the brother and sister of Christ. He paved the way for us to be in this spiritual family.
As members of God’s family, our need for unconditional love and acceptance if fully met. We are secure in god’s limitless love. God’s love has NO LIMITS.
In Romans 5:8 tells us that “even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”.
One of my favorite verses in the bible that talks about the unconditional love and acceptance is Romans 8:38-39.
Romans 8:38-39
(38) For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
(39) nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What great love God has for us! It’s unconditional and it’s freely given.
A Spiritual Body
Now let’s go onto a how we are apart of a spiritual body.
In Ephesians 1:22-23 it tells us that “we are the body and Christ is the head”.
As individual parts of Christ’s body, our need for true significance and identity is fully met. We have meaning and purpose because of who we are in Christ… because we are meaningful and because we have purpose we belong to Christ. It’s not because of anything we did, can do, or will ever be able to do that can gain us acceptance into the family of God.
2 Timothy 1:9
(9) who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the eternal times.
1 Corinthians 2:9
(9) But as it is written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."
We can’t image what it is going to be like to be in the presence of all mighty God. We can not comprehend it. All I know is that it will be worth it all… I don’t care what you go through on this earth it is going to be worth it all when you get to heaven. God has some big things planned for us. He wants to love on us for eternity… it is going to take forever and ever to show our thanks and his love for us!
A Spiritual Temple
And to finish up my first objective let’s talk about how God wants to create a community of spiritual beings who will receive and reflect the likeness of God and glorify him forever… let’s talks about how we are a Spiritual Temple.
As living Stones in God’s temple, our need for lasting competence and fulfillment is fully met.
All of us have gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to us for the specific purpose of blessing others and glorifying God. And if we use those gifts for those purposes, then the things we do in his power will last forever!
Colossians 1:29
(29) For which I also labor, striving according to the working of Him who works in me in power.
Ephesians 3:16
(16) that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man;
As children of the most high, almighty God we must train ourselves to look beyond people, beyond things, and beyond circumstances to meet our needs.
Job is a great example of depending on God. Even though everything he had was taken away from him he dared to believe that all though he had nothing in the natural that God was enough for him.
Folks, I am going to be honest with you. I don’t know if I am there in my walk with Christ right now. But I am more and more lead to this walk now more that ever. I am more determined to lean on him now more than ever. I am more determined to be totally sold out to him now more than ever. Why? Because the more I study his Word it tells me that in him I have everything I need.
Why is it that so many of us Christians continue to act as nonbelievers when it comes to the quest for security, meaning, and fulfillment in life?
Ephesians 2:2-3 has the answer. By looking at these verses we can determine that three powerful forces works against our walking in the Spirit: the flesh, the world, and the devil.
The Flesh
Now… when we were saved we received a new spirit when we came to Christ. But our new spirit is encased in this same body and its same physical needs and cravings. Nor were your mind, emotions, and will instantly transform when you became a believer.
The flesh is the power or “law of sin” that is still in our members. Remember in Romans 7:14-25 when the apostle Paul goes through and talks about the things he did not want to do are the things he did and the things he wanted to do he did them not. Then he goes on to talk about the flesh was warring against his spirit.
We become changed from the inside out not the outside in. We begin to gradually conform to the image of Christ by the renewing of our minds… and that comes by reading his Word and praying.
The World
The second of these three forces is the world. We live in a culture and society that promotes values and perspectives so the opposite of how the Bible says we should live. We talked about this earlier but the Bible tells us that we are pilgrims in this world, the Bible tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. But yet some Christians live in this world as if this is all there is therefore seeking happiness in materialism. The only way to get around this is to be informed; to have knowledge, to gain wisdom from God’s Word and with the help of his Holy Spirit.
The Devil
The third force that works against our spiritual life is the devil. Satan and his demons use the world (debt, social status, materialism) and the flesh (lust, pride, anger) in an attempt to defeat us and make us useless for the kingdom of God. Now the devil can oppress us but only while we are controlled by the flesh… he has not effect over us if we are controlled by the spirit because he can not defeat the life of Christ that is present within us!
All three, the flesh, the world, and the devil war against our spirit health daily. This is a spiritual battle. Every aspect about our spiritual life hinges on how we respond to God’s plan to satisfy our needs for personal worth. In other words… do we look to God to satisfy our needs for the flesh, for things of the world? If you do then you are walking in the spirit and you will find joy, peace, and contentment. But if you are not then you will struggle during your Christian journey.
Our Response to God’s Plan
In Romans chapter 6 describes a three fold process to help a believer move from the inside (inner man) to the outer person (outer man).
These three things start with:
1. Knowing – knowing who you are in Christ (Romans 6:3-10)
2. Reckoning – considering these truths to be so (Romans 6:11)
3. Yielding – presenting yourself to God (Romans 6:12-14)
Knowing
I’m sure you can recall the story in Luke 9:18-20 when Jesus was praying and his disciples joined him… Jesus asked his disciples those two questions.
