If You are Willing and Obedient

I've been struggling with completing my quiet times these past few weeks, months, well, really the past year. My mindset has been that I'm going to deploy for 9 months and will have nothing else to do but work and study my Bible, so why not enjoy now what I can't do there? God told me something different the other day.

Now, I'm not one of those spiritualists who see angels in smiles and messages from God in bowls of Cheerios, but I had a strange thing happen to me yesterday. I hadn't read my Bible in almost two weeks and was feeling pretty guilty, but it was Friday, it was my birthday, and it was only 40 days before I leave out for Afghanistan, so I was going to enjoy some TV. But I couldn't get my mind off the fact that I should read, so I just turned the TV up and concentrated on the show in front of me.

Then I heard a knock at the door. I tried to hide but the TV was too loud and I could see the eyes peering in through our window watching me pretend like I wasn't home. I slowly opened the door and asked the two ladies if I could help them. They said, "We just want to encourage people to read the Bible." Then they left. Well, I got the hint, turned off the TV, and opened up to where I left off two weeks ago. Here's a snippet of what I read:

"Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen [unless you] learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression.... If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land" (Is 2.15-20). I am willing but I haven't been obedient. To those who aren't even willing, God says "They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them." Lord, though I repent of being disobedient, please never allow me to become unwilling.

 

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INCREASING QUALITIES (part 2)

"Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control" (2Pt 1.5).

Faith comes from hearing the Word of God and is simply defined as "being fully convinced that God has the power to do what He has promised" (Rom 4.21). But faith, like milk to a newborn baby, is just the first of many steps to maturity. It is Peter who actually writes that Christians should crave God's Word like infants longing for liquid sustenance "so that you may grow up in your salvation" (1Pt 2.2). But if there's one thing I've learned about babies, it's that they will accept milk from anyone who offers it.

Surely, you've noticed that children, if they are hungry, will eat food given to them by anyone. So also, hungry Christians who lack the perishable skill of discernment, will accept the preaching of God's Word as truth no matter who presents it. Paul warns the Ephesians that if they do not get equipped in the work of God, they will "be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine" (4.14). Basically, immature Christians will believe anything that sounds true and then change their beliefs if what sounds true no longer seems to be so.

Immature Christians also do not "endure sound teaching but having itching ears they wil accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions" (2Tim 4.3). Basically, they have bountiful amounts of knowledge but it isn't buttressed by virtue or self-control, so they just find teachers who will agree with what they want to believe about God. So how do we increase from faith to godliness to love? Well, it takes one simple process.....

 

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