Category: Interior Life

guilt conviction sin

Embracing Conviction Of Sin

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Conviction of sin can lead to destructive attitudes as well as constructive sorrow. Seeing our sin may lead us to self-condemnation or rejection, or to imagining that God condemns or rejects us. We may begin to hate ourselves or think we are hopeless. These are all strategies of Satan. He knows that if we reject ourselves (for any reason, not just sin) that it will create a wall between us and God. Self-rejection may be Satan’s number one strategy in every person’s life. It cuts us off from the grace and power we need for healing. Instead, we should treat ourselves the way God does: with grace and forgiveness. We do not have permission from God to contradict what God thinks about us. We are His saints and His children. His Son died in our place so that nothing could ever separate us from His love and acceptance. If He Continue Reading →

battle against sin

Facing The Deeper Battle Against Sin

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After turning away from the more obvious sins in our lives, we may begin to think that we are fairly godly. But that is when we face the real battle against sin. Sinful thoughts and attitudes remained buried deep within our hearts and control us in ways we don’t realize. If we saw all our sinfulness at once, it would overwhelm us and drive some of us mad…which is a warning against excessive self-examination. Yet we still desire to grow in godliness. We want to share in His nature and reflect it to others, and to do that we must continually give Him permission to uncover deeper areas of our lives. Better yet, we should eagerly ask Him to do so and pursue it with our whole heart. Then our heart will have an attitude of continual openness to His promptings. We will be more willing to open the door Continue Reading →

wife, married, bride, lamb

Do You Live Like The Wife Of The Lamb?

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The most astonishing feature of the next age: we will be “married” to the Lamb (Rev. 19:6-9; 21:2, 9-27; 22:17). Our greatest blessing will be joining to God in Christ. “In the story of redemption and the history of heaven the supreme event for which the ages are waiting is the marriage of the Lamb. The Bible is one long love story and redemption a divine romance of the love of God.” (1) We will be the wife of the Lamb. The bride of the Lamb comes down out of heaven as the New Jerusalem (the city of the saints of God) “having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel” (21:11). Our wedding day will finally arrive and having been clothed in staggering beauty our loving Bridegroom will take us into his heart and ravish us in loving embrace forever. Being Christformed, deep will call to Continue Reading →

suffering

Suffering Makes Us Complete

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We are supposed to suffer because suffering makes us complete. Jesus said: “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:38, NIV). (The idea of taking up our cross is also found in Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:23 and Luke 14:27.) To take up our cross is to suffer. We need the benefits of suffering. Hebrews 2:10 declares that God made our savior “perfect through what he suffered” (NIV). How much suffering will it take to perfect you? You might need more suffering than Jesus to reach completion because you have an old corrupt self, which he did not have. Our suffering only lasts for this life; in the next life God will reward us for it. Since the new covenant of the kingdom fulfilled the old covenant, the followers of God no longer need material or political success in this world in Continue Reading →

treasure in heaven

Saving Up For Your Eternal Retirement

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In the Old Testament God promised material prosperity to his faithful followers. In the New Testament we find a new approach to material prosperity and possessions. In Matthew 6:19-34 Jesus taught us how to relate to money and possessions. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth . . . but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven . . . for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matt. 6:19-21, NIV). The antidote to materialism is saving up for your eternal retirement. This keeps our hearts pure from disordered attachment to possessions. Of course, we have material needs, but we have a Father who knows our needs and directs us to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you” (Matt. 6:33, NIV). And even though he was the Lord of glory and destined to be enthroned as Continue Reading →