1. Who do the crowds say that I am?
2. But who do you say that I am?
We can ask ourselves three fundamental questions as well:
1. Who do you say that you are?
2. Who do people say that you are?
3. Who does God say that you are?
Many people and sad to say Christians as well have their own sense of identity based on the first two questions. We discussed earlier about how we must base our opinion of ourselves on what God says about us and about who we are and not what we think or other people thing about us.
We have to know and understand that as believers Romans 5:8 that God loves us unconditional and he accepts us no matter how we feel or perform.
Believers must know and understand that not only did Christ die for us but we also died with and in him. The Bible tells us in Romans 6:6-7 that “our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin”.
Quote from the book. “Through our co-crucifixion with Christ, we have died to the bondage of sin, and God has already accomplished this. We may not feel this is true, be we must never reason from our performance to our position; our security and significance in Christ are not threatened by earthy failure or rejection, we must base our behavior on our belief.
In other words who we are should determine what we do, and not what we do should determine who we are! Why; because KNOWING our identity is based on our new birth in Christ.
Be determined to know who you are in Christ Jesus and Know what God says about you!
Reckoning
Ruth Paxon wrote “Sin need have no more power over the believer than he grants it through unbelief. If he is alive unto sin it will be due largely to the fact that he had failed to recon himself dead unto sin.”
Reckoning is a process… it’s not easy nor is it natural for us. For most Christians, sadly, they have to come to the end of their rope, the end of their own resources before they have a realization of their co-crucifixion with Christ.
Most of the time it takes believers to be broken and then and only then will they surrender and turn from a self reliant life to a life that total relies on God.
Faith is a total dependence on God… and this God-dependence can only begin when our self-dependence ends.
When we surrender full control of our life and plans to Christ, we discover his peace. When we lose our lives for his sake, we find his life instead.
Giving us you life, decisions, everything there is about your own will and identity is a hard thing to do. It’s not natural! But loosing our life is the only way we will find his life.
I want to be honest with you… there was a time in my life that I was afraid to pray a prayer like… oh Lord, what ever it takes to draw closer to you Lord, that’s what I’ll be willing to do. Connie and Marty used to sing a song called whatever it takes to draw closer to you Lord.
That is a BIG STATEMENT. Fear would grip me… would he require or take my home, my cars, my business, my family so I would rely on him and him alone?
We must “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12) by reckoning what God has said about our position in Christ to be true! You have to pray for a spirit of wisdom and a revelation of knowledge of Him like Paul prayed in Ephesians 1:17.
This brings me to the last of the three.
Yielding
As we come to realize who we are in Christ, and come to terms with reckoning it to be true (or getting it into our spirit), then we need to act on it by yielding ourselves to God as new creatures in Christ.
Romans 6:12-13
(12) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
(13) Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
If we want our spiritual lives to grow and prosper, this threefold process of knowing, reckoning, and yielding should become a daily habit for us.
Luke 9:23
(23) And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
By practicing these principles it will free us from being grabbers/takers and allow us to become givers who expect and need nothing in return.
If we try to gratify our needs, we will experience frustration and failure. But if we pursue God and hunger and thirst for him and his righteousness, we will be satisfied and our needs will be fulfilled.
Matthew 5:6
(6) Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
All of this that we have talked about this morning boils down to one thing. Trust… can we trust God as a person and believe that truth is what God says it is, regardless of how we see it or feel.
This all leads back to where we began this teaching… the character of God.
We must know and study the character of God. As we renew our mind concerning the love of God we begin to realize that he is not carrying out his program at our expense but for our highest good. He loves us so much!
I encourage you to look over that sheet I gave you concerning what God says about you because that is the character of God. God is not a man that he should lie!
This is why is so important to renew your mind with the truths of Scripture on a regular basis and respond to them by putting them into action.
We are going to continued to talk about the Exchanged Life Spirituality this morning. I just could not get a way from it. And the title of this lesson is God’s Plan to Meet our Needs.
Now… once we are in Christ, we automatically become members of a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple.
It is through this new identity of whose we are in Christ that God can satisfy our deepest needs.
What I hope and pray that we take away here today from this lesson are two things.
1. An appreciation of God’s plan to meet our deepest needs through our participation in a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple.
2. Encouragement to respond to God’s gracious plan by knowing, reckoning, and yielding.
An appreciation of God’s plan to meet our deepest needs through our participation in a spiritual family, a spiritual body, and a spiritual temple is our first item we want to look at this morning.
Without Christ, we have not fellowship with God. We have no communion with God because God does not have fellowship with sin. It is only through Christ that we can have fellowship with God.
