A: All I know is that there was no BEST IN ME for God to see. Regardless of whether people are discouraging us or encouraging us, as it was in my life, we are dead to God prior to salvation. In fact, the Bible tells me that "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord (Eph 5:8)." Darkness! That is who I was prior to faith in Christ. Darkness doesn't conjure up an image of God seeing anything good in me. Now, as a child of God I am a child of the Light. That Light, of course, being Jesus Christ. The greatest news in the world is not that God saw the "best in me," but that, in Christ, He took away the WORST IN ME. "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)." He not only took away my sins, but those who discourage us as well. That is why we can go to those who said "we wouldn't amount to anything" and say I forgive you because God has forgiven me. We can even say the same thing to those who encouraged us. "Thank you for your support all these years and I would like to repay you by telling you about Jesus Christ."
God most definitely can see us through the dark times, and I believe He does this even when we aren't saved, just to show us how much He loves us. And if in the end we "amount to something," we can and should give Him thanks. Just remember that it is not because He saw the BEST IN YOU, but loved you despite the WORST IN YOU. The Apostle Paul had made something of Himself as a Pharisee prior to coming to faith in Christ. How did he describe his accomplishments? "Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord (Phil 3:8 NLT)." The only time God sees the BEST IN YOU is when you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior. The BEST God sees in you is Himself, in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Those who love us and encourage us are a blessing from God, but life is not so much about overcoming obstacles in order to make something of yourself. Life is about embracing your struggles and allowing them to strip you of your pride and self-reliance so you too can say that your accomplishments are "worthless compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." He is THE BEST and He is IN ME. Be blessed.
Q: Godly sorrow and worldly sorrow; Is there a DIFFERENCE?
A: "Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death (2 Cor 7:10)." You have to understand the Gospel to understand the difference. Most people look at this passage from the perspective of sinning. They will say things like worldly sorrow means you are sorry you got caught sinning while Godly sorry means you are sorry you sinned against God and redouble your efforts to never do it again. However, the Gospel is sin, death, forgiveness and life. The only true repentance from the perspective of a Christian happens at the moment of salvation. The moment we accept Christ by faith we have repented, changed our mind, of our unbelief in Jesus Christ and accepted Him as our Savior. That is why the passage in 2 Corinthians 7 says that Godly sorrow "leads to salvation." You are only saved once in your life. Most often one is saved when they are confronted with the fact that they are spiritually dead to God in their sins and need His life. That is why there is "no regret." You don't regret receiving eternal life and getting to know your God.
Worldly sorry, often times, leads to you trying to change your situation in the energy of your own flesh. When you believe something is wrong about yourself, you're not convicted of your sinfulness and spiritual death, rather you believe that if you just find the right way of doing things you will change yourself. All this leads to is you jumping from church to church or from book to book trying to find the set of rules that best fits your own desires. But, this only "leads to death" because all you discover is there is more sin in your life to overcome and that you will never overcome it. That is why Paul, the one speaking of Godly and worldly sorrow, said of Himself, "I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death (Rom 7:10)." He thought he was "alive" to God because of his obedience and sincerity to the Law. But, he realized that the Law only stirred up more sin in his life and he died, recognized his spiritual death. Worldly sorrow only leads you to the wrong thinking that you can "fix" yourself if you just try hard enough. Thankfully, God can still use that, like He did with Paul, and bring you to the end of yourself so you will come to faith in Jesus Christ. Amen!
Q: The bible says to "walk" in godliness..What does it mean to "walk" in godliness?
A: We have to be careful not to fall into the trap set before us when we hear phrases like "walk in godliness." It is our natural tendency to believe that we are to live a life of repentance and obedience to the good and evil defined within God's Word. By doing that we will be deceived into a life of walking by the flesh rather than by the Spirit. Godliness, by definition means "conforming to the laws and wishes of God." And we are not under any form of law. And when we put ourselves under the law we are walking by the flesh. Most people believe walking by the flesh is throwing caution to the wind and indulging the flesh in all manner of sin. However, living a lifestyle dedicated to restraint of the flesh is still walking in the flesh because your focus is on the flesh and what you are doing. To walk means to "pursue a particular course of life." Therefore, it is easy to say that to "walk in godliness" is to "pursue a particular course of life by conforming to the laws and wishes of God." And the moment you do that you have set yourself on a path of frustration as you try to live an impossible life of being pleasing to an already pleased God in order to be blessed with rewards He hasn't promised to give you and cursed with punishment Jesus has already taken for you.
