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Is “Right” All?
Right with God
All the reports are pointing to Jesus coming soon so TV is asking Christians if we are ready. Are we right with God? Leola thinks about this and asks her own question, “Am I right with God? What is right with God?” She researched this idea and concludes she IS right with God. She has faith in Jesus Christ. From Romans 1 to Romans 3:20 Paul tells us what being wrong with God is then he says “but now” to show us being right with God is having faith in Jesus Christ. So, her next question is, “Why is the ‘preacher’ preaching to the choir?” Leola remembers Revelation 2 and 3 where Jesus tells His churches about being an overcomer. Is “right with God” and “overcomer” being used interchangeably? The Bible tells us once we are saved we are right with God (Romans 3:21-26) therefore how often do we need to become “right with God”? Biblically speaking salvation makes us right with God so she says out loud, “Yes, I am right with God.”
Leola has confessed Jesus Christ as her Lord and Saviour (Romans 10:9-10). She knows she has eternal life (John 5:24). This is right with God according to Paul. Is she missing something? Is there more? This short speech needs to be preached in the street not in the church. It needs to be spoken to the unsaved not the saved. This “right with God” speech needs to be modified to help the saved preach this to the unsaved. As Leola thinks more about this topic it becomes clearer to her being right with God is His job. He is the one who saves us. He is the one who chooses us. We cannot make ourselves right with God. This is what Paul is telling us in Romans 3. Being right with God is the work of God and not of our own works. Salvation, sanctification, reconciliation, glorification, all of the ‘ations that go with it are all the work of God therefore being right with God is out of her hands. Is there more to what the “right with God” question? She supposes so.
We are definitely in a time of peril. Mankind is in love with itself and thinks it doesn’t need our God. As a matter of fact they cannot see God in what is happening to the land today. Not so in the church. End times preaching is commencing again. The saved are asking each other if we are right with God. Why? Why are we asking each other this question? The saved ARE right with God if they are indeed chosen. We can choose for ourselves to sit in the church building out of obligation or ritual but we cannot choose be chosen by the Father. There are plenty of those people sitting in the church today and until they are chosen they cannot be right with God. They may very well get bitter and become those folks who make their own gospel to lead many astray (Jude). Will this affect the people who are right with God? It will, I suppose, make us question our salvation but that should not be so. No one who is chosen by the Father should question their salvation. If you do question your salvation you are not working out your salvation with Him.
Right Relationship with God
Leola wonders if that is all there is? Why do we have a 2000 page book if this is all there is? There has to be more included in “the right with God” concept being preached today. Her works cannot make her right with God but they do put Leola and every Christian in a “right relationship with God”. Leola is learning that being “right with God” is different from being in a “right relationship with God”. She cannot make herself right with God no matter how hard she works. Salvation is a gift of God through grace and not of our own works (Ephesians 2:8-9). On the other hand having a “right relationship with God” is about overcoming our obstacles and continuing to have faith in Jesus through them all. Leola thinks the people preaching the “right with God” speeches actually mean for us to examine our relationship with God. How can she tell if our relationship with God is right? Sometimes Leola feels lost and disconnected from God then two days later she feel found and completely connected. There is one thing she knows for sure, she is ready to go home. She is torn between going home to be with Jesus and staying for the sake of the people she will help with their life skills. That is the key she teaches and follows. She is ready. Maybe us teachers of the Word should ask, “are you ready for God” rather than are you “right with God”. Leola has been ready for years.
We can tell we are ready for God when we can honestly say, “Jesus come,” and mean it. Jesus tells us in every one of those 2000+ pages He needs to be first in our lives but unfortunately that is much easier read then done. I can tell you from experience once you begin putting Him first life gets much easier to handle, stuff gets easier to relinquish, money gets easier to donate, love gets easier to give away, and the plan gets easier to follow. We begin to see this world is not our home and we long to go home to be with Jesus. If you are ready for Jesus to come you are in a right relationship with God but if you are not you need to begin working out your salvation. Ask the unsaved to see if they need to get ‘right’ with God but ask the saved if they are in a ‘right relationship’ with God. Jesus come!
