Hope-Filled Christian
Hope-Filled Christian
Redefining Our Relationship with God: Faithfulness, Obedience, and a God-Centered Life
What if you could redefine your relationship with God in a way that brings you closer to Him? Join us as we navigate the complexities of our divine connection and shed light on the importance of faithfulness, reverence, and letting God take control. Drawing parallels with human marriage, we explore the concepts of justification and sanctification, emphasizing how our actions can impact our relationship with the Almighty.
Are you ready to heighten your obedience and understand its direct link to your actions and God's will? Let's confront the consequences of sin, particularly sexual sin, and its effects on our mental and emotional health. This episode does not shy away from discussing societal perspectives on sex and the drawbacks of prioritizing pleasure over intentions. We wrap up with an inspiring call to lead a God-centered life and become agents of change in society. Don't miss this enlightening discussion, as we dive not only into our responsibilities but also into the immense potential for growth and transformation that our relationship with God holds.
Hi and welcome back to HFC. I'd be lying if I said that, you know, I felt like I was entirely out of my weird little funk that I feel like I've been in. But I've been reading this book and so it's not necessarily something that I came up with, but it's more of something that I wanted to share because it feels like along the lines of what I was trying to say last time, skipping over that sense of you know, and I was okay. Let me start off. I'm reading this book and I've kind of mentioned it before.
Speaker 1:It's called the Eye of God, by John Bavir, and it's very insightful. Talks about a relationship with God and the necessity of having, you know, a sense of awe and reverence towards God, meaning respecting him and acknowledging that he doesn't have to give us his love but he chooses to, and realizing that it's not a guaranteed thing that we receive. It's guaranteed in the sense because we know that God will never forsake or leave us, but it's still not something that we should take for granted or feel entitled to. And one of these chapters was called literally called entitled and I truthfully feel like it spoke to what I was trying to say when I was saying that we are worthless. Not worthless, you know, as in we have no worth, but worthless in the sense that we are worthless than God. Like. He is not the one who's going to be missing out in this situation. He is not the one that should be walking on eggshells. He's not the one that should be doing things out of respect, not out of fear that we're terrified of each other, but fear out of I don't want to lose, you know, the love that you have for me. In the same way, it's like I don't know specifically where it was talking about this in this book, but it was talking about well, it actually was. So in mentions in this in this book. I think I might have said Bible, really sorry.
Speaker 1:It mentions in this book where he's talking about the discussion of what it means to be in communion with someone, and we know that in the Bible, you know, our relationship with God is referred to as communion, and I've talked about this before that when I was doing studies on, you know, the constitution and the creation of United States. What it was talking about a lot was a sense of communion, which means to choose one another, that God has chosen us and now we need to choose him. Except it's not as equal as we'd like it to appear to be. It's not as oh yeah, you know we're partners here. We're not partners.
Speaker 1:We're still termed coheirs, meaning he's still the king, and when we're looking in terms of what a monarchy looks like, the prince is just a subject to the king as others. Can he speak to the king? Yes, can he tell the king anything that he wants? Is he going to get anything he wants? No, but can he tell the king anything he wants? Yes, okay, but at the end of the day, what the king says goes. It doesn't matter if the prince wants to marry someone or wants to, you know, go and farm. If the king says no, then the answer is no, and that's the way that it works with the king.
Speaker 1:And yet sometimes I feel like we confuse coheir with co-ruling. We're not co-ruling. We're not getting in the passenger seat. We're sitting in the back seat. God is in the front seat, taking the drivers wheel, or, technically, I guess we could sit in. We're not a co-pilot. I guess is what I meant to say. We're on a plane and we're holding the other wheel. We should be taking the passenger seat. We should, oh God, don't you think, or could we possibly stop here or could we possibly go there? And if God says no, then that's final, because he's in control, he has the wheel.
Speaker 1:But he compares our holy communion with the communion of man and wife and he talks about how there's two types of holiness that we encounter when we come upon God, and those two types of holiness are justification and sanctification. Justification, which is typically when you're talking stuff like that, it means evidence that the base is true On paper. Justification is are you cleansed? Are you with Christ? Are you in the sense of a matrimony, meaning marriage? Are you married? Yes, you are married. That's justification. And then, since we would say am I saved? Yes, I am saved, and let him save because Jesus Christ paid the sin and he has washed me clean and made me clean.
Speaker 1:The next part comes to sanctification, which is in the sense of human marriage, meaning acting out the roles of man and wife. You know what we're in this relationship. It's not a guaranteed relationship. We can still, you know, make that marriage rocky if we're being unfaithful, if we're, you know, seeking love and passion and all these other things outside of the marriage. If we were in a marriage and we were seeking pleasure and joy and peace from other scenarios other than our, you know, spouse. That would create a rocky relationship, and that's similar to what happens with God when we put other things before him and we begin to do things not discussing it. Oh honey, I just bought a car and it's like what do you mean?
