Prove What’s Best in the Land of “Anything Goes”

How can we judge what is right when now we live in society where anything goes?

Over the last eighty years the American culture transformed dramatically.

In the 1930′s and 40′s most of the United States lived in rural areas and the number one commerce was agriculture until the war. The war changed things. The men came home with a new perspective of the way things work in other places. The family farm wasn’t the only way to do things anymore. They also wanted more for their families then had ever been known. They knew how to work hard because many of them had seen the Depression yet had, through the sheer guts and muscle of the united military forces, conquered an evil unlike any they’d ever known. Hitler. They were ready for a new life and had the energy to make it happen. The baby boom was underway and in 1951 television was born then in 1954 it transformed again and went to color. Soon the news was coming to the average American’s dinner table and spreading faster than in times past. Other things were coming as well. The sitcoms and family entertainment showed us a perfect world, expectations and constrains on behavior were defined in the way the “Leave it to Beaver” family did things. This produced a generation of men and women who grew up with their televisions and an arranged set of “what is best.” Unfortunately it didn’t include many multi-cultural situations and or women excelling in the workplace. There were holes in this “what is best” arrangement.

Let’s fast forward over the stormy sixties and seventies.

Let’s zoom past all the turbulence and uncertainty of troubling wars and administrations. We know the invention of the internet substantially, like the television, changed our perception of the world. Now, instead of looking up information in encyclopedias, information was a mouse click away. They say that if the internet was a book it would make a few laps around the earth with its thickness and volume. Wow, humans have come a long way! Communication, media and international travel and trade are the big commerce now. You can go anywhere, do anything, and learn what ever you have a passion for and all for a relatively small price; broken down in interest-laden payments of course. If you are in your seventies or eighties now, you deserve a well-earned rest! Our race went from having little or no communication and media to having a glutton of it. And anything goes! But where has all these metamorphoses taken us? Are we in a better place of rightness? Has this leap made us more able to prove “what is best?”

Thankfully, through all the giant transformations we’ve seen, one thing remains the same. God has not changed. Oh, some will debate me because the face of religion looks far different now than ever before, but I’m sticking to my guns. Spiritual guns that is. Nobody is older than God and nobody knows more than He does. God has seen more change, improved more generations of people in a single act and affected a larger number of the human race than all these technologies combined. He’s done it with style, with love and without offense and Philippians, shows us how.

In the last post, I covered agape, and our walk in love. I covered the precise and accurate knowledge of God and how having those two things gives us spiritual insight. That hasn’t changed in all of the eons before us. It is still as poignant today  as it will be three thousand years from now, should the Lord tarry. God has us beat on communication too, but that subject is a whole week’s worth of blogs.

Here’s today’s verse.

“That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ;” Phil 1:10

Here is the literal translation of that verse according to usages.

“So that you will be able to distinguish those things which are spiritually best. Then you will be pure and spotless, without being offensive until the day of Christ.”

Times will remain ever-changing. Until the day Jesus Christ returns and amidst the wind-blown economic and social environment, we children of God, must be able to judge what’s best. How can we do that? Look back a verse with me and read this with meaning.

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and [in] all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ;” Phil 1:9-10

The walk in love is a timeless rightness. It gives us effortless sincerity. The precise and accurate knowledge of the one true God will forever give us insight, making it easier to distinguish what is spiritually best despite the physical changes around us. Do you see the scope of what God did in us? He made us equipped and able to handle anything! No human invention can duplicate His genius and efficacy. We owe Him a debt of gratitude and all the love we could give.

One truth remains in center stage, though we live in a time of excessive supply of opinions, God has always been able to help us prove what is best for our lives.

God bless you today!

How Can Spiritiual Precision Bless My Life?

How could someone have spiritual precision? Why does it matter? I’ve never heard anyone talk about it, so it must not be a big deal…right?

(Note: Our verse today covers a lot of ground in about a thousand words. You may want to read it on a lunch break or 15 minute break somewhere in your day).

We all know that the accurate and rightly divided Word of God is a precision instrument. It is so precise, God compares it to a two-edged sword dividing the thoughts and intents of the heart and the soul from the spirit. That sounds precise enough. But how does one use that precision?

Well, let’s start at our verse in Philippians.

 

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and [in] all judgment;” Philippians 1:9

I’m excited because God defined what He wants us to abound in by the Greek words He uses in the verse above.

Let’s look at the literal translation.

“I pray that your love (agape, love by your freewill decision to be obedient to God) may abound (perisseuō, exceed and overflow) yet more and more (even more than that) in knowledge (epignōsis, precise and accurate knowledge of spiritual things) and in all (pas, individually, each, every) judgment (aisthēsis, cognition, discernment).”

I heard a phrase that I’ve made my own over the years. “The faster you go, the faster you go.” An olympian once said it after competing in several events and finishing the last race faster than all the others. We have that same opportunity! Our ability to “check-in” with God on what to do in each situation, which is walking in agape, abounds more and more by doing it. We get better and better at walking in love. That is a relief to me, I don’t always know what to say, but someday if I keep at this, I’ll get there. That is how we are perfected or matured in the faith.

Then we have the word “knowledge” which is epignosis. Let’s look at a few other places this word shows up. Remember it means, precise and accurate knowledge of spiritual things.

“That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:” Ephesians 1:7

“And have put on the new [man], which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:” Colossians 3:10

“Who will have all men to be saved , and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:4

Wow! These verses amaze me! We receive the accurate and precise knowledge of God from God Himself!. Then we can put on the new man by renewing our mind after we know the accurate and precise knowledge of God and God wants all men to come to the accurate and precise knowledge of the Truth which is Him!

As long as I’ve been in the Word in know that if there’s a right way to do something, there’s also a wrong way. Look at this verse.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.” Romans 16:7

There are people out there preaching doctrine contrary to the precise and accurate knowledge of God. The word “contrary”, above, is the Greek word, para. We get our English word “parallel” from this word. This means that their doctrine is so close to the accurate knowledge it could seem like it is that knowledge, but in fact it is error.

Wait just one minute Terri!

How am I supposed to find out what is accurate and what is error if the doctrine or teaching is so close like that? Well, how does one find out if you have a counterfeit oil painting on your hands? They say you have to know the real thing so well, that the counterfeits are easy to spot. God asks us to get to know Him so well that if the devil comes in with a forgery of any kind, you can “resist the devil and he shall flee.”

God helps you too. There are certain plants for your garden that repels pests. Likewise the precise and accurate knowledge of God repels, counterfeits. For instance, when you realize that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, you’ll begin understanding where all the trouble is coming from. It’s not from God, He loves you. See now it’s easy to spot the lie that God is testing you. The truth repels that pesky little lie. Do you see how easy it can become. Just match up the counterfeit next to the real thing.

“We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.” 1 John 4:6

This word “knoweth” is ginosko which means to know by experience. What have we experienced? The precise and accurate knowledge of God.

Cool huh!

The last phrase in Philippians 1:9 is “and in all judgment (aisthēsis cognition, discernment)” This word compliments everything we’ve learned already in this verse. This is spiritual insight and after what we just read it’s spiritual insight on steroids. Wow! Can you believe all this wonderful precision was in one verse? Spiritual insight and precision starts with honing of our ability to walk in love. That walk helps us weed out the error and wrong doctrine. The Love helps us with our precise knowledge of God and it will give us spiritual insight.

God bless you today!