We live in a world that is always right there in front of our face. And it can be easy to let our carnal everyday lives take precedence over our spiritual lives. (Which one do we think about or tend to more?) We feed our bodies but not our spirit. This is the reason for the analogy about the pinnacle spiritual events in our lives. If we only live life in the flesh or mainly in the flesh and expect a youth camp or a Revival to get us back on track, how can we say that our hearts belong to Jesus? How can we say that our lives belong?

Matthew 6:21 and again in Luke the Bible says that “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” You should not need a revival every summer to help you get your life back on track. We do not need a “Revival” but a continuous “vival.” A continuous and humble renewal of our love for our Savior.

This brings me back to the two words that I was thinking about when I began the last post: Uncomfortable and Belong. Jesus says in John 15:19 that ” If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” As Christians we are not called to feel comfortable here. I am trying to write this post, leaving a lot of loose ends. Not making everything crystal clear. (If everything is crystal clear to you up to this point I am sorry. I did a better job than I intended to.)  So that you are uncomfortable with what I am writing. So that you have questions. Questions are good. Questions like: Where are you on a scale of comfortability? Are you a 10? (Totally comfortable.)

Maybe, when we begin to feel uncomfortable we are just beginning to get somewhere. We are just beginning to find our place and belong.  But for many of us, we have not yet even reached Nazareth.

I believe that we have to understand that the devil works in a lot of areas of our lives through one medium. Fear. Fear of the unknown is probably the biggest “type” of fear that the devil uses. We can see this all the time in our own lives as well as the lives of others. God has a new and fresh direction for your life when you come to him. But the only way that we can have it is if we lose the life that we have. But still some will not give it up because they do not KNOW what that direction will entail. This is a good example of fear producing failure and weakness.

But, faith overcomes fear. Even when you feel afraid, if you step out in faith, you will be able to conquer the fear. Satan uses fear, we conquer it with faith.

Faith is a force that must be released.  The Bible says that we are supposed to go from faith to more faith to more faith(Romans 1:17 Amp). Faith grows when you use the faith you have and you see the faithfulness of God and you then take another step in faith and another step and you keep on stepping out in faith until you just LIVE by faith.

God dosen’t want us to just have faith for ONLY this circumstance and that circumstance, but he wants us to LIVE by faith. You do not have to let the devil run your life.  If you believe that the devil is under your feet, then you can believe that you have authority over him(Luke 10:19). This does not mean that we can necessarily stop him from coming against us, but we do have the authority to keep a good attitude. Attitude is almost always everything when our circumstances get tough. Belief produces attitude, attitude: (produces) behavior.”

Not all things are good but all things can work together for good(Romans 8:28). So many times when we get attacked we lay down the purpose for our life and place all of our time and energy in fighting with the devil. Sometimes to a certain degree we have to ignore the devil and keep doing what God has called you to do. Madness, jealousy, envy, hate none of those things will help you. The only thing that will help you is keeping a good attitude, continuing to pray, continuing to love God. Keep going on with the purpose that God has for your life. If all things work out for good, God will give you a better job than the one that you lost(or whatever your circumstance may be). But if you have a bad attitude because you have a bad situation then it can go from bad to worse to worse to worse to worse. Keep a good attitude.

It is also so important that YOU know who God is. It is not good enough to know a preacher who knows who God is or a friend who knows or have a husband or a wife who knows who God is. No! YOU have to know who God is. YOU have to have personal faith in the living God that YOU believe lives on the inside of YOU. You have to know his word. You cannot have a relationship with God through somebody else. Authority as a believer does not give us free reign to do whatever we want to do. It means we have the authority to bring heaven to earth, as believers, through our prayer life(Matthew 16:18-19).