Without Christ life is all about self, and we are driven to use people, things, and circumstances to meet our needs. In Christ, we have fellowship with God. For us believers, life should be all about the One who has already fully met our needs.
A Spiritual Family
If you are a born again believer then you are apart of a big spiritual family. Guess who is the firstborn of that family?
Colossians 1:18
(18) And He is the Head of the body, the church, who is the Beginning, the First-born from the dead, that He may be pre-eminent in all things.
Christ had to be the first born in order that we may be born again into the family of God. We are the brother and sister of Christ. He paved the way for us to be in this spiritual family.
As members of God’s family, our need for unconditional love and acceptance if fully met. We are secure in god’s limitless love. God’s love has NO LIMITS.
In Romans 5:8 tells us that “even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”.
One of my favorite verses in the bible that talks about the unconditional love and acceptance is Romans 8:38-39.
Romans 8:38-39
(38) For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
(39) nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What great love God has for us! It’s unconditional and it’s freely given.
A Spiritual Body
Now let’s go onto a how we are apart of a spiritual body.
In Ephesians 1:22-23 it tells us that “we are the body and Christ is the head”.
As individual parts of Christ’s body, our need for true significance and identity is fully met. We have meaning and purpose because of who we are in Christ… because we are meaningful and because we have purpose we belong to Christ. It’s not because of anything we did, can do, or will ever be able to do that can gain us acceptance into the family of God.
2 Timothy 1:9
(9) who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the eternal times.
1 Corinthians 2:9
(9) But as it is written, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard," nor has it entered into the heart of man, "the things which God has prepared for those who love Him."
We can’t image what it is going to be like to be in the presence of all mighty God. We can not comprehend it. All I know is that it will be worth it all… I don’t care what you go through on this earth it is going to be worth it all when you get to heaven. God has some big things planned for us. He wants to love on us for eternity… it is going to take forever and ever to show our thanks and his love for us!
A Spiritual Temple
And to finish up my first objective let’s talk about how God wants to create a community of spiritual beings who will receive and reflect the likeness of God and glorify him forever… let’s talks about how we are a Spiritual Temple.
As living Stones in God’s temple, our need for lasting competence and fulfillment is fully met.
All of us have gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to us for the specific purpose of blessing others and glorifying God. And if we use those gifts for those purposes, then the things we do in his power will last forever!
Colossians 1:29
(29) For which I also labor, striving according to the working of Him who works in me in power.
Ephesians 3:16
(16) that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man;
As children of the most high, almighty God we must train ourselves to look beyond people, beyond things, and beyond circumstances to meet our needs.
Job is a great example of depending on God. Even though everything he had was taken away from him he dared to believe that all though he had nothing in the natural that God was enough for him.
Folks, I am going to be honest with you. I don’t know if I am there in my walk with Christ right now. But I am more and more lead to this walk now more that ever. I am more determined to lean on him now more than ever. I am more determined to be totally sold out to him now more than ever. Why? Because the more I study his Word it tells me that in him I have everything I need.
Why is it that so many of us Christians continue to act as nonbelievers when it comes to the quest for security, meaning, and fulfillment in life?
Ephesians 2:2-3 has the answer. By looking at these verses we can determine that three powerful forces works against our walking in the Spirit: the flesh, the world, and the devil.
The Flesh
Now… when we were saved we received a new spirit when we came to Christ. But our new spirit is encased in this same body and its same physical needs and cravings. Nor were your mind, emotions, and will instantly transform when you became a believer.
The flesh is the power or “law of sin” that is still in our members. Remember in Romans 7:14-25 when the apostle Paul goes through and talks about the things he did not want to do are the things he did and the things he wanted to do he did them not. Then he goes on to talk about the flesh was warring against his spirit.
We become changed from the inside out not the outside in. We begin to gradually conform to the image of Christ by the renewing of our minds… and that comes by reading his Word and praying.
The World
The second of these three forces is the world. We live in a culture and society that promotes values and perspectives so the opposite of how the Bible says we should live. We talked about this earlier but the Bible tells us that we are pilgrims in this world, the Bible tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. But yet some Christians live in this world as if this is all there is therefore seeking happiness in materialism. The only way to get around this is to be informed; to have knowledge, to gain wisdom from God’s Word and with the help of his Holy Spirit.
The Devil
The third force that works against our spiritual life is the devil. Satan and his demons use the world (debt, social status, materialism) and the flesh (lust, pride, anger) in an attempt to defeat us and make us useless for the kingdom of God. Now the devil can oppress us but only while we are controlled by the flesh… he has not effect over us if we are controlled by the spirit because he can not defeat the life of Christ that is present within us!