Speaker 1:You didn't discuss that with me, except in this case, biblically, god would be the man of the house, where he would be making the final decisions, where we would have to be subservient to him and listen to him and let him make the decisions, where we again are in that passenger seat and we're making suggestions, but essentially, the man of the house is the man of the house. He makes the last word, he makes the decision, he is guiding, he is leading, and so, in that same way, it talks about how signification is similar to that where it's justification says you are saved. But signification is a process in which you go about being saved not necessarily works, but living as God would want us to live, living true to His word. Justification says you are saved, sanctification is reading your word to figure out. Okay, the Bible is my manual. What does it mean to be saved? What does it mean to be holy?
Speaker 1:Now, I know we're always talking about or at least I always love to mention a verse, and so the verse that we're reading today is 1 Peter 1, 14, 16, it's actually mentioned in the chapter and it says Live as children of obedience to God. Do not conform yourselves to the evil desires that govern you in your former ignorance, when you did not know the requirements of the gospel. But, as the one who called you as holy, you yourselves also be holy in all your conduct and manner of living. For it is written you shall be holy, for I am holy. And this is, you know, god saying that, because we are with God, we must be holy. We are called to be holy, and he's not talking about positional holiness. Because we have positional holiness, we have that justification. We have Jesus Christ died for our sins. We are now made, you know, holy in that sense. He's talking about behavioral holiness, which means the process of sanctification, which means following what the Bible says and, you know, holding his verses close to our heart and leading the life that God has called us to. And I guess that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Too many of us are, you know, pulling justification and we're doing the whole. Do you know who my father is? And not in the good sense of. Do you know who my father is? I stand with God, he's standing behind me, but the annoying one we're like do you know who my father is? You know he'll have your head for this and pulling that stuff where you get pulled over by a cop and I'm like, well, my father's a judge and you know he's a judge and trying to scare the cop, but the cop isn't. In the same way.
Speaker 1:You know God's judgment isn't going to take favorites. If you are acting in a way that is not holy, then he's gonna judge you as such. If you're acting in ways that are holy, well, we looked at the situation. You were fine. That's okay, because there will be times where we will be accused by people as such as not being holy as and whatnot. And gratefully for us. You know other people are not judges, neither are we. We are not meant to be judges of other people. We are solely meant to hold people accountable, not judge them, but remind them of what the word says, and sometimes it might come off weird, but do things in love and in kindness, not whoa. Remember what the Bible says you have to honor. You know what I mean. Like you shall not lie. Or the Bible says to turn the other cheek. You need to turn the other cheek from me, you need to forgive me, like something like that. But in the sense of you know someone's doing something wrong and you're like, well, remember what the Bible says. You know we're supposed to forgive each other and love on each other, and that we cannot be in God's presence but also have hate for another man or, in that case, man or woman, and so it really.
Speaker 1:I honestly feel like everybody should read this book. I love it. It's very difficult for me to read through it because of that kind of you ever read something that you feel is so impactful and it's just like everything tries to come into your time when you should be reading that book. It's just so good, and so I'm just gonna read another couple of highlights that I read from this chapter and that'll be it. So it goes on to discuss and I'm just reading from the book now, just highlights. So it's not, you know, continued in this way. It's just highlights that I wrote and I'll try to kind of provide context if it's not doesn't make sense to me. It is, and this is what John B Vera wrote.
Speaker 1:As I mentioned before, the primary definition of holiness is separation unto God, and this certainly includes purity. The next part I skipped over some stuff and it says the blood of Jesus does indeed cleanse us from all sin. However, we get confused when we mix the work of justification with the work of sanctification and when we repent and receive Jesus Christ as our Lord, our sins were forgiven and we were washed completely clean, skip some. And then it says this is the work of justification. What, the very moment we receive justification, the work of sanctification which holiness began. This is when what was done on the inside of us is worked out. Our new nature becomes an outward reality in the way that we live.
Speaker 1:And he does mention at some point this is why sometimes we feel like well, I don't know why I can't seem to get things right, I don't know why I can't mess things up, and it's because we're not living sanctified all the time, we're not living with that sense of fear and respect where we say that little things are okay to slip through. Oh, it's fine, it's just a little white lie, or it's fine, I don't have to do that. Or we take God's commands as suggestions and we begin to lose the respect that we have for God. And one of the verses that he mentions consistently throughout this book is the part where Let me see if I can find it he mentions it a lot when, basically, peter is talking about seeking out a relationship with God with fear and trembling, and it's not in happiness and joy and grace and mercy. It's Philippines 212. My dear friends, you've always obeyed God. When I was with you, it is even more important that you obey now, while I am away from you. Keep on working to complete your salvation with fear and trembling. And it's when we begin to lose that sense of fear of God and that sense of respect from God and we begin to take His commands as suggestions and we begin to believe what we want and what we feel is more important than what God wants or God feels.