Meditation Verses: Romans 1-3; Revelation 2-3; Romans 10:9-10; John 5:24; Jude; Ephesians 2:8-9
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The Strong Survive
The Animal Kingdom
While watching Animal Kingdom Leola was given a revelation from God. Among us in the church there are the strong and there are the weak. Thank the Lord we don’t eat each other although we do try to consume each other. What is it making one person strong and the other weak? She asks herself, “Am I strong or am I weak?” Then God asks here clearly, “Which do you choose?” Good questions. Of course she would choose strong but that is so much easier to say than to do. Strength doesn’t come from how well she can control others it comes from how well she can control herself. It comes from how well she does what the Lord has assigned for her. It comes from how much she knows Him. The strong, she thinks, survive what God has in store for them! There are two very prominent character traits of the strong, trust and courage. They are interchangeable daily. Strong people trust God to do what He says He will so they stand before the daunting task with courage. Every time they act with courage and survive they trust more. The strong have the courage to do what God tells them to do because they trust Him. Every time they trust Him they acquire more courage. How often does our Lord say, “Fear not and take courage!” Trust Him and stand before the task with courage to do what He wants us to do is the main theme. Can we learn this from the animal kingdom? No, we cannot, Leola tells herself! Their strong survive by instinct, size and fierceness! They fight for dominance and they win by fighting to injure, maim or kill. For the animal kingdom winning is living but for the Kingdom of God the strong are dying to live!
Only the dead will survive in the Kingdom of God. It is not about animal strength or instinct or even reasoning, it is about how well we kill ourselves and fill our lifeless bodies with God. In the Kingdom of God it is about giving others your food not eating it yourself. It is giving away our riches to provide for others. It’s about becoming foolish to gain wisdom. It’s about getting to the back of the line to be first in line. All of this goes against the grain of our world. It goes against the grain of our own soul. This is a fight we can only win when we concede. When we concede our strength becomes boundless.
The Kingdom of God
The people who are in the Kingdom of God kill themselves. They don’t wait to be killed by the dominant animal in the group or by predators. As they kill themselves God dominates them and that is when they become strong. They are not surviving by instinct and they don’t have to chase down their prey – God supplies it. This is the most peculiar concept in the world for Leola who is fiercely independent. God bids her to want the Kingdom of God by proving He can be trusted! Leola is killing what God tells her to kill because she trusts He will replace it with better. She improves what He tells her to improve because she trust He is going to use that someday. She only has the courage to do any of it because she trusts God to keep her safe. God knows Leola will survive in the Kingdom of God because He gives her His strength to survive.
It is not easy to trust God enough to kill yourself but to survive in the Kingdom of God we must learn to trust Him. The more we put our own life on the line the more courage we get because we tap into the strength given to us by God to do what He wants us to do. He created us knowing we would be filled with fear and doubt and He told us over and over He would be our strength. He has proven Himself to be faithful to us therefore we should prove ourselves to others to be strong enough to survive.
Meditation Verses for this week: Psalm 8 (HCSB Version). This versions speaks directly to this. Believe verse four when it says that we were created a little lower than God because the original Hebrew uses the word Elohim. Another verse to prove this out is 1 Corinthians 6:3 Do you not know that we shall judge angels? How much more, things that pertain to this life? We are made a little lower than God – does that make you feel strong enough to survive. I hope so?
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Invisible Rewards
Invisible is She!
Leola is gifted with administration, which is causing her quite a bit of heartache because she sees issues with planning others just don’t see. Not only is this an issue for her in church but at work too. She needs to learn how to train herself to say what needs to be said then and not say more. She needs to understand what needs to be done when it absolutely needs to be done and not more. She also needs to learn to allow time for the people to catch up in their own mind without the “I told you so” stance. It is not about pride for Leola, at least in this situation, it is about not being listened too by leaders or people in authority. This plays right into her insecurities so she walks out of meetings or conversation with another crack in her heart. Leola has felt invisible all of her life. Each part of her life has brought a new season of feeling as if no one sees or hears her. Maybe it is this gift of administration from the Lord or maybe it is just her? She does know one thing – it is a horrible feeling not to be seen and she doesn’t like it very much!
