Posts Tagged ‘romans’

Knowing God’s Will

March 16th, 2010 No Comments

The following is a repost of a past entry from another blog I operated:

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Romans 12:1-2

This single passage of scripture blows my mind every time. Every time I read this, I’m convicted on my views of what “worship” truly is.

In the Old Testament, sacrifices were made to God in the form of slaughtering an animal on an altar to God to atone for sins and wickedness of a people. Since Jesus paid the once for all sacrifice for those of us who are called by his name, we no longer have to submit blood offerings to God. Instead, we’re called to live our lives in worship to God.

Is your sacrifice, your daily life, acceptable to God? What changes need to take place in your life for it to be holy and acceptable to God?

We can’t “worship” God only on a Sunday or Wednesday night. We’re called to a richer, more authentic worship of our Creator—with our everyday lives.

Does your life worship, glorify, and build up the name of Jesus Christ, or your own?

“…by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

I’ve heard Christians ask this question time and time again (present company included): “How do I know God’s will for my life?”

Paul writes that we can tell what the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God is when we present our lives as living sacrifices. If we live our lives wholly devoted to God, in tune and in step with the Holy Spirit, we will know what God’s will is for us in our spirits, by constantly being in the presence of God.

Pastor/author Mark Batterson once wrote, “God wants you to get where God wants you to go more than you want to get where God wants you to go.” If you are a child of God, then he will watch over and direct you to where he has divinely ordained you to be.

Worship God with your life every day. Our Father will handle the rest.

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Passion

February 20th, 2010 No Comments

14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Romans 13:14

We are souls created for passion. We sing passionately, we eat with passion, we watch and talk about movies passionately, we love passionately, we passionately play our sports, and we even sleep passionately.

There is something about the human soul that God divinely created that has a drive and desire to do everything with a heartfelt passion.

That passion, unfortunately, is spent on vain and useless pursuits compared to the light of eternity. Instead of investing our passions in something worthwhile, we somehow manage to find an inane way to waste our time and talents on the created rather than the Creator.

These are the “provisions of the flesh”—we have human desires that we satisfy with human means, wasting our God-given passion on vain pursuits that, in the end, lead to death.

Every single day when you wake, what are you “putting on?” The natural tendency for us is to wake, shower, eat, and go about our lives, leaving the natural, selfish self on when we wake.

Yet, when we consciously surrender ourselves to God day by day, “putting on” the righteousness of Jesus in our time with Him, we want to make the choice to serve God instead of  ourselves.

Rally your focus on glorifying God. How do we do that? I love what theologian and pastor John Piper says,

“God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.”

- John Piper

Be satisfied in God. That means asking God to make His presence more satisfying every day, and begging God to make you crave Him in every moment, allowing nothing else to satisfy that craving except the very soul-satisfying presence of God. Only God can truly satisfy that soul craving that every human has. Everything else in life only tickles the tongue, stirring a greater desire to experience the source of what we tasted. While God is the giver, we experience his gifts on a daily basis.

What if we desired the Giver over the gifts? What if we realized that the life God gives is great, but God himself is greater? What if our desires paradoxically shifted from the natural to the supernatural?

That’s passion.

4 Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Psalm 37:4

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Getting into debt

February 14th, 2010 No Comments

No one likes debt. It sucks. Getting into debt is an action much like shackling yourself to the will of someone else. Credit cards, IOU’s, favors…they are all some form of debt or debt-returning devices we use every day. Everyone knows they should stay out of debt—why do you think we have so many seminars, books, and get-out-of-debt-for-free websites in existence today?

But there is one debt that Christians owe continually, and should pay back over and over:

8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

Romans 13:8

Even the apostle Paul knew that we need to stay out of debt. But there is a recurring debt—the debt of love. We don’t simply owe one person a little bit of love, as if only one person ever loved us. Instead, because of the enormity of God’s love for us, we are now compelled to pay that debt off in turn by loving everyone else.

Christ-followers are called to a life of love. What does real love look like? Check out 1 Corinthians 13. The entire chapter defines what love is.

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

1 Corinthians 13:4-6

When I stack my life up against the model of genuine love found here, I fall so short. But this is the lifestyle of love that I owe to everyone in the world, people created in the very image of God himself. It’s something to strive for every day, only by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We can’t truly love in our own strength—only in His.

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