I was sitting in the atrium of my school cafeteria today and couldn’t help but overhear a conversation this girl was having with one of her friends. She was telling him about her older step-brother being gay. As she told the story, she went through all of her childhood with him and the kind of relationship that they had and so on. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she really didn’t like the relationship that they had now, after he had told the family that he was gay. She described it as though his sin had somehow distanced her and her family from him. I could tell that she was hurt and that she still really cared for her brother even through all that had happened. She went on to say that his birthday was coming up and that she was writing him a letter and sending him a present, hoping that this would be the start of fixing their relationship.

From the story, I gathered that she lived in a Christian home because she kept saying “I know what my brother is doing is sin. I won’t tell him otherwise. But I also will not condemn him because of it. I will show him love.” This statement: “I will show him love” really caught my attention. It was almost as if she was saying ‘I will show him love and through love I will show him truth.’ In this moment, I felt like my spirit man grew up a little bit. I felt that in that moment God was showing me something. And here is my attempt of putting my finger on it.

Sin is a wretched, nasty, vile, thing. It is something that we all struggle with and journey to overcome. Sometimes we think that if we just forget about sin, this is the best way of dealing with it. But we cannot forget about sin. It plays such an important role in our everyday lives as Christians. It is the reason for the fall of mankind. It is the reason for our daily repentance. And dare I say, it is the reason for our salvation. Without sin there is no need for salvation. No need for a savior because there would be nothing to be saved from.

The bible addresses sin. From the fall in Genesis to Jesus’ coming in Revelation chapter 22. But what the bible has to say about sin and the world’s spin on what the bible says about sin is two different things. In society, sin is broken up and thought of on different levels. This sin is worse than that sin and therefore this sinner is worse than that sinner. But this is not true to the Bible. The Bible does not put degrees on sin in the sense that one sin is worse than the other EXCEPT, the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31). This is the only sin that is unforgivable. With this in mind, think back to the story that the girl was telling– How the sin of her brother distanced him from her and her family. Why? Because they did what most would do. They put a degree on sin. When in God’s eyes his sin of being a homosexual is no worse than lying.

This brings us, I believe, to a very gray area in the church today: the balance between ‘forgiveness’ and ‘love.’ The Bible calls us to love. To, in a sense, show the compassion of Christ. And the Bible also tells us to forgive. But nowhere in the Bible does it say to condemn someone for their sin (Luke 6:31). So where do we as Christians draw the line? First, I believe that this is so much bigger and that there is so much more to this than I can get to in this post so I will try to keep it simple.

I believe that the answer lies within this truth in context of the Bible: God is love (1 John 4:8) but, God is just. We are called to be fishers of men. To catch them but not clean them. God will change their hearts and minds we just have to help them to get in the position for God to do so. John 1:10-13.

Many of us go through life with not a clue as to what we are supposed to be doing. We just “go where the wind blows us.” But yet, I do believe that we all have some idea of what we should be doing. Though minute of an inkling as it may be. The problem is that we just can’t get over our own self.

Many times we spend our life in a constant state of procrastination. We tell ourselves that we cannot do what God wants us to do yet because we have to get through school or get married first or have kids or get rich! Then and only then will we be able to truly focus on doing God’s will for our life!  We are constantly putting god’s plan for our life off, waiting for a more convenient time. We think that God has to work on our time. If we do not know what God wants us to do by lunch, then He will just have to wait until tomorrow because the rest of the days’ schedule is full.

But then it wouldn’t be God’s will would it? It would be our will. Our prerogative. Our priorities. Our life with which to do whatever we will. Once we realize that our time and God’s time are totally different things, then and only then can we begin to understand what His will is. It is God’s schedule first and then our schedule.

Matthew 6:33, I believe is the key to understanding. It says, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all of these things will be given to you as well.”  We have to understand that God’s will is not some distant, inconceivable idea we are suppose to question for the rest of our lives and if we get it wrong we will be smitten by the almighty smitter.  If in everything that we do we seek the kingdom of God first, we will be doing that which lines up with His will. We will have a hope and a purpose and will walk in the victory of that.

This can be your life. This can be the victory in your Christian walk. It is not by your might, or power, but by the will of God.