When Leola feels invisible she ramps up her actions toward noticeability ultimately inflating her anger because she is getting nowhere. What she hadn’t noticed before is she is attempting to get rewarded by man! The premise of getting our reward from man is complicated and stealthy. At work she understands she is looking for the recognition of capability and at home she is looking for ignorant compliance to her demands. This is simple ten years later to understand, but at the time it was a struggle to work it all out. For as long as Leola can remember she has been one step ahead of most people with insight into the issues facing them. It has never been something she bragged about but it has always been a burden for her. She couldn’t understand why man could not see what she was seeing. It was simple to her! Maybe it was her! Maybe folks just didn’t see her. Oh, they saw her long enough to call her ugly but not long enough to take advice; long enough to tell her what to do but not long enough to listen. On her knees bawling like a baby, God would teach her He sees her and a lot more.
Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 6:1) This verse we read but don’t see it for what it really means to us on a daily basis! Our deep feelings of insecurity come from the rewards we are attempting to get from man and do not receive. Men, of all kinds, are trying to get rewards from men and it is highly promoted. Gifted leaders are rewarded by man with leadership but it goes to their head and they begin to accept the reward from man rather than Jesus. Gifted musicians take reward from man then fall prey to pride and start singing worship to the devil. People cross the line every day under the guise of getting rewards from men. We see it happening daily from the world and the church including people who love Jesus. We are just a little more subtle about it. We tell people how much money we gave, who we helped, what we do for others and the like. The minute we open our mouth we have our reward!
He Sees Her!
Leola, still on her knees, cried out to God telling Him everything she feels. She told God, people don’t see her and she isn’t sure He doesn’t see her either. He has removed everything important to her and here she was alone in her ‘Jesus Room’ with nothing left to lose. Her heart was broken beyond repair from being invisible all of her life. She couldn’t stop crying and her emotions were running the gamete. When she stopped crying there was no lightning bolt to knock her out of her chair. There was no angel standing in front of her to tell her face to face God sees her. She just felt relief from the tirade because she actually understood herself why she was so disappointed with God. She expected God to take from her because she had known no different. She expected God to be blind to her because she felt no other feeling. Leola placed a human standard on God. Up to that point there was no male figure in her life she could say had any favourable impact in her life and God, to her, had been no different. She loved Him dearly but she also wasn’t expecting much from Him either. She didn’t expect Him to meet her needs, meet her expectation or to meet any of His promises in her life. The year following this outburst was enlightening to say the very least. God transformed the way she saw Him but more over He transformed the way she saw herself. She loved Jesus with all of her heart and did everything possible to obey His every command but her invisibility had engulf her whole life even into her Spiritual life. It had permeated so deep she was even invisible to herself. God raised her from the dead and changed how she looked at herself through learning more about rewards from the Bible. Leola now understands the difference between the rewards from Heaven and the rewards from man! She works fervently for the rewards from Heaven knowing God sees her and is the rewarder of those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). They are invisible rewards!
We are made to want reward but not from people from God! He knew we would need this to be driven. He gifts us to be driven in specific directions yet He also knew that same gift is used in the world to make money to live on. There are poor Christians and there are filthy rich Christians and everything in between. Our reward is not the money, the accolades or the power because God can take all of that away in a minute. Our reward is the treasures we are storing up in Heaven where moth and rust do not destroy (Matthew 6:20). This week think about why you work so hard and for whom!
Meditation Verses this week: Matthew 6:1; Hebrews 11:6; Matthew 6:20
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I am Not Failing!
The Failure!
