How To Live Sane In An Insane World, Part 8

I pray each of you are having a wonderful day today! I’m so thankful to the Lord for everything He continues to pour out. Everywhere I look, I see His hand at work!

In the last blog, we talked some about having our mouth filled with God’s Word. It is far too common to have blessing and cursing flow from the same port! Where does that blessing and cursing come from? Where does that sweet water and bitter water come from? Where does that life and death come from? It comes from my heart, and until I begin to “man up” and ask God, “God, where did that come from,” I might walk in deception. I have inquired of the Lord the source, and He has responded, “It’s coming from your heart; you have to get your heart straight.” Those are not pleasant words; I don’t like it when God says that to me. I may reply, “But God, I have the heart of David!” He says, “Yes, you do, and the heart of Saul.” That’s what needs to be transformed, our hearts.  

Listen, I’m tired of getting sucked back into the draw of the world and its mentality. In the Bible, the Apostle Paul writes, “No good soldier entangles himself once again with the things of the world.” I don’t have time for it anymore. I can’t afford to be entangled with the things of the world! There are too many things I want to experience in the Kingdom of God, and I’m robbing myself of the measure of God’s Kingdom by allowing myself to be entangled with the cares of the world, the lusts of the flesh, and the desire for other things. They are always there trying to pull us away from the things of God.

So, I say to you . . . if we will take the medicine—sometimes it does taste bitter—it will eventually bring us to a place of greater life.

“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1).

What are we seeking, friends? What are we fixated on? What is consuming our lives? What consumes our thoughts and emotions? What’s driving us? What’s compelling us? I will tell you this: in the Kingdom of God, motivation is everything! What motivates us to do what we do? What we do can sometimes look really bad, but it may be from a good motivation. Sometimes it can look really good, but come from an evil motivation! God is always looking at the motivation of the heart.

Other people don’t know your motivation; don’t worry about their judgments! You get your heart straight! Just as other people cannot see your heart, you can’t see theirs. Don’t be focused on the speck in a brother’s eye as long as you have a beam in your own. We’re so good at judging others while we walk around half blind. Isn’t that true? We need to search our hearts and let God search them, too.

Verse 2 says, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” I like that . . . it’s like concrete setting . . . like a linebacker set in position. God wants us to prosper, so it’s not necessarily the things on the earth that are evil; God doesn’t have a problem with things, believe me! He doesn’t have a problem with you prospering. If He did, that means He would have lied. Just read your Bible and see how blessed women and men of the Old and New Testaments were! I’ve been young and now I’m old, but I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging for bread. It’s not the things, it’s what you set your mind on! What are you fixated on? What’s driving you?

Paul continues in verse 3 of Colossians, “You died, and your life is hidden in Christ in God!” It’s time for us to consider ourselves dead! D.E.A.D.! When we consider taking up our cross, sometimes we want to die just a little bit at a time! We get one arm nailed up, then we pull it down and put the other one up there and say, “Okay, God, you can have this arm now.” Then we want to wiggle around on the cross. WHY DON’T WE JUST DIE??!! You can’t hurt a dead man. The reason we keep getting hurt is because we’re just not that dead yet. Dead men feel no pain. Let’s set our focus on things that are above and not of this world. Amen?

A key to living a crucified, victorious life is to keep our thoughts and minds in check. Again, here is a review of your complete spiritual prescription to be taken three times daily until you evidence a change in your thought processes. After that, administer as needed!

1.     Casting down imaginations (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

2.     Getting our minds renewed (Romans 12:1-2)

3.     Meditate on and SPEAK the Word of God (Joshua 1:8)

4.     Judge our thoughts (Philippians 4:8)

Grace and peace,

pg

Building Wisely

Greetings from the beautiful Dominican Republic!

Today I want to talk with you about something that is important in each of our lives and that is in regard to how we build. We are all involved with building something. God has created us to be builders! He put within every one of us—whether we are male or female, young or old—a desire to be productive, to achieve, to succeed, and to build. That desire is part of who we are because it is part of who God is. 

So today I would like us to consider not only what we are building but also how we are building. Just because we are building something doesn’t mean that we’re using wisdom, and it’s easy to think that we’re being wise wherein we may actually be proceeding ahead foolishly. In order to have a proper perspective, I want us to go right back to our creation. We should ask ourselves: “Why am I here? What is God’s ultimate purpose for giving me life?” 

We could study the Westminster Protestant Catechism, and find that they have cooked man’s existence down to two principal points:

1.     To glorify God

2.     To enjoy Him forever

Sometimes we get hung up on the “enjoying” part! We don’t think God exists for us to enjoy Him. God wants this to be fun! We would do well to ask ourselves this question every once in a while: “Am I having fun yet?” God does not want this to be drudgery. I know that there’s something to be said in regard to the “baptism of suffering,” but even in that, we are supposed to count it all joy! God wants us to enjoy this Christian experience, this journey, and He wants us to be reminded of why He has given us life. He didn’t have to do that; He was very sufficient in and of Himself. He chose to create you and I, to give us life, and to place us on this earth for such a time as this! 

We exist for a purpose, but ultimately, before we can break down all the bits and pieces of that purpose, we must understand that it is for His glory and that He would have us to enjoy Him forever. God’s not a mean old Daddy; He’s a good, good Daddy! He loves us and wants what is best for us, and He knows what that is better than we do ourselves!

With all of that in mind, each of us is called and placed here on the earth to work, build, and to do so according to the purposes and plans of God. We all have the desire to build, but are we doing so according to the plan of God? I think the most essential part of what we’re talking about is that it’s not what we build that is of the utmost importance, it is how we build. 

In the Kingdom of God, motivation is everything in regard to pleasing Him. Now, we being human, we judge nearly everything on what we see, what we hear, and how we feel. We determine what’s good by those three factors. We tend to follow the proverbial saying of, “I calls them as I sees them.” 

We judge based on appearance and what we think we hear, when many times what we heard was not even what was being said. We will immediately think we heard something and then begin to quickly judge the motivation of other people as though we are able to see his or her heart! We would never stop to consider that what we heard them say was not even what they said! 

There’s example after example in Scripture of this in action. In fact, wars have been waged, blood has been shed, and lives have been lost . . . all based upon misperception and bad judgment. We find people judging people and their motivation and half the time we don’t even know our own! Come on, somebody. 

We think we know our hearts. “I’ve searched my heart.” Well, it’s about time you let God do that. He may have a different determination. 

This really is a positive message, and we will continue on with it in the next blog. It is certainly valuable to consider this topic of how we are building. We’ll be looking at this in greater depth and hopefully be able to accurately evaluate if our building has the proper foundation needed in order to support God’s purpose in our lives. In the meantime, may God bless you abundantly in everything you put your hand to, and I’ll be in touch again next week. 

Grace and Peace,
pg