Why Am I The One Getting Hurt?

Do you ever feel like your heart is the one being trampled in the fray? Today, we’ll talk about why that happens and how to stop it from happening. Let’s go to our verse in Philippians first.

“Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:11

We’ve learned over this last week that when our love (agape) abounds more and more we gain knowledge the accurate and precise knowledge of God; which walks hand in hand with judgement spiritual insight. With these three ingredients running at top speed we can discern error from truth and remain sincere without offending others until Christ Returns. (Philippians 1:9-10) All these things lead to us having a life rich in the fruits of righteousness or right living which happened through what Jesus Christ did, and all of this if for the glory and praise of God. Okay, wow. This shows me one thing.

God’s love is inexorably tied to God’s wisdom and knowledge.

We cannot separate them. What do I mean? Here’s an example. Betty had a friend who couldn’t make her mortgage payment. She had half of it, but was going to be short. Betty had the money to give, but that would’ve left her wanting on all her bills. Betty could assume that the loving thing was to help her friend out because Betty still had time, her friend didn’t. That’s why we should always treat every time like the first time. Instead of assuming what God would say, Betty stopped and checked in about it. If Betty assumed God would say yes or no, she’d be wrong. Why? Because she wasn’t doing Proverbs 3: 5&6, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.

So Betty was “dumb” enough to stop and not assume anything. She got quiet and waited for an answer from God who told her to tell her friend to balance her checkbook. So her friend went to the bank, got a print out and started adding. Sure enough, she had subtracted too much on one transaction and actually had the money in her account after all. Wow! Was that walking in love on Betty’s part? BIG Time! Would it have been smart for her to give her friend the money? Maybe, we don’t know. There are more variables in the equation than we have time to explore, but the point is, God cut to the quick of the problem and solved it. Betty walked in God’s love and His wisdom. Also Betty operated two of the nine manifestations by asking God for “word of wisdom” (what’s going on) and for “word of knowledge” (what to do about it).  The other manifestations work the same way. What if God would have asked Betty instead to believe for a miracle. Wow. There’s two more. What if He would have had her discern a spirit and then cast it out of the situation. Wow there’s two more. You see how we can use the manifestations in every moment of our lives? We use them at God’s discretion by always asking Him first.

Just because someone has a need doesn’t mean that we should take care of it.

God knows the entire situation and all the thoughts and intents of the hearts involved. He never wastes our time or resources. God’s children are God’s concern, not yours. He was the one who promised to supply all their needs, not you. He was the one who created them, not you. We help only when and where God tells us to and keep our noses out of it otherwise. God is a big guy. Thankfully, He didn’t hand us His Word and ask us to fulfill all of those 900 promises. He didn’t even give that job to his son Jesus Christ. Wow! What a revelation huh. So who are we to micro-manage and over-emotionalize someone elses needs. Are your teenage or adult children born-again? Hmmm… I digress…

Here’s another example of how we simply cannot walk in God’s love and not His wisdom.

There was a Christian woman in a large city who had a soft spot, or what she thought was a “calling” to the homeless people of the city. She would bring them into her apartment and feed them, let them spend the night and take care of them. She thought she was walking in God’s love towards them. One night, one of them, slit her throat in her sleep and stole all her belongings. Wow. Would God have wanted that to happen? I’m only telling you this because I hate seeing the adversary hurt God’s good-hearted people just for the fun of it. We have to be “…ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Matthew 10:17b. Our good heartedness has to be weighed with God’s wisdom. We have to treat every time like the first time with God. Let’s say God did want her to take in those people, it still would have been on a case by case situation. Here’s the point.

Stay sweet honey, but guard your heart. 

When we operate this way on a regular basis, our lives begin to fill with the fruit of righteousness. That word “fill” is pleroo in the Greek, which means, to be filled to capacity. Our lives are like a glass of water that is filled to the very brim with the results of right believing or right living. Every time we walk, a little bit of that fruit of righteousness spills out onto other people because God is giving us more as a result of our walk. So get out there, spill a little of God’s love on people but spill when and where God tells you to. Instead of being on the defensive against the enemy and being his punching bag, we become little bless bombs for God.

God bless you today!

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!