The sun is shining this beautiful morning and it is shining in Leola’s heart too. There is no other day that she can remember at this moment to have such an impact on her than today. She is wiping the tears away as she opens her Bible to read. How grateful she is to be saved by grace! She is reminded of how often she has failed to do what God has convicted her of but this morning she is remembering something the Spirit revealed to her last night. Her conviction is renewed but it wasn’t quite so easy in the past. Today, she is quick to discover her underlying issues and quick to get on with living the abundant life Jesus came to give her. If it were not for the Book of Life her existance would be the same as everyone else’s. She has become one who cares so deeply about following her calling that she would pray for God to get her ready. She wants to save women from everything 2 Timothy 3 says will happen to them but failure needs to be dealt with. And what better place to go then the Psalms.
“A Psalm a day keeps my depression away,” she thinks as she starts reading Psalm 73. Leola had been beating herself up yesterday for failing to continue on her path with Jesus. He has convicted her to love her fellow man. Jesus has been working in several areas of her life at the same time. Most people would cringe at the prospect of doing so much at once but God has gifted Leola to be able to handle it. What most people take a lifetime to clean up Leola can clean up in no time thanks to Jesus! She also knows, when much is given much is expected (Luke 12:35-48). She knows what is expected of her and she is extremely hard on herself when she fails. In the olden days she would beat herself up for days yet never come to the conclusion of why she failed. She failed again, after years of practice, she did it again! That old ugly woman (ETS – Evil Twin Sister) rises up at different times and Leola is unprepared for her appearance. She will be happy and content then, bam, ETS shows up unstoppable. An ETS warning light would be nice like the Kmart Blue Light Special but unfortunately it doesn’t and she fails. When she is walking up to a situation she would love to see the blue light flashing then as she is walking up she can prepare for it. Alas after years of torturing herself, God has given her a partial sentence that will change the way she deals with the ETS appearance from that moment on.
When God calls us He has already created our new man but our old man has to be put away by us. We need to remember God create both men. The old man is who He has saved and knows him better than we do. He has prepared the new man to do His work because the old man was incapable through sin of doing the righteous work. The old man is self-serving and self-absorbed but the new man is Spirit minded and Heaven absorbed. We will only be 100% heaven minded when we are in Heaven so in the meantime, while we are on this earth, we will not only fight the devil but we will fight our old man too. They exist, for us, in the same body, in the same space, in the same time and the devil knows that better than we do. As long as he can make us think the old man still lives he will be successful at reviving that dead guy each and every time. We need to work hard at keeping that dead guy in the grave. It may be a slow process at times and quick at other times. It is completely dependent on what God is teaching us and how much we fight Him. It is our job to be successful at keeping the old man in the grave.
The Revelation!
Leola gets quite a few revelations from God while looking out the front window or any window as a matter of fact. This is why she loves to be able to do see out the window while she is studying the Bible, writing or doing any kind of work. When she stares out the window in the winter she sees white (the colour of purity) and in the summer green (the colour of growth). Every time she looks up she sees blue which is the colour of Heaven. If she could live in a house made of glass she would. While she was thinking about her failure again, she instinctively walked to the front window and she is spoken too. Leola has become very aware of the Spirit speaking to her. He said, “You have failed but you are not failing!” She smiled from ear to ear! The perfect encouragement at the perfect time. Her soul accepts it. She is not failing she is succeeding. She has come a long way from where she was and it has been a long road travelling from dead to alive. Leola knows the road is still long and narrow but she is accepting day by day every success she has gained and she is accepting every encouragement he God is supplying. She is not failing, she is succeeding.
I know how hard it is to accept our success because sometimes our failures are before our eyes constantly. Since our mind is filled with our quest to be like Jesus we forget how much closer we are toward that than yesterday. When we look in the mirror we need to begin seeing this new man, who looks like Jesus, rather than the old one who looks like sin. Psalm 73:26 is correct in saying, My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. This is why we are not failing. God is the strength of our heart and He is our portion forever. I look like Him and because of His Spirit in me I will act like Him when I keep the old man buried. I did fail but I am NOT FAILING!
