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Frugality was once considered a virtue in our country. Like the Amish in this picture, most people had learned the skill of doing the most with what they had on hand. Hand-me-downs were not seen as something to be ashamed … Continue reading
This morning as I was doing my daily reading of the Bible, this verse jumped up at me: I will praise thee, O LORD, with my whole heart; I will shew forth all thy marvellous works (Psalms 9:1). As I continued to read the rest of the chapter, three questions kept coming to my mind: 1) What am I holding back from the Lord? 2) What is keeping me from praising Him with my whole heart? and 3) Why do I not share the blessings from the Lord with others? I’ve been a Christian since 2006 and have seen the Lord working within my life in some pretty amazing ways, yet in light of all three of the questions, I could not believe how difficult it was to honestly answer them.
This is a simple and straight-forward question. What am I holding back from the Lord? It is fairly easy to start with the most obvious ones, such as praise, worship, and giving. But we must go deeper than those – what am I holding back? Many of us have a true friend that we share every aspect of our life with; for some this may be a spouse and for others, it may be a childhood friend. Remember the hurt feelings and shock you felt when you found out they held something back from you? Remember how you felt when you found out through someone else about it? If so, you can probably imagine how God feels when He knows we are holding things back from Him. There have been times where I have not had the faith in Him I should have. There are times I have not been as grateful for his mercy, grace, and blessings as I should have. There are times I know I needed to ask His forgiveness for sin, yet I could not bring myself to pray about it.
I think about conversations I have had with other Christians in the past who have told me they were surrendered completely to the Lord’s will. One even told me that he believed that the Lord was calling him into full-time ministry and he was willing to do whatever the Lord wanted him to do – except be a missionary. At the time we laughed it off, but now, with a fresh perspective, he was holding something back from the Lord. He was not completely surrendered. Can the Lord still use him? Absolutely, but he will never receive the joy that comes from serving the Lord as long as he is holding something back. I think of the exchange between Jesus and the rich young ruler as told by Luke: And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother. And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me (Luke 18:18-22). To paraphrase this passage, Jesus was telling this young man that he had to be willing to surrender everything he owned and all that he was and all his personal power and prestige in order to follow after Jesus. He could not hold anything back.
This is another question where it is easy to claim that I’m already doing this. In all honesty, I know that it’s not true. Just as I hold things back from the Lord, I also hold back my praise from Him. David wrote, And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee: for thou, LORD, hast not forsaken them that seek thee (Psalms 9:10). If we are His child, then we have every reason to praise Him with our whole heart. Through the Bible we have the testimony of God’s love for us and the proof of His great salvation offered to us. So if we have every reason to praise Him with our whole heart, why is it so difficult? Each one of us who have accepted Jesus as our Lord and personal Savior can think of at least a half-dozen things He has done: Sing praises to the LORD, which dwelleth in Zion: declare among the people his doings (Psalms 9:11).
As I honestly began to consider this question, the first thing that came to my mind is unconfessed sin. Unconfessed sin will separate us from the blessings and joy that Jesus brings. We feel conviction brought about by the Holy Spirit and and not repent of our sins and praise the Lord, we decide to hide ourselves from Him. The last thing we want to do when running from the Lord is to praise Him. We also are hesitant to praise the Lord with our whole hearts when we know things are not as they should be between us and someone else. We also find it hard to praise the Lord with our entire heart when we know He has set something before us and for whatever reason, we don’t do it. It’s hard to praise the Lord when we are not living fully in His will.
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Posted in Christian Living, Discipleship, My Walk
God has a plan for your life. No one has ever been born by accident or without any sort of desire by the Lord. Before any of us were even born, the Bible teaches Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself (Isaiah 44:24). Within the teachings of the Old Testament there are a handful of verses that also adds to our understanding – as Christians – of how God has a plan for each of us even before we are born! Even before the birth of Jeremiah, the prophet, God already had a plan for his life: Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations (Jeremiah 1:5). Although God did have a plan for Jeremiah, it is important to understand that Jeremiah had to be surrendered to the Lord’s will before he could understand what God had planned for him.