Speaker 1:And I've mentioned it before, but one of my favorite verses was I don't even know the verse, I'll always look it up just to make sure that I'm still right in my membrane and I used to read it all the time because it was something that I used to do all the time. I would always make up plans and I would freak out and worry about stuff that was in the future. And it's a verse that says what are you but a wisp to imagine or to think that you could have any? This is like a very bad summarizing or paraphrasing of it. Do not take this for word for word. Find the verse for yourself. Actually, you know what I'm gonna look. What are you but a wisp verse? Okay, so it's James 414.
Speaker 1:It says yet you do not know the least thing about what may happen tomorrow. What is the nature of your life? You are really but a wisp of vapor, a puff of smoke amiss that is visible for a little while and then disappears into thin air. And then it goes on to say you ought to instead say if the Lord is willing, we shall live and we shall do this or that, but as it is, you boast falsely your presumption and your self-conceit. All such boasting is wrong.
Speaker 1:So any person who knows what is right to do but does not do it to him, it is sin. And so that goes to speak. For if God is telling you to do something and you're not doing it to you, it is a sin. And this is where we begin to wonder like but I'm not sinning and the Bible doesn't say anything is wrong with not doing that. But this part does that if God has told you to do something and you're not doing it, to you it is a sin. And that's when we begin to open doors and that's when we begin to have struggles. But I'm not doing anything wrong, god, I'm not lying. I'm going to church, I'm praying, I'm reading my Bible, but you're not doing what God has called you to do, and so to you it is a sin.
Speaker 1:And that part, if you want to read it yourself, is James, chapter 4. James chapter 4, 14 through 17, that I read, but the part before 14 was actually really good too. It's usually where I start in that verse it's come now, you who say today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city and spend a year there and carry on our business and make money. And then it goes on to say that. Yet you do not know the least thing about what may happen tomorrow. What is the nature of your life? You are really but a wisp of apron. And it's calling our own, our own sense of entitlement or sense of conceitiveness and self-centeredness into perspective. It's saying like, how do you realize how crazy it is when you think of that, your judgment or your sense of perspective is much more important than God's, when you're saying stuff like, oh, but I don't want to do that, forgetting that God never asked.
Speaker 1:Not only that, but, as that verse 17 says so, any person who knows what is right to do but does not do it to him it is a sin. And so when God tells us to be nice or kind to someone, when we are refusing to do that, it has now become a sin. And when we open that door to sin, that door opens to every sin, not just, you know, oh, the cute sins or the acceptable sins, because there is no sin that is acceptable. Every sin Mars us. I mean, the Bible does talk about other sins that are more Impactful, and actually I'll read that in which it's. It's something that I actually read recently and I thought was powerful. It's also in that same chapter Of the book of God and it talks it's first, that's the Lonians for first three through five. It says God will, god's will, is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin, then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor, not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways. And I Can't help begin but begin to wonder if this is why, you know, so many people in society nowadays are feeling like they have no control over their mind, over their body.
Speaker 1:They feel lost, like I, just I. They're feeling the need to talk to people and feeling the need to Take medication and I'm not saying that mental illness does not exist, which would be kind of, you know, stupid, considering my own struggles with insecurities and anxieties and and depression and fear and all those things that I had had previously. But I'm saying like we're opening doors to those things when we are not staying away from sexual sin, and that's. There's other parts that talk about sexual sin, that talk about, you know, the impact of what it means to live in sexual sin, that our body is a temple and that when we, you know, take part in sexual sin, we are marring the temple that God has created, we are ruining the vessel that God has created and in doing so we are kind of affecting the way that he's able to fill us, and so it takes a while to overcome sexual sin.
Speaker 1:And I've also read people like um, if you're like this is totally off topic, but I've heard people say that there are sexual ties and I've heard people Say that there are no ties, that that God can cunts us of them and then God cannot cleanse them and it's just a whole big thing. But even just the implications that they could possibly be a thing is is worrisome, like we're opening ourselves up to other people by, by taking part in sexual sin and with society, the way it is about, oh, sex positivity and and you know, this negative Kind of outlook on, you know, being a virgin and being abstinent and doing all these things and and it's kind of a weird like when I think of abortion, and this isn't even totally off topic when I think of abortion, I'm this is gonna sound weird and I don't mean to sound bad. Before even get to the whole part of you know, should there be a choice or pro life for a choice, I get to the part of we Are not we necessarily, because not everybody's like that, but society is to a point where they're like oh yes, I'm gonna have fun, no matter the consequence. You know when something was created, specifically like sex was created, you know, to give birth to something, to get birth to something, to procreate, to have children, to, you know, be bountiful and whatnot. But we have created into a thing oh, I just want to have fun, I want to indulge, I want to, you know, feed into my carnal pleasures and whatnot. Everything else be damned. You know, like I'm not gonna care about the other person, which is why we've gotten to the point where why which is why we're seeing things like rape because they don't Give a damn about the other person We've not thought of sex as a is it purity?