The Bible says that "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness (2 Ptr 1:3)." We already have what it takes to "walk in godliness." We have been given God Himself in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit. And it is the grace of God that "teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age (Titus 2:12)." It is responding to the leading of the Holy Spirit that results in a life of godliness. The byproduct of which is serving others in love with the love God has shown towards us. For example, everybody agrees that fornication is a sin. A lifestyle of obedience and repentance says don't do it because it is wrong. A lifestyle of trust and dependence on the Holy Spirit says to not do it because it is not an act of love to have sex out of wedlock. One is an act of the flesh responding to law. The other is a response to the Spirit, which leads to the flesh responding in love. Instead of "walking in godliness" we should be "walking in the Spirit" by allowing the grace of God to teach us rather than the law of God which is no longer our "schoolmaster (Gal 3:25 KJV)." Be blessed.
Q: What is a Christians "purpose",and does it ever "change"?
A: God's purpose for us is "to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship (Rom 12:1)." We are here to allow God to serve the world through us by making ourselves available to Him. In many ways God has made a deal with us. He has said, "I will offer you Myself, which will resurrect you spiritually from the dead and meet the deepest desires of your heart, if you allow me to work within and through you to reach the world with the saving message of Jesus Christ." In Him, He "has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph 1:3)" and "has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness (2 Ptr 1:3)." Now, that we have everything from Him we can spend our lives discovering what all He has given us which frees us from trying to get it from Him through our works.
The deepest desires of our heart are for unconditional love and total acceptance. We have been given all that from Him through faith. Therefore, we can enter His Sabbath rest because "for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his (Heb 4:10)." We rest because our sins are no longer held against us, we already have every spiritual blessing in Christ, we are already pleasing to Him, we are already holy in His eyes, we are already sanctified and justified and we are complete in Him. Our Christian life is not about going to church or giving of our time, treasure and talent to God. Our Christian life is about knowing our God. We can't do that if we feel our purpose in life is anything other than resting in His finished work on our behalf and letting Him live the Christian life through us. Anything more than rest is disobedience! If you believe that there is something you must do, keep or achieve, you have missed the message entirely. In Christ, "you have been made complete (Col 2:10)." God made you complete so He could get your attention off of yourself and on to Him. "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph 2:10)." Be blessed.
Q: Jesus says seek "first" His kingdom. What does that mean?
A: This means nothing to the Christian. Christians don't "seek" the Kingdom of God, in the sense Jesus meant it in Matthew 6:33. When Jesus said, "seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well," He was speaking to Jews who were under the Law. These were Jews who thought they were already righteous in God's eyes through their attempts at being obedient to the Law and through being God's "chosen" people. Jesus was trying to show them their sinfulness in order to lead them to Himself. When we say this passage applies to Christians we are in danger of deceiving ourselves back into a legalistic lifestyle of performance as we try to obtain through self-effort that which we already have through faith. To seek means "to try to obtain." Kingdom means "the domain over which the spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ extends, whether in heaven or on earth." Therefore, to seek the Kingdom of God can mean "to try to obtain the domain over which the spiritual sovereignty of God or Christ extends." This does not apply to Christians.
The Kingdom of God is already within a believer. "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you (1 Cor 3:16)?" If the Kingdom of God is where He is and where His sovereignty extends, then we have already found it. The passage from Matthew also says that seeking His Kingdom will result in receiving His righteousness. Again, as Christians we are already righteous in God's eyes. "It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption (1 Cor 1:30)." We are righteous, holy and redeemed because of our faith in Jesus Christ. It is not something we must continue to seek. If it were then we must establish how to seek it. And by doing that we are right back under the law. If God's righteousness was something we could achieve through "seeking" then we would not have needed Jesus Christ to come to this world. "I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing (Gal2:21)!" If you are seeking the Kingdom of God and His righteousness you are saying Jesus died for nothing. It is time to rest in what you have and stop trying to obtain what you cannot attain. Be blessed.
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