How Do I Move Forward ?

aiki said:

By and large, God doesn't correct our lives in a single, sudden, radical transformation. He uses a life-long process of change to make us who He desires us to be.

It is God, though, who changes you, not you who changes yourself for God. And God works to do so, to transform you, only as you live before Him in daily submission to His will and way (Romans 6:13-22; Romans 8:14; Romans 12:1; James 4:6-10; 1 Peter 5:6). This is how your relationship with God "works." It's not complicated, but it's not always easy, either. We're so used to sitting on the throne of our hearts that we do so without thinking, pushing the Holy Spirit off of it all the time.

But so long as he is not on the throne, ruling your life, he will not act to change you; for to do so without your conscious consent, which you give by your yielding the throne of your heart to him, would be to make a puppet out of you. There isn't any love in doing so, though, is there? Love and coercion are anathema to each other. But God wants a love-relationship with us (Matthew 22:36-38; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3) as the ground out of which our walk with God grows.

So, if you want to take the throne of your heart and life for yourself, the Holy Spirit, God, will let you, waiting for you to get off of it and give it back to him before he'll begin to change you again. The "trick," then, to Christian living, to walking well with God, is simply to willingly, consciously, persistently give him control of your mind, will, emotions, desires and heart. Then, wait, by faith, on him to transform - OVER TIME - who you are, moving toward him more and more in your living and desires and habits, as He enables you to do so.

The true battle of the Christian life is to remain in submission to God. Not stamping out sin, or fighting off the devil, or pushing down the impulses of your flesh, but when these things confront you, to submit yourself immediately and continuously to God's control. This is the real battle we fight as children of God. The temptation to do the fighting ourselves, to suppress, and control, and change ourselves, is very strong. But if we attempt any of these things without first being submitted to God and moving in His power, the strain of resistance will become too much and failure will soon result.

So, walking well with God is actually pretty simple, isn't it?

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aiki said:

Well, as I'm sure you understand now, we find these things offered freely to us in a relationship with God. We discover in God the greatest, most perfect love there is; in Him we take on a dignity befitting our position as His adopted children, grounded in wisdom and holiness; our salvation, too, is in God, our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is himself our salvation. You won't find self-esteem, though, in God. In fact, self-esteem - pride, egoism - is exactly the opposite thing God will instill in His own. He wants us to accept who He has made us to be, to be content to be tall, or short, slender, or thicker, brown-eyed and mechanically-inclined or green-eyed and artistic, but holding ourselves in esteem is contrary to the humility and selflessness of our divine example, Jesus Christ. We are called instead to die to ourselves as followers of Christ (Matthew 16:24-25; John 12:24-25), to turn from pride and self-interest, recognizing that the new life we find in Jesus is his life, not ours, and ought to reflect him, not us.



Not exactly. Salvation is a doorway through which we step into fellowship with God. But, like any person with whom you want a relationship, you can't just start one with them entirely as you decide you'd like to do. You can't, for instance, just walk into your neighbor's house one day, help yourself to food from their fridge, plunk yourself down on their bed and begin eating, inviting them to join you for a chat. You'd get tossed out on your ear! Or arrested. Well, in the same way, we can't just approach God any old way we'd like. He's GOD, right? And as such He dictates to us what a relationship with Him will be like.

God offers to us salvation but under His dynamic, not ours. We cannot earn our salvation from God, but we can't be saved and go on living as we always have. Salvation isn't just escaping hell, but an exchange of life that happens by way of being filled with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ (Titus 3:5; Romans 8:9-11; 1 John 4:13), and "made new" spiritually, as a result. Our salvation is actually a relationship we have with God through Jesus. The Savior is himself our salvation. (See: 1 John 5:11-12) And Jesus offers to us a relationship with God through him only as we trust in him as our Saviour and Lord (Romans 10:9-10), repent of life lived apart from him (James 4:6-10), and confess our sin (1 John 1:9).

So, there are conditions for salvation. We can't just saunter up to God and say, "Hey. Howzit? Wanna hang out?" He will be treated only as the God He is, with respect from us, receiving from us humility and submission, faith and love. These things don't save us, but they are vital to being saved - like going to the oncologist, being diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, and trusting a surgeon to remove the tumor don't save you. These things are necessary to being freed of your tumor, to being saved from it by the surgeon, but you could do all of these things and, if the surgeon doesn't get your tumor out, you'd still die. The actual saving of you from a cancerous tumor is solely the work of the surgeon to which you cannot contribute at all; you can only receive his saving work upon you as you lie, unconscious, on the operating table. Likewise, we must repent and be converted, trusting in the saving work of Christ on the cross for us and submitting to his Lordship over us. But the removal of our "tumor of sin" is solely God's work to which we can contribute nothing.



We all do. It's being human. But God can change us, make us more like Jesus, and bring us into the life for which He made us.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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