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My conclusion is that we are done in by delusions.
Or decptions.
I think I could have walked away that day determined never to get fooled again.
1. We’re Fooled by the Clock
The clock fools us completely when we lose sight of eternity.
We discard our identity. We forget God’s timeline. All we see is now, all we hear is tick, tick, tick, and Jesus’ kingdom seems like an illusion.
2. What We Worship Isn’t God At All
The breakthrough that must occur in the heart of a man and the heart of a woman usually doesn’t occur until their idol has been toppled—and they begin to truly worship the King.
3. We Miss God’s Good Intentions
On the other hand, we reason, if we can only remain in control and determine our own destiny—which obviously require our keeping His hands off our lives (except maybe on Sunday morning)—then we’ll surely know how to make our lives turn out and have the most meaning and purpose.
Christ goes right for the jugular when He says that anyone who desires to save his life is ultimately going to lose it. In fact, Jesus teaches that they will be the very ones who will have wasted their lives!
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” (Matthew 6:31–33)
When you change agendas, you also change bosses, from you to Him. He assumes the full responsibility to take care of all of your needs “according to His riches in glory.”
1. Devote More of Your Time to the Kingdom
The starting place of “seeking first” is always your time.
2. Donate More of Your Treasure to the Kingdom
But there’s an additional principle at work: Your heart moves toward your treasure to the same degree you had to sacrifice to put it there. If your donation didn’t really cost you much then not much of your heart is going to follow it.
3. Donate More of Your Talent to the Kingdom
5. Dream More of Your Special Task in the Kingdom
People I’ve met who serve God with the most zest and confidence do so because they have a clear sense of destiny in their lives.
This awareness that God was up to something important, personal, and unique in his life was a key ingredient in Paul’s incredible, lifelong energy in Christ’s service.
I pray with all kindness that you have arrived at a breaking point—that you have knelt or want to kneel before your great and loving Master.
His heart is always for you, and His loving and very specific purposes for you have been set from eternity past.
Sound familiar? Why in the world do we let junk pile up like that? Maybe it all seems indispensable at the time. Or maybe we’re just too lazy or hurried to dispose of things properly. Soon we have a monster on our hands and we’ve run out of wiggle room.
Even if you are serving God and sitting in the First Chair of faith, you still need this chapter. Accumulated and unaddressed sin is the primary force that pulls us out of the First Chair and chains us firmly in the Second Chair. After Joshua challenged the Israelites to choose to serve the Lord, he told them to “put away the foreign gods which are among you.” He was asking them to take another look at anything in their lives they worshiped or served apart from God. Anything that was contrary to His will and His ways. In other words, anything that was sin. God was saying, “You can’t serve me
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1. Salvation forgiveness occurs only once, at the time of conversion when the Lord forgives the person’s sins; gives him eternal life; transforms him from being an enemy of God to a child of God; sends the Holy Spirit into his life as a seal until the day of redemption; and brings about many other one-time changes as recorded in the New Testament.
2. Fellowship forgiveness should occur repeatedly throughout the life of every believer. Why? Every time born-again believers sin (and all of us sin before and after salvation), we’re instructed in the Bible to confess our sins. Our ongoing, wayward behaviors don’t threaten our eternal future with God, but they do pollute and weaken our ability to fully serve, respond to, and enjoy Him in the present.
Confession and cleansing are among the most difficult disciplines to practice.
In fact, I have found that confession and cleansing are among the most difficult disciplines to practice.
To be thorough, I recommend praying through ten questions based on Paul’s inventory of the “acts of the sinful nature” in Galatians 5:19–21. Pray each request slowly and out loud to the Lord, then pause quietly for a few seconds and write down any additional sins. 1. “Lord, who do I need to forgive who has hurt me?” Pause and write. 2. “Who have I hurt?” Pause and write. 3. “Have I ever stolen anything from anyone?” Pause and write. 4. “Have I ever lied or purposefully misled anyone?” Pause and write. 5. “Have I ever purposefully gossiped about anyone?” Pause and write. 6. “Bring to my mind
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Take heart. Your list is not who you are now; it is an honest accounting of what you did in the past. It is proof that you have completed a courageous step—looked backward to face the truth so you can turn forward and face the Lord with joy!
When a sin becomes no longer acceptable to you, you have a breakthrough with God.
you have a breakthrough with God.
We’re complicated, conflicted beings who want more than one thing at a time. Mostly, we want to feel better now.
We’re complicated, conflicted beings who want more than one thing at a time. Mostly, we want to feel better now.
We’ll never break free of the sin cycle in our lives until we take steps to deal with the persistent appeal of sin itself.
Instead of all those powerful negative emotions, the sin offers soothing, positive ones. Or, as I’ve come to believe, a sense of comfort.
Two dominant motives lie at the root of why we sin. Reason 1: We seek the pleasure that comes from that sin. Reason 2: We seek the absence of pain that is the immediate source of our temptation to commit that sin.
Is looking for a presence of pleasure wrong in God’s sight? Is looking for an absence of pain wrong in God’s sight? Absolutely not. In fact, the Lord made us all the same in this matter: None of us like pain, and all of us like pleasure. The issue isn’t the motive, it’s the method. It’s looking for the right thing in the wrong place. But once you understand the two reasons for sin—sin for pleasure, sin for relief of pain—several important spiritual breakthroughs are at hand.
I’ve prayed to my Comforter many times since that first occasion, and I’ve discovered two immutable truths: the Holy Spirit always—and I mean always—completes His responsibility in my heart; and He always gives me His comfort within three minutes, though I can never put my finger on the moment when He does.
Every pain or negative emotion becomes fertile ground for temptation, and unless they are physically related, each one is rooted in an unresolved issue or event in our lives. As part of your journey of spiritual breakthroughs, I encourage you to begin asking God to reveal to you the cause of your inner distress. I promise you He will. Based on my experience and that of many others, I’ve found that an astounding 70 percent of our inner pain is rooted in unforgiveness; 20 percent seems to stem from unresolved personal conflicts; and everything else accounts for the remaining 10 percent.
The most satisfied person in all the world is the First Chair person who walks by means of the Holy Spirit and who has faced the failures and wounds of the past and worked through each of them until they have been fully resolved.
This is my prayer for you, Sherry.
Because God designed us spiritual beings, we have a nagging awareness that life is far beyond what we can see, hear, and touch.
This void, or driving need, is one that every human feels. It was intended by God to drive us to seek Him.
For example, busyness must be one of the most common responses. Busyness hides the reality of the emptiness for a while.
Did you catch that word, “grope,” for Him? Even though God is not far from us, we must choose to reach for Him. As you can imagine, how we respond to this inner void, and what we reach for to fill it, has everything to do with which Chair of commitment we’re sitting in.
For all but the spiritually gifted, like saints and preachers, selling out to God can wait until heaven.
if we don’t face the truth about our natures, the void which can pull us toward God will be used by Satan to drag us into sin again and again.
All this raises a key question: If the hole in our centers is God-shaped, as Augustine said, why would nearly everyone—well-meaning Christians included—try to fill it with anything else? I believe one reason is that we don’t always believe God is telling us the truth.
We can get so good at filling the void in our heart with substitutes for God’s presence that we hardly notice the ache anymore.
We could paraphrase Jesus’ message: “Yes, I am here to save you and take you to heaven when you die. But so much more is possible right now if you’ll let me in.”