All three, the flesh, the world, and the devil war against our spirit health daily. This is a spiritual battle. Every aspect about our spiritual life hinges on how we respond to God’s plan to satisfy our needs for personal worth. In other words… do we look to God to satisfy our needs for the flesh, for things of the world? If you do then you are walking in the spirit and you will find joy, peace, and contentment. But if you are not then you will struggle during your Christian journey.
Our Response to God’s Plan
In Romans chapter 6 describes a three fold process to help a believer move from the inside (inner man) to the outer person (outer man).
These three things start with:
1. Knowing – knowing who you are in Christ (Romans 6:3-10)
2. Reckoning – considering these truths to be so (Romans 6:11)
3. Yielding – presenting yourself to God (Romans 6:12-14)
Knowing
I’m sure you can recall the story in Luke 9:18-20 when Jesus was praying and his disciples joined him… Jesus asked his disciples those two questions.
1. Who do the crowds say that I am?
2. But who do you say that I am?
We can ask ourselves three fundamental questions as well:
1. Who do you say that you are?
2. Who do people say that you are?
3. Who does God say that you are?
Many people and sad to say Christians as well have their own sense of identity based on the first two questions. We discussed earlier about how we must base our opinion of ourselves on what God says about us and about who we are and not what we think or other people thing about us.
We have to know and understand that as believers Romans 5:8 that God loves us unconditional and he accepts us no matter how we feel or perform.
Believers must know and understand that not only did Christ die for us but we also died with and in him. The Bible tells us in Romans 6:6-7 that “our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin”.
Quote from the book. “Through our co-crucifixion with Christ, we have died to the bondage of sin, and God has already accomplished this. We may not feel this is true, be we must never reason from our performance to our position; our security and significance in Christ are not threatened by earthy failure or rejection, we must base our behavior on our belief.
In other words who we are should determine what we do, and not what we do should determine who we are! Why; because KNOWING our identity is based on our new birth in Christ.
Be determined to know who you are in Christ Jesus and Know what God says about you!
Reckoning
Ruth Paxon wrote “Sin need have no more power over the believer than he grants it through unbelief. If he is alive unto sin it will be due largely to the fact that he had failed to recon himself dead unto sin.”
Reckoning is a process… it’s not easy nor is it natural for us. For most Christians, sadly, they have to come to the end of their rope, the end of their own resources before they have a realization of their co-crucifixion with Christ.
Most of the time it takes believers to be broken and then and only then will they surrender and turn from a self reliant life to a life that total relies on God.
Faith is a total dependence on God… and this God-dependence can only begin when our self-dependence ends.
When we surrender full control of our life and plans to Christ, we discover his peace. When we lose our lives for his sake, we find his life instead.
Giving us you life, decisions, everything there is about your own will and identity is a hard thing to do. It’s not natural! But loosing our life is the only way we will find his life.
I want to be honest with you… there was a time in my life that I was afraid to pray a prayer like… oh Lord, what ever it takes to draw closer to you Lord, that’s what I’ll be willing to do. Connie and Marty used to sing a song called whatever it takes to draw closer to you Lord.
That is a BIG STATEMENT. Fear would grip me… would he require or take my home, my cars, my business, my family so I would rely on him and him alone?
We must “fight the good fight of faith” (1 Timothy 6:12) by reckoning what God has said about our position in Christ to be true! You have to pray for a spirit of wisdom and a revelation of knowledge of Him like Paul prayed in Ephesians 1:17.
This brings me to the last of the three.
Yielding
As we come to realize who we are in Christ, and come to terms with reckoning it to be true (or getting it into our spirit), then we need to act on it by yielding ourselves to God as new creatures in Christ.
Romans 6:12-13
(12) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
(13) Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
If we want our spiritual lives to grow and prosper, this threefold process of knowing, reckoning, and yielding should become a daily habit for us.
Luke 9:23
(23) And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.
By practicing these principles it will free us from being grabbers/takers and allow us to become givers who expect and need nothing in return.
If we try to gratify our needs, we will experience frustration and failure. But if we pursue God and hunger and thirst for him and his righteousness, we will be satisfied and our needs will be fulfilled.
Matthew 5:6
(6) Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
All of this that we have talked about this morning boils down to one thing. Trust… can we trust God as a person and believe that truth is what God says it is, regardless of how we see it or feel.
This all leads back to where we began this teaching… the character of God.
We must know and study the character of God. As we renew our mind concerning the love of God we begin to realize that he is not carrying out his program at our expense but for our highest good. He loves us so much!
I encourage you to look over that sheet I gave you concerning what God says about you because that is the character of God. God is not a man that he should lie!
This is why is so important to renew your mind with the truths of Scripture on a regular basis and respond to them by putting them into action.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sunday School Lessons
Hey Guys... most of my blogs are actually my Sunday school lesson I prepare each week to teach. I am teaching from Kenneth Boa's book, Conformed to His Image. I have enjoyed reading and studying his writings and learning to apply his sound biblical principles. I just wanted to give you an explanation as to why my blogs are so long. I plan to start blogging about my life and my family as I have more time to write. I would appreciate your feed back.