Just as God has a plan for every person ever conceived, God has a plan for every Christian who will completely surrender to His will. When I was a young-in-the-faith Christian, there was so much about my new-found faith that I simply didn’t understand. As I have shared many times, I was regularly attending a church that did have sound Bible preaching, but there was no discipleship for those, like me, who didn’t come from a Christian family. As the pastor would teach about great men of the faith such as Moses, Abraham, Billy Sunday, and even Billy Graham, I had no idea where I fit into God’s plan. All I knew was that I wanted to be used by God but I wasn’t sure if God even had a plan or purpose for my life. What I didn’t know was a simple lesson taught by Jesus himself during His earthly ministry: For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey (Matthew 25:14-15). What I didn’t understand was that I had not demonstrated to the Lord that I could be trusted with even two talents. I didn’t realize that I had not been faithful in doing the things that God had already called me to do.
God has a plan for all Christians that begins with us demonstrating we can be faithful in four simple things that all Christians are called to do. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been a Christian for two weeks or two decades, there’s no spiritual growth or other things that God will place in front of you to do if you’re not being faithful in these four basic areas of Christian service. These four areas have always been a part of His plan have been the same for those who lived in the days of the Old Testament and for everyone that has lived since the times of the New Testament. This shouldn’t surprise us because the scriptures teach us, Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever (Hebrews 13:8) and He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting (Habakkuk 3:6). God’s plan has never changed and never will.
After 2006, when I became serious about my relationship with the Lord, I began to pray daily and read my Bible with a new intensity that I had never had before. Not sure where to start in my Bible reading, I began in Proverbs, reading a chapter each morning before I began my daily routine. What I began to learn from my Bible study, the sermons of the pastor where I attended, and from the leading of the Holy Spirit is that praying and studying the Bible were two of the four things that God wants those who love Him to do. Over time, I learned that the other two things, bearing witness to others of Christ’s love and the willingness to worship God alone, when done with a servant’s heart, is where true obedience and spiritual growth begins in the life of a believer. We cannot expect the Lord to use us in any ministry or lay on our hearts a specific calling if we are not faithfully doing the very basic things of our faith. Do you want to be more than a pew-sitter within your church? Then you must be faithful in the things that God has already called you to do.
David, the psalmist, wrote Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee (Psalms 119:11) and the apostle Paul left the instructions to Timothy, Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). Both men understood a simple truth that Paul understood well: For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). It is through our personal reading of the Bible that we truly begin to learn of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and His will for our life. Regular Bible reading bears fruit and is never a waste of our time and effort. As inspired by the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul wrote, All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). When we truly study the Bible on a daily basis we are opening the door for the Lord, through the leading of the Holy Spirit, to truly make and mold us into the Christian that God has called us to be.
When I first became a Christian, the extent of my prayer life was in giving thanks for the meals I ate each day. After the decision was made to become more serious in my walk with the Lord, my prayer life had to change as well. I asked the pastor of the church I was attending in Carbondale the best way to do this and he offered me perhaps the best advice I ever received on the topic of prayer: Don’t worry about them – just talk to the Lord as if He is in the room with you and don’t be afraid to pour out your heart and soul to Him. This is similar advice to what the apostle Paul wrote, And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear (1 Peter 1:17). God doesn’t compare the prayers of Christians to one another but he judges our prayers according to the contents of our heart. As I have studied the psalms there’s a consistency to David’s writings. He is completely open with the Lord in all of his psalms. He tells God how he is feeling, the fears he has, the sorrows and pain, and even the joys he has. I believe that too many of us treat the Lord as if he doesn’t already know the content of our heart and we pray what we think He wants to hear from us.
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Posted in Christian Living, Increasing Faith
Tagged 1 Corinthians, 1Peter, 1Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Acts, Christian living, Exodus, faith, Hebrews, Isaiah, James, Jeremiah, Mark, Matthew, Personal insight, Proverbs, Psalms, Unborn baby
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