Tuesday, September 9, 2008

What God thinks about us!

Jeremiah 29:11-13 (AMP)

11For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome.

12Then you will call upon Me, and you will come and pray to Me, and I will hear and heed you.

13Then you will seek Me, inquire for, and require Me [as a vital necessity] and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.

Study #1

He wants me to have hope in my final outcome. People don’t hope for things they don’t want. That means the final outcome He has for me is going to be something really good. Even though I don’t know what it is, I need to trust in Him that I will like it.

We may not like the path that we have to take in order to walk in this plan, but that is no reason to not walk the path. Nothing good in life is going to come without some type of hard work or sacrifice. To be the best basketball player in the NBA it doesn’t come over night. There are years spent practicing and drilling when they could be hanging out with friends instead. But because of a hope they keep at it until they reach the final outcome.

Study #2

I have to require Him as a vital necessity because that’s what He is. Without Him I am destined for hell. He is my only hope and assurance of eternal salvation. He says I only find Him when I search for Him with all my heart. That is the place of desperation and vital longing for something that sustains your life because you are keenly aware that you’ll die without it. That is our daily required posture and attitude for God. I have to require Him and seek him with everything, my whole heart, like I will die otherwise everyday. The reason for this is because it is the truth. If I die without God, outside of His will, I am lost.

To receive salvation I confess Jesus as Lord with my mouth and believe in my heart that God raised Him from the dead. At this moment I am perfect and in right standing with Him. But what about after that when I sin again because of my un-renewed mind? We confess our sins and He’s faithful to forgive us and cleanse us. The key is that we must do that part… confess our sins. We cannot become lackadaisical about this and that is what almost every Christian does at some point. We get used to being saved. We get into a comfort zone… we become dull… we think we can maybe do things we did before and go places we went before without it having an effect on us since we’re “stronger” Christians now. But if we are not continually on our face before God and confessing any sins we may slip and commit and not seeking Him as a vital necessity… this is where we fail.

Paul talks of the Christian struggle of trying not to sin but the carnal nature getting the best of us. The solution he presents is simple: There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Walking after the flesh is us living perpetually in that old mindset that does not see or recognize the earnest, deep requirement to have Jesus and walk in His way. If we walk after the spirit it isn’t just doing the acts of righteousness; anyone can do that. It is a heart condition, a need, a deep longing desire to be in fellowship with God. And we no there is no fellowship between light and dark. So we know the only way to maintain that type of unbroken fellowship with Him is to live the life of love. We cannot attempt to walk in the spirit any other way or we will fail.

He says that if I am going to find Him I must search for Him with all my heart. It’s a total buy in. We cannot expect partial to be enough. All of humanity is fallen because of one sin committed thousands of years ago, just one. Yet, we seem to take it for granted how serious the command is to require Him as a vital necessity. This is His thought and plan for us: to search for Him, to seek Him, to inquire of and require Him as a vital necessity. And this plan brings along with it peace and welfare. Living in this place of deep longing and need for God brings these things and the hope of a good and perfect final outcome. There is no other way.