God Bless,
Dwayne
God Bless,
Dwayne
Friday, October 3, 2008
Exchanged Life Spirituality
Let’s talk about living a “spiritual life” for a minute. We need to understand certain things about this spiritual life we are attempting to live. We also need to understand what NOT the spiritual life is. Let’s talk about that for a little bit.
The book gives an interesting list of contrast of what the spiritual life is not compared to what it really is… here is that list.
The spiritual life is not:
A crisis but a continual process
Based on knowledge but on obedience
External but internal
Automatic but cultivated
The product of energy but of divine enablement
A dream but a discipline
An unusual experience but a normal experience
A list of rules but a life relationship
To be endured but enjoyed
Theoretical but intensely practical
Howard Hendricks says that a spiritual life is “the life of Christ reproduced in the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit in obedient response to the Word of God.” I think that is an awesome definition.
What does Exchanged Life Spiritually mean?
Exchanged life spirituality concentrates on the reality of a new identity through the in-Christ relationship that can and will dramatically transform us as we progressively grasp it.
Living an exchanged life spiritually stresses that the spiritual life is not a matter of trying to do things for Jesus but of claiming and resting in what he has already done for us!
What we are going to be learning about this morning is GRASPING OUR TRUE IDENTITY IN CHRIST.
You can not grasp your true identity in Christ overnight! That would be impossible. Understanding your relationship with Christ and what he has done for you will take your life time to understand. As a matter of fact if you think you have totally figured it out then I am scared of you. I don’t think we will ever understand what Jesus did while we are here on this earth when by taking your sin and my sin upon him self, dying and 3 days later defeating death, hell and the grave. That’s too big for us to comprehend and we’ll spend our life time contemplating the height, and the depth and the width of the love that God has for us.
After those 20 or so teen received Christ as their Lord and Savior during our teen rally, we took them in a room and I tried explained what had happened to them. I tried to explain that they had crossed over from death unto life. I tried to explain through scripture that they had been given a new life and they were a new creature in Christ Jesus. I tried to explain that they were now no longer under the bondage of sin and had the freedom and liberty in Jesus. But as hard as it was for me to explain I could since that it was harder for these teens, many of them un-churched, to understand. All they could do was cry because they felt a change had taken place in their being that they just couldn’t describe. At the very end after praying with them I encouraged them to talk to God everyday like they would talk to their best friend, and read their Bible everyday. That night I believed they started their journey into trying to understand what had taken place in their life… the journey into Exchanged Spirituality.
We will take a lifetime learning what an exchanged spiritual life is… but it’s a journey worth taking.
Before we can truly understand and practice the principles of exchanged life spirituality we need to understand a few things. The first thing we need to understand is God’s Character and Plan.
God’s Character and Plan
You know… people who don’t have a relationship with God, their creator, are hungering for something… for love, for happiness, for meaning, for fulfillment, but nothing on this planet offers what can fully satisfy these longings they have.
You know, in theory, most Christians acknowledge that Christ alone can meet these needs… but very few Christians can show them by example. This is because some Christians have missed one of the most important principles of Scripture. You see the fruits of the spirit such as love, joy, peace, long suffering, cannot be obtained by pursuing them in an of themselves. The only way to be successful at obtaining real joy, real love, real peace is by pursuing God! By pursuing God; this is just and overflow… a bi-product of what comes out of pursuing God!
In Exodus 33:13-14 Moses prayed this prayer to God…
Exodus 33:13-14
(13) Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.
(14) And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
Like Moses we should pray to know God’s ways… by putting God first in everything, everything else falls into place!
God’s character is fundamental to everything we do and everything we are as Christians. Do you know the character of God?
The Bible tells us that God is:
Self-existent
Infinite
Eternal
Unchanging Creator of all things
In his powers, he alone is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.
In his perfections, his attributes include holiness, justice, truthfulness, love and goodness.
God’s love for us is proof that God is a giver… after all he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall have eternal life. God is a giver. God has given in spite of the fact that people reject his gift. But that is the essence of God’s love toward humanity… he doesn’t want anyone to perish but all to have eternal life.
Now… if we want to understand God’s love for us we need first believe ALL of God’s actions were born out of love.
1 John 4:8 says
1John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
God is LOVE! That is part of his character.
And because God is love, his desire for you and for me (humanity) is to show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Scripture portrays the relationship God wants to have with us in terms of a shepherd and his sheep, father and his children, and a husband and his wife.
But… sheep can go astray, they can wonder away from the flock and the shepherd; children can rebel, and a wife can be unfaithful.
