God Is Not Mad at You: You Can Experience Real Love, Acceptance & Guilt-free Living (27 page)

When we receive Christ as our Savior, our spirit is saved or born again. It is made holy and God comes to dwell in us. Our soul (mind, will and emotions) still needs to be renewed. It must be turned over to God for His use. If it is not, the world will never see Jesus shining through us.

The Word of God, when it is truly received and becomes rooted in our hearts, does have the power to save our souls, as James 1:21 says. We must love the Word and study it. To read it, or to hear someone else teach it, is good, but it is not enough. We must study! Let me boldly ask you how much time you spend studying God’s Word yourself. I pray that it is often, for without that, there will be very little growth.

In
The Lost Art of Disciple Making
, Leroy Eims provides a wonderful image of this phenomenon. “One spring our family
was driving from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa, Florida. As far as the eye could see, orange trees were loaded with fruit. When we stopped for breakfast, I ordered orange juice with my eggs. ‘I’m sorry,’ the waitress said. ‘I can’t bring you orange juice. Our machine is broken.’ At first I was dumbfounded. We were surrounded by millions of oranges, and I knew they had oranges in the kitchen—orange slices garnished our plates. What was the problem? No juice? Hardly. We were surrounded by thousands of gallons of juice. The problem was they had become dependent on a machine to get it. Christians are sometimes like that. They may be surrounded by Bibles in their homes, but if something should happen to the Sunday morning preaching service, they would have no nourishment for their souls. The problem is not a lack of spiritual food—but that many Christians haven’t grown enough to know how to get it for themselves.”

The Word of God is the food our spirit needs to remain strong and it renews our minds (Romans 12:2). When we learn to think right, all other things begin to go right.

Spiritual maturity does not develop from merely having knowledge of God’s Word, but from applying it in everyday life and learning to live by it. Let’s say that you have been studying what God’s Word says about patience and you agree with it and have full intention of being patient. Now, let’s say that you go shopping and a clerk waits on you who is very slow. She is new at her job and doesn’t seem to know how to operate the computer properly. You are in a bit of a hurry and you can feel impatience welling up in your soul. At this point you have a decision to make. Will you behave according to the impatience you are feeling, or will you walk in the spirit and display the patience that God has given you? If you display patience, then you have exercised your
“patience muscle” and it has become stronger, and you have glorified God by choosing to represent Him well.

We have God’s Word readily available to us via church attendance, radio, television, the Internet, CDs, DVDs, our phone and other devices. We don’t have a famine of God’s Word, but we do need more people who will exercise regularly by applying the Word to their lives.

Paul exhorted Christians to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. He didn’t mean that they were to work for their salvation, but that they should work with the Holy Spirit toward spiritual maturity (Philippians 2:12). He quickly goes on to tell them that it cannot be accomplished in their own strength, but that God would work in them to accomplish it.

The things that we seek or pursue tell a lot about our character. We are told to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right) (Matthew 6:33). We are told to seek peace, and in my experience I have found that the only way to have peace is to learn to promptly obey the Holy Spirit. We are also told to seek God’s presence, for that is the most precious gift that we can have. We need God more than we need what He can do for us. I like to say, “Seek God’s presence, not His presents.”

We are also told to pursue holiness, without which no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14). Wow! That could sound a bit frightening unless we understand that the thing being stressed is the pursuing. God wants us to pursue holiness even if we never arrive at the place of perfection. If we are pursuing holiness, which is another way of saying spiritual maturity, it reveals
a right attitude toward God. As I said earlier in this book, we’re made holy by God when we are born again. We have the holiness in our spirit that God expects us to manifest, but it will not be manifested if we are passive. We must pursue it! Pursuing holiness is another way of saying, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” or, “Let us go on to spiritual maturity.”

Holiness is not following a set of rules and regulations; it is simply and joyfully learning to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

God is giving us a promise that because He is holy and living in us, we can also be holy in all of our conduct and manner of living. It is a process that is worked out gradually as we continue to pursue it in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus won’t be at all disappointed when He returns if we have not arrived, but He does want to find us pursuing holiness.

We are saved by faith alone and not by works, but James said that faith without works is dead, and it is void of power (James 2:14–18). Faith needs works (deeds and actions of obedience to back it up), otherwise it is destitute of power.

We are warned over and over in Scripture that the works of our flesh are not acceptable to God, but we are also told that we are to work the works of God. Jesus said, “I have glorified You… by completing the work that You gave Me to do” (John 17:4). Our “works” (works of the flesh) are our energy trying to do what only God can do, but God’s works are works that we do at His bidding and only by His power.

We should avoid works of the flesh like the plague. They are things like trying to save ourselves, make ourselves righteous by our own works, produce good fruit by struggling, or following our human plans to get what we want instead of asking God for them and waiting on His way and timing.

Although we avoid works of the flesh, we should aggressively pursue doing the work of God. God wants all of us to obey His Word, but I also believe that He gives each of us an assignment in life. As we continue to grow in God and learn to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit, we will learn what that assignment is. Fortunately, we don’t have to compete with anyone, but we are free to be the unique individual that God designed us to be.