This week’s meditation verses: Psalm 73:26; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Ephesians 4:24
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With God as Your Teacher…
A look through the large picture window in Leola’s living room tells her it is a gloomy rainy day with no hope of sunshine. It’s a cold gloomy day inside Leola’s heart too. She has been true to her words to read the Bible every day although it has done nothing to defrost her frozen in time heart. She had hoped for something different but her thoughts were getting worse. She sits staring at the drops of water outside hitting her window and rolling down to the ledge wishing she was one of those drops with no feelings and no expectations. She is feeling crushed by her feelings of hopelessness. There is no hope for tomorrow to be different and no hope for the future to get better. The Bible to this point has not told her what to do about the condemnation of sin she is under. If this is what understanding is Leola wants none of it!
She doesn’t know how to fix herself! She has never watched a Christian fix themselves before. Her lack of hope invades her mind constantly. The past three years of reading the Bible and going to church have done nothing to help her as a matter of fact she is beginning to believes Scripture and church are making it worse. She has read through the Bible once, gone to multiple Bible studies and hooked up with many Christians over the years but none have admitted to trials or conviction of sin. She knows of no one who is worse off than her! She now believes her public plastic face will be the only face she will wear. Her hidden grief is almost intolerable!
We go to church and we discuss our problems with people but do we truly understand it is God who is supposed to teach us His ways not man. Sometimes it is easier to turn to man. I am completely guilty of this concept. We either do one of two things as growing Christians – we go to people or we ask our own soul! It is very peculiar that we do those things because we have known they are not successful yet we continue. Man wants what he wants and he goes the way he wants to go and our soul knows no better. We have no escape outside of obedience to God yet we try to make a way. We rely on man and his miracle pills when we expect them to fix us.
We are God’s children and as such we must learn from the Spirit what to do and how to do it. He says to us “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you.” (Psalm 32:8) We can count on Elohim to instruct us and to counsel us. He has counselled us to be convicted of our sin and then He instructs us in the way we should go to escape the sin. This is not an easy task but we can do it! We must do it!
At the end of one of her mind numbing days, talking about her problems with any old person, she retires to her have-to-have-it couch with her promise to read the Scriptures. Tonight, she is going to let gravity choose her reading because this is the way she rolls. She doesn’t actually care about what she is about to read because her grief has made her apathetic. She opens the Bible and drops it on her lap but doesn’t begin to read. Leola sighs and stares. It is still raining out so she listens to the sound of it hitting her front window while consorting with it. If it isn’t raining, it is raining! Each rainy day is running into the next and her grief is beginning to overwhelm her to the point of giving up. Being in Heaven will be much better than being here.
She finally looks down to see what gravity has done for her. At this point in her walk she doesn’t realize that gravity was created by God for His glory and He will use it for His glory too. Psalm, why does gravity always bring her to the Psalms? She chose Psalm 32 for her reading. As she read the tears ran down her face like the rain on her window. This God she didn’t understand and didn’t really know had written about her grief over her sin long before she was even born. She read the Psalm three times stopping each time on verse 8 to soak it in. Her grief over her life did not stop that day but God revealed Himself to her as her teacher. She would submit to Him more and more each day being instructed how to change her life one minute at a time instead of expecting a miracle. With God as her Teacher she would learn her lessons well!
We are more than capable of overcoming sin if we allow Elohim to instruct us in the way we should go. Let the Spirit counsel you within your conviction then allow Him to instruct you in the way out of sin! With God as your Teacher you will learn each lesson well!
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The Escape is Obedience!
The Excuse!
She is walking through the parking lot excited about a new prospect she has ahead of her. Leola Lurned squeezes her coat tighter as much a result of the cold as out of an uneasiness about attending church for the first time in ten years. This is her mother’s church, her grandmother’s church, and her family church. It is a traditional religious institution or so she thought. In the time she attended before she doesn’t remember ever walking out of a sermon with anything that would make her a better Christian. She was a ‘knob shaker’ extraordinaire during the time she graced the building with her presence, but it is different today. Today, she is expecting something different, something life changing and she will not be disappointed!
