Category: Level: Beginner

Sadly, many ministers all around the world today teach that God promises prosperity to all faithful followers and that believers should freely seek, and expect to acquire, wealth beyond their needs. This teaching appeals to the “lust of the eyes” (1 John 2:16), in other words, the materialism of the old self. The teachers often add that our tithing will lead God to bless us financially. We refer to these teachings as the “prosperity gospel”. The prosperity gospel has never been considered orthodox in Christian history; it would have been summarily rejected by all the great Christian teachers of the past. This includes the pioneers of Pentecostalism. Much of prosperity teaching relies on the Old Testament, which as we saw in our previous post on wealth is not legitimate because the New Testament teaches a new approach to wealth. Do we want to live under the old covenant? Do we Continue Reading →

Most of us have areas in our lives we have not achieved holiness. It helps to remind ourselves of how God motivates us to holiness. One way is reminding us of our destiny. Since we are destined to live as perfected new Adams in an eternal community of love with God and his followers, why would we embrace anything that doesn’t fit with our future identity? Why would we resist the restoration of God’s image in us? We long for our full Christformation so we pursue Christlike purity now. In other words, God has predestined us to holiness: “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:4, ESV). Christ died “in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith” (Col. 1:22-23, ESV). One of the major Continue Reading →

Last week we looked at committing ourselves to God’s will. Now consider an area of your life in which you wonder if you are doing God’s will. We will go through five steps for examining our hearts and choosing God’s will. This is not so much an exercise in finding God’s will as it is an exercise in guiding our hearts to abiding in God. Five Steps Toward Pursuing in God’s Will We remind ourselves to consider God’s will. We examine ourselves to determine if we are really open to pursuing God’s will. We try to discern God’s will. We ask ourselves if we are now willing to do God’s will. We do God’s will. The first movement is to get in the habit of reminding ourselves to consider God’s will for the decisions we make or attitudes we embrace. This is simply looking to him for his will. Common Continue Reading →

When someone mentions that we should do God’s will it can conjure up images of gritting our teeth and forcing ourselves to do something very disagreeable. There is some truth in this but the supreme reason we do God’s will is that we love him and know that his principles for living will produce more life and happiness than anything else. Learning to do God’s will when we don’t feel like it and when we don’t feel God is one of the greatest and most freeing lessons in the Christian life. Remember that the purpose of all of God’s commands is that we would have more life, bear fruit, abide in the kingdom of God and keep us moving in the direction of the future perfect community of love with God and his followers. The directives in Scripture are ideals that we move toward as we are gradually “attaining to Continue Reading →

God is populating his kingdom with lovers until the day when he will fulfill all his promises of the kingdom and establish the perfect community of love with himself and his followers. Loving him is our greatest good, and for citizens of his inaugurated kingdom the King’s greatest commandment is to learn to fully love him. This keeps us on the trajectory that culminates in our future spiritual marriage with God on the New Earth. In this way we conform to the core of the image of Christ, for his highest priority is oneness with the Father and love is the bond of that oneness. These are the reasons that loving God is the supreme commandment and supremely important for all of our growth. God’s love for us is the foundation of his goodness to us. Our resulting love for him is the foundation of all our responsibilities toward him Continue Reading →