The assignment that God gives us may or may not seem spectacular to the world, but it is spectacular to God. You may be a mom who is raising a child who will do great things for God. Or you may be a janitor in a school and a great example of someone with godly character to the children. You could even be a very famous person, but all that really matters is whether we are fulfilling
our God-ordained assignment. When we are, we are working the works of God.

There are different seasons in our life, and our assignment can change as those seasons change. After Dave and I married, I spent many years doing various kinds of office work, then I had years of being a stay-at-home mom, then I went back to work and eventually started a Bible study where I worked and that developed into the ministry I lead today. All of that happened over a span of forty-seven years, so I encourage you to understand that whatever you are doing now is an important part of your life that you should embrace and enjoy. When the seasons change, go on the next assignment that God has for you and do it with eagerness and joy.

I think we can simplify what spiritual maturity means by saying that it is loving people the way God does. Above all that we pursue, we should aggressively pursue truly loving people. To be spiritually mature means to be like God, and He loves people.

The apostle Peter exhorts us to take the promises of God and add our diligence by employing every effort in exercising our faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in exercising virtue we develop knowledge (intelligence). He goes on to say that as we exercise knowledge, we will develop self-control, and in exercising self-control, we will develop steadfastness (patience, endurance). In exercising steadfastness, we will develop godliness (piety). And in exercising godliness, we develop brotherly affection, and in exercising brotherly affection, we develop Christian love (2 Peter 1:3–7). We see that the end goal is Christian love!

It looks as if we must be diligent and make an effort to keep growing if we ever expect to reach our goal of learning to love as God does. We can also see from what Peter says that reaching this goal is a process that will obviously take time. And don’t forget to enjoy the journey! Our journey with God is the most exciting part of our lives.

How is true spiritual love manifested? We find the answer in 1 Corinthians 13:4–8.

• Love is patient
  
• Love is kind
  
• Love does not envy
  
• Love does not boast
  
• Love is not proud
  
• Love is not rude
  
• Love is not self-seeking
  
• Love is not easily angered
  
• Love keeps no record of wrongs
  
• Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth
  
• Love bears up under anything that comes
  
• Love always believes the best of everyone
  
• Love is always full of hope in all circumstances
  
• Love endures everything without weakening
  
• Love never fails
  

I know that I need to keep exercising in these areas and pursuing holiness; how about you? I urge you to ponder your behavior and ask yourself before God what areas you might need to improve in. I know that I could be more patient and less self-seeking, just to name a couple of things. I pursue these goals with all of my heart, but I am never condemned when I don’t succeed
totally. I just keep pressing on. I don’t feel condemned, because I have a solid foundation in my life of knowing that God loves me unconditionally, has forgiven all of my sins and is merciful, and that His grace (undeserved favor and power) are always available to me. I press past my mistakes and I keep praying and leaning on God and expecting to see Him work through me.

I find several Scriptures that tell me to examine myself. That doesn’t mean that we should be excessively introspective, nor should we be judgmental toward ourselves, but taking an honest look at our behavior is healthy.

Perhaps if we were willing to be more honest with ourselves about ourselves, we would make faster progress in spiritual maturity. Let us follow the gentle prompting of the Holy Spirit concerning our behavior so we don’t have to be corrected more sternly by God. God is concerned more with our spiritual growth than He is with our present comfort. The spiritually mature person can examine himself honestly in the light of God’s Word and never feel condemned when he sees his flaws. He is actually delighted to see them, because he knows that only the truth makes him free. He knows that God’s love for him is not based
on his behavior, but he does desire to improve in order to bring more glory to God.

Spiritual maturity is not church attendance, knowledge of church doctrines, giving large sums of money to the church, holding a position on the church leadership team or being on a church committee. Spiritual maturity is not memorizing Scripture, or reading the Bible through each year. We can do religious exercises by the thousands and still not be spiritually mature.

I am not going to give you a list of things to do in order to develop spiritual maturity. I have shared the importance of studying God’s Word and regular fellowship with Him, including prayer, but beyond that, the only thing I will say is… follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit. If you do, He will teach you all that you need to know and He will do it in a way that will work perfectly for you.

We all do a lot of things that are connected with our Christianity. We go to church, read the Bible, pray, read Christian books and perhaps listen to Christian radio or watch Christian television, but to what purpose?

“A while back on
The Merv Griffin Show
,” says Gary Gulbranson in an article in
Leadership
magazine, “the guest was a bodybuilder. During the interview, Merv asked, ‘Why do you develop those particular muscles?’ The bodybuilder simply stepped forward and flexed a series of well-defined muscles from chest to calf. The audience applauded. ‘What do you use all those muscles for?’ Merv asked. Again, the muscular specimen flexed, and biceps and triceps sprouted to impressive proportions. ‘But what do you
use
those muscles for?’ Merv persisted. The bodybuilder was bewildered. He didn’t have an answer other than to display his well-developed frame. I was reminded that our spiritual exercises—Bible study, prayer, reading Christian books and listening
to Christian radio—are also for a purpose. They are meant to strengthen our ability to build God’s Kingdom, not simply to improve our pose before an admiring audience.”

I believe that God has a purpose in all the things He does, and we should also be people with a purpose. When we study or hear preaching, let it always be with the purpose of doing what we have learned. If we hear but don’t do, we deceive ourselves by reasoning that is contrary to the truth (James 1:22).