Growing up Leola never saw religion in her house even though Sunday best was a requirement. She came from a ‘knob shaking’ family! She wondered no more about where she got her ideas and habits about God. The door to the church was easy to open and enter though what was to come would be harder. The hall was filled with familiar but unknown faces, some smiling, some frowning, some talking and some listening. The noise was an indicator she was on time. Leola wandered the halls from memory to the sanctuary to find a seat. True to her word of last week she had been reading the Scriptures daily without understanding. He lack of understanding gave her reason to look for a legitimate escape from that daunting task. She found a seat in the back row praying under her breath it doesn’t belong to a bitter old man who has a need to sit in the same seat every week. Sitting down Leola drags her brain for just one iota of information she understood from Scripture this week.
How many times did we have to drive before we understood how to do it well? How many times did we cook a meal before we understood spices? How long have we worked at our job before we understood it enough to be competent? Obedience to a manual or a recipe was the key to understanding each of those topics. How do we think we can understand Scripture if we don’t obey Them? In our walk with God whether we are baby Christians or seasoned Christians we look for excused to avoid putting time into knowing Elohim. I remember when the Father first called me I actually had no idea I was supposed to read the Bible. No one told me ‘to know God is to know Scripture’ and if they did my ears were not hearing. It wasn’t until I learned of the familial relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist was a zeal for His Words put into my heart.
Up until that point the only obedience I could be accused of is confessing my sins to each other (James 5:16). I had no understanding of Scripture or His commandments and no understanding how to escape my sin either. I was fooling myself in thinking shaking the doorknob once a week was going to give me the skills I needed to improve my life. My lack of understanding was no longer valid after that and neither is yours. We do not have an excuse for a lack of understanding of the Scripture because it is outright disobedience to the Lord. We think if we read the Word over and over we will eventually understand it but according to the Word Itself our understanding comes from the obedience of the Words we are reading. One day we will stand before Jesus and NO excuse will be valid. Ignorance is not bliss in God’s economy because the escape is obedience. We must make it a priority to understand His Words through the obedience of the Words. We have the escape now let us take it!
The Escape!
Leola is pulled from her thought when the Pastor begins to speak into the microphone perfectly placed on the pulpit to his tall stature. He begins with a prayer so soft at first she can barely comprehend the words then the sound rises above her pounding heart to her ears. He is speaking directly to her and it makes her uncomfortable. He asks God to bless us with complete understanding of the Words God has given Him to speak on this day. Would God so touch us that we would feel it down to our core? Would He give us the power to obey Him thereby getting understanding of the Scriptures. How did the Pastor know? How did he know Leola’s silent struggle to sustain her resolve to read Scripture? How did he know she was looking for an excuse to quit?
Leola stared wide eyed at the Pastor! There was a sensation in her she had never felt before. Before she could get over the last shock, he threw out another one. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; A good understanding have all those who do His commandments. (Psalm 111:10) His bold knowledge of her struggle continued to make her feel awkward. He knew she was looking for excuses and Leola’s cheeks beamed bright red with embarrassment at the prospect of him knowing such a deep secret. She wanted to leave but her sudden fear of gossip kept her planted in that seat. She continued to listen with great distress believing he would soon publicly call her out. When she thought she was going to explode she heard the Pastors words, “God knows you so deeply, even you will be amazed at His understanding of your struggles!” He glanced at her with such love in his eyes she knew that new sensation was Jesus! Her resolve returned out of love for the Man! She knew she needed to continue in her promise to read the Scriptures every day excited to allow the Spirit to talk to her about obedience. She understood one thing this Sunday morning, her excuses are not escapes; obedience is the escape!
Our own understanding of the Scriptures will not come until we obey the Scriptures and we cannot obey the Scriptures if we never read them. Therefore in all of your getting in life, get understanding!