It was rebellion and the rejection of God’s love and provision that got us in this shape to begin with.
All of us live in a world of pain, injustice, disease, and death, and in the midst of this it is easy to blame God for our problems.
But our environment has been distorted by sin, and sin is contrary to the nature of God.
Sin is why Christ came into this world… to redeem us back to God. This was part of God’s plan. Christ did not come into the world to judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17).
I love this quote by Kenneth Boa –
“The better we grasp the love and goodness of God’s character, the less we will be tempted to think that he is carrying out his plans at our expense.”
Think about this… it is always better for us to conform to his will. Why? Because conforming to his will always leads to our highest good.
Obedience to God produces joy and fulfillment.
Disobedience produces sorrow and frustration.
Everything God ask of us is for our good.
Everything God ask us to avoid is harmful… therefore we should stay away for it.
Life would be so much easier if we would just learn to listen to and understand what God has for us to do in our lives.
God can be trusted!!
But love always involves a choice. Adam and Eve decided they wanted more than what God had given them and instead of listening to God and staying away from that particular tree… they disobeyed and ate of it. And disobedience produces sorrow and frustration. We have been cursed by their decision.
You see beauty was replaced with ugliness, holiness with evil, kindness with cruelty, generosity with greed, love with hate, peace with violence, security with fear, and joy with anger. All because this happened because of disobedience and being self centered instead of God centered.
Think about that for a moment… most sin occurs because of our selfishness. Most sin occurs when we only focus on ourselves and not God.
Our Old and New Natures
Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve were in harmony with God and their environment. Everything was hitting on all cylinders. They were alive in their spirit and they enjoyed constant communion with God. They grew and developed spiritually and mentally because God gave them task and things to do. Their bodies were flawless and they were perfect in every way.
But as I stated earlier… love always involves a choice. Adam and Eve became selfish in their thoughts and desires and this rebellion radically changed this world.
At the moment they sinned they suffered spiritual death because they were cut off from God. When their spirits died, their sin nature was born, and their minds, emotions and wills came under the dominion of sin with all its distorting effects. Their bodies began to deteriorate… pain and evil spread, and creation itself was corrupted. And the most tragic thing of all… there was not a way back to God yet.
When we are born into this world we are born in our own sin nature. You don’t have to teach a child how to sin… they do it naturally. It not that they are sinners because they commit certain sins… they are born into sin… it’s in our nature. Without the redemptive work of Christ, we would be cut off from God without hope of restoration. Why are we cut off from God? The answer is simple, because “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).
Now… unlike those who are fallen, those who are redeemed are able not to sin. As they walk in the Spirit, they please God and exhibit Christ like qualities.
But don’t get me wrong… there is a war going on. The inner self joyfully agrees with the law of God (Romans 7:22) but there is still a law or power of sin in the outer self (Romans 7:23).
Our spirit… our inner most deep being inside of ourselves has been change… made into a new creature. But our redemption is not fully complete yet. Our spirits have been redeemed but our bodies are still weak. We still have to deal with this earthly body that has been contaminated with sin and it wars against our spirit.
One day we shall be like him when we see him as he is!
1Jn 3:2
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
On that day the inner man and the outer man are going to agree. We will be free from the power of sin, and our minds, emotions, and wills will be continually under the dominion of the Spirit of God.
Until that day… we constantly battle between the new creature we have become in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and the mortal sinful nature we were born into thanks to Adam (Romans 5: 12-21).
You know… everyone human being has basic physical needs that must be met. There are physical needs like food, clothing, shelter, rest, and protection from danger.
In addition to the physical needs there is also a set of psychological needs that every human being needs to have met in order to have some sense of personal worth.
Things such as:
Love and Acceptance – everyone needs the security that comes from feeling unconditionally loved and accepted by at least one other individual. Without this it can cause one to have all sorts of issues, behavior issues.
Significance and Identity – people need a since of identifying with someone or something greater than themselves. The need to feel that their life is worthwhile and that life is meaningful is set in each of us in our inner being. God put it there. People who do not relate to God for their significance and identity tend to either over compensate and work to make them appear greater than they are or they simply have an inferiority complex that only God can truly heal.
Finally… Competence and Fulfillment – this is another universal need that all humans have to feel that one’s life has made a difference and that he or she has accomplished something that will last. One can see how a non-believer would try to over compensate for this lack in their spiritual life by their job performance, or academic standards.
For centuries humans have tried to turn to other people, things, and circumstances to meet these needs, but none of these can truly satisfy them. Even Christians fall into the same trap… trying to feel the void by not totally depending on God and their exchanged life.
God has set eternity in our heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and he alone can fill the void.
Now I need to make something clear here… this is not to say that it is wrong for Christians to be concerned about our appearance, our possessions, or our accomplishments. Whatever we do as “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:20) should be characterized by excellence. Why should we care about these things… because it is done for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:23).