Speaker 1:Thing. We have not thought of sex as a you know being this is a special connection. We've thought of it. Oh, it's fun, and if you're not doing it, you know You're lame, or something along those lines. And so we're seeing rape. We're seeing people getting drugged for sex. We're seeing sex be sold. We're seeing sex be Traded. We're seeing people offer themselves up for sex because it's. It's become this oh, whatever, and, and. We're seeing kids and whatnot throw themselves at each other for sex, and and and then, and. Then pregnancy, which used to be the goal of sex, has now become the unwanted consequence of.
Speaker 1:I can't believe, you know, that this child dare come and ruin my, and it's just going back to that sense of entitlement, that sense of you know that my wants, my desires, are more important than the creation or the creation of the sting, which God had a purpose for. God did not have that purpose of sex, where it was meant to be. You know, everybody's having sex with each other and everybody was just having fun and it wasn't meant to be for fun and not in and of itself on month, but like it's just we're the sense of entitlement that people have begun to get, and that's what I was trying to say. Like we need to acknowledge the fact that we are worthless, that our opinion is not worth the same as God's, that our opinion is not to be held at the same level as God's, that God is God, he is the King of the Kings and I feel like even now I'm thinking about the 10 commandments and thou shall not have no other idols before God. And yet, who have we been idolizing? We've been idolizing ourselves so much to the point that we have UBU, you know, and people so concerned with their physical outlook, their physical appearance and all this stuff that that we're losing sight of. What does God want us to do. And people are saying I can't hear what God is telling me. But it's not that we can't hear him, it's that we've chosen for so long to not hear him that we don't even recognize his voice. But anyway, like I said, I just love this book. I just really eye opening.
Speaker 1:I do really think that's important to acknowledge, though, that there is that sense of you know, I am made clean, the justification and then the sanctification that now this is how I become holy, or how I stay holy, or how I live in holiness. I have been invited into holiness. Now I have to do the role of holiness. I have been married into this marriage, but now I have to do the role of a spouse. Okay, our lives are not the same as when we existed before, and that's one thing that kind of freaks me out about marriage which is a side note, because I know that that's not a small commitment, and I know that having kids is not a small commitment, and I know that all doing all those things is not a small commitment, because to have kids is one thing, but to be a parent is another. To be a father is one thing, but to be, you know a dad is another. I can father a child, but I have to be a dad, you know, to raise a child I can marry someone, but to be a husband I have to do a certain thing. I can be a Christian, but to be a co-heir with Christ I have to live in that holiness. Anyway, that's it for this week's episode.
Speaker 1:As always, let's go ahead and end with a prayer. I'm going to read the prayer that he put here and I'll just add onto it. The prayer he put here was Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you work in me both to will and accomplish your good pleasure. I desire to live outwardly, which you've already done for me. Inwardly, god, I also pray that you open our eyes to the ways that we've deceived ourselves, where we've put ourselves before you and not even realized it, where we start to build a sense of respect for you. I pray that you forgive us for losing sight of this and I pray that you will help us to realize it, to take your word for what it is when you speak to us. It is not a suggestion, it is a command.
Speaker 1:I rebuke, lord, that sense of self-centeredness and protection of our self. You know image, where we say no, I can't do that. It's too embarrassing. Lord, I pray that you help us to be brave and courageous in living out your word, that you ignite in us a fire to live as you intended to dance and praise you and worship you like the great saints in the Bible, where they praised and worshiped and they didn't care who was around. I want to see that, lord.
Speaker 1:I pray and I ask for that, lord. I ask that you do that within each and every one of us that is listening, now that you create within us a burning fire, a burning passion for you, something that threatens to consume us, but instead it doesn't. It's just we exist in the fire, like Meshach and Pentecost I cannot remember the names, but you know what I mean, lord. We just want to exist in this passion, lord, and not be consumed, but to be cleansed and for there to still be existing works there, lord, to be moving in you and to be receptive to you and listening to you and hearing you and changing our perspective from a self-centered Christianity to a God-centered Christianity, something that we've been moving away from as a society.
Speaker 1:Lord, I pray that the people who are listening to this become the movers and the changers, that they begin to speak to people and share the word with people and move as you intended us to do. I pray that you forgive us from our sins. Lead us not into temptation, lord, in the name of Jesus, amen, thanks for listening to this week's episode of HFC. I did remember the names of those people Shadrach, meshach and Abednego. Thanks for listening to this week's episode and I pray that you really. I just want all of us to grow, you know, and all of us to continue moving in this relationship that we have with God. Have a God Best Week. See you next time. Bye.