But… and this is a big but… if our joy and peace depend upon how we look, what we own, or how well we perform, we are looking not to the Creator but rather to the creation to meet our God-given needs.
The book gives an interesting list of contrast of what the spiritual life is not compared to what it really is… here is that list.
The spiritual life is not:
A crisis but a continual process
Based on knowledge but on obedience
External but internal
Automatic but cultivated
The product of energy but of divine enablement
A dream but a discipline
An unusual experience but a normal experience
A list of rules but a life relationship
To be endured but enjoyed
Theoretical but intensely practical
Howard Hendricks says that a spiritual life is “the life of Christ reproduced in the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit in obedient response to the Word of God.” I think that is an awesome definition.
What does Exchanged Life Spiritually mean?
Exchanged life spirituality concentrates on the reality of a new identity through the in-Christ relationship that can and will dramatically transform us as we progressively grasp it.
Living an exchanged life spiritually stresses that the spiritual life is not a matter of trying to do things for Jesus but of claiming and resting in what he has already done for us!
What we are going to be learning about this morning is GRASPING OUR TRUE IDENTITY IN CHRIST.
You can not grasp your true identity in Christ overnight! That would be impossible. Understanding your relationship with Christ and what he has done for you will take your life time to understand. As a matter of fact if you think you have totally figured it out then I am scared of you. I don’t think we will ever understand what Jesus did while we are here on this earth when by taking your sin and my sin upon him self, dying and 3 days later defeating death, hell and the grave. That’s too big for us to comprehend and we’ll spend our life time contemplating the height, and the depth and the width of the love that God has for us.
After those 20 or so teen received Christ as their Lord and Savior during our teen rally, we took them in a room and I tried explained what had happened to them. I tried to explain that they had crossed over from death unto life. I tried to explain through scripture that they had been given a new life and they were a new creature in Christ Jesus. I tried to explain that they were now no longer under the bondage of sin and had the freedom and liberty in Jesus. But as hard as it was for me to explain I could since that it was harder for these teens, many of them un-churched, to understand. All they could do was cry because they felt a change had taken place in their being that they just couldn’t describe. At the very end after praying with them I encouraged them to talk to God everyday like they would talk to their best friend, and read their Bible everyday. That night I believed they started their journey into trying to understand what had taken place in their life… the journey into Exchanged Spirituality.
We will take a lifetime learning what an exchanged spiritual life is… but it’s a journey worth taking.
Before we can truly understand and practice the principles of exchanged life spirituality we need to understand a few things. The first thing we need to understand is God’s Character and Plan.
God’s Character and Plan
You know… people who don’t have a relationship with God, their creator, are hungering for something… for love, for happiness, for meaning, for fulfillment, but nothing on this planet offers what can fully satisfy these longings they have.
You know, in theory, most Christians acknowledge that Christ alone can meet these needs… but very few Christians can show them by example. This is because some Christians have missed one of the most important principles of Scripture. You see the fruits of the spirit such as love, joy, peace, long suffering, cannot be obtained by pursuing them in an of themselves. The only way to be successful at obtaining real joy, real love, real peace is by pursuing God! By pursuing God; this is just and overflow… a bi-product of what comes out of pursuing God!
In Exodus 33:13-14 Moses prayed this prayer to God…
Exodus 33:13-14
(13) Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people.
(14) And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
Like Moses we should pray to know God’s ways… by putting God first in everything, everything else falls into place!
God’s character is fundamental to everything we do and everything we are as Christians. Do you know the character of God?
The Bible tells us that God is:
Self-existent
Infinite
Eternal
Unchanging Creator of all things
In his powers, he alone is omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient.
In his perfections, his attributes include holiness, justice, truthfulness, love and goodness.
God’s love for us is proof that God is a giver… after all he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall have eternal life. God is a giver. God has given in spite of the fact that people reject his gift. But that is the essence of God’s love toward humanity… he doesn’t want anyone to perish but all to have eternal life.
Now… if we want to understand God’s love for us we need first believe ALL of God’s actions were born out of love.
1 John 4:8 says
1John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
God is LOVE! That is part of his character.
And because God is love, his desire for you and for me (humanity) is to show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Scripture portrays the relationship God wants to have with us in terms of a shepherd and his sheep, father and his children, and a husband and his wife.
But… sheep can go astray, they can wonder away from the flock and the shepherd; children can rebel, and a wife can be unfaithful.
It was rebellion and the rejection of God’s love and provision that got us in this shape to begin with.
All of us live in a world of pain, injustice, disease, and death, and in the midst of this it is easy to blame God for our problems.
But our environment has been distorted by sin, and sin is contrary to the nature of God.
Sin is why Christ came into this world… to redeem us back to God. This was part of God’s plan. Christ did not come into the world to judge the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17).
I love this quote by Kenneth Boa –
“The better we grasp the love and goodness of God’s character, the less we will be tempted to think that he is carrying out his plans at our expense.”
Think about this… it is always better for us to conform to his will. Why? Because conforming to his will always leads to our highest good.
Obedience to God produces joy and fulfillment.
Disobedience produces sorrow and frustration.
Everything God ask of us is for our good.
Everything God ask us to avoid is harmful… therefore we should stay away for it.
Life would be so much easier if we would just learn to listen to and understand what God has for us to do in our lives.
God can be trusted!!
But love always involves a choice. Adam and Eve decided they wanted more than what God had given them and instead of listening to God and staying away from that particular tree… they disobeyed and ate of it. And disobedience produces sorrow and frustration. We have been cursed by their decision.
You see beauty was replaced with ugliness, holiness with evil, kindness with cruelty, generosity with greed, love with hate, peace with violence, security with fear, and joy with anger. All because this happened because of disobedience and being self centered instead of God centered.
Think about that for a moment… most sin occurs because of our selfishness. Most sin occurs when we only focus on ourselves and not God.
Our Old and New Natures
Prior to the fall, Adam and Eve were in harmony with God and their environment. Everything was hitting on all cylinders. They were alive in their spirit and they enjoyed constant communion with God. They grew and developed spiritually and mentally because God gave them task and things to do. Their bodies were flawless and they were perfect in every way.
But as I stated earlier… love always involves a choice. Adam and Eve became selfish in their thoughts and desires and this rebellion radically changed this world.
At the moment they sinned they suffered spiritual death because they were cut off from God. When their spirits died, their sin nature was born, and their minds, emotions and wills came under the dominion of sin with all its distorting effects. Their bodies began to deteriorate… pain and evil spread, and creation itself was corrupted. And the most tragic thing of all… there was not a way back to God yet.
When we are born into this world we are born in our own sin nature. You don’t have to teach a child how to sin… they do it naturally. It not that they are sinners because they commit certain sins… they are born into sin… it’s in our nature. Without the redemptive work of Christ, we would be cut off from God without hope of restoration. Why are we cut off from God? The answer is simple, because “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).
Now… unlike those who are fallen, those who are redeemed are able not to sin. As they walk in the Spirit, they please God and exhibit Christ like qualities.
But don’t get me wrong… there is a war going on. The inner self joyfully agrees with the law of God (Romans 7:22) but there is still a law or power of sin in the outer self (Romans 7:23).
Our spirit… our inner most deep being inside of ourselves has been change… made into a new creature. But our redemption is not fully complete yet. Our spirits have been redeemed but our bodies are still weak. We still have to deal with this earthly body that has been contaminated with sin and it wars against our spirit.
One day we shall be like him when we see him as he is!
1Jn 3:2
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.
On that day the inner man and the outer man are going to agree. We will be free from the power of sin, and our minds, emotions, and wills will be continually under the dominion of the Spirit of God.
Until that day… we constantly battle between the new creature we have become in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17) and the mortal sinful nature we were born into thanks to Adam (Romans 5: 12-21).
You know… everyone human being has basic physical needs that must be met. There are physical needs like food, clothing, shelter, rest, and protection from danger.
In addition to the physical needs there is also a set of psychological needs that every human being needs to have met in order to have some sense of personal worth.
Things such as:
Love and Acceptance – everyone needs the security that comes from feeling unconditionally loved and accepted by at least one other individual. Without this it can cause one to have all sorts of issues, behavior issues.
Significance and Identity – people need a since of identifying with someone or something greater than themselves. The need to feel that their life is worthwhile and that life is meaningful is set in each of us in our inner being. God put it there. People who do not relate to God for their significance and identity tend to either over compensate and work to make them appear greater than they are or they simply have an inferiority complex that only God can truly heal.
Finally… Competence and Fulfillment – this is another universal need that all humans have to feel that one’s life has made a difference and that he or she has accomplished something that will last. One can see how a non-believer would try to over compensate for this lack in their spiritual life by their job performance, or academic standards.
For centuries humans have tried to turn to other people, things, and circumstances to meet these needs, but none of these can truly satisfy them. Even Christians fall into the same trap… trying to feel the void by not totally depending on God and their exchanged life.
God has set eternity in our heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11) and he alone can fill the void.
Now I need to make something clear here… this is not to say that it is wrong for Christians to be concerned about our appearance, our possessions, or our accomplishments. Whatever we do as “ambassadors for Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:20) should be characterized by excellence. Why should we care about these things… because it is done for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:23).
But… and this is a big but… if our joy and peace depend upon how we look, what we own, or how well we perform, we are looking not to the Creator but rather to the creation to meet our God-given needs.
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