Weekly Wisdom

When you know down deep inside that your Father created the whole universe, you will never again think bad things can overpower you. God is more powerful than anything that can come against us. He takes a personal interest in keeping us blessed and protected.

Galatians 4:6 says,

“And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts crying, Abba, Father.”

Our spirit is crying everyday for a greater intimacy with our heavenly Father. Because our minds are so earthly and our Father is so heavenly, we tend to neglect spending time with our Father God. The earth and all the things in it are calling us to spend time with them. We must resist the temptation to give them a higher place in our life. Even as Jesus was 12 years old, He was seeking His Father’s will by studying with the doctors and lawyers in the temple. He wanted to know more and more about His Father from heaven. In these last days, there will be ample opportunity for us to be distracted with earthly, material things. In Ephesians, God calls us to redeem the time. The more time you spend with God and His Word in prayer, in church, and in study, the more you will learn who you are as a son or daughter of God. By doing this, you are redeeming the time.

The job of God’s family on the earth is to bring God’s business to the earth. At the time when Jesus said that He must be about His Father’s business, He was studying in the temple with teachers of the Old Testament. Why? Well, we can't do something we've not learned. Even though we are children of God, our productivity is limited by our lack of understanding the Father’s will.

These are great days in the church. Great works of God will be accomplished through you and me as we are ever-increasing in our heavenly Father’s understanding. Our elder Brother, Jesus, came to die for our sins and to reveal His Father to us.

Over the years, I have watched different family businesses, and it seems to me that when you have two generations working a business, that business is fairly successful. The second generation has learned both the first generation's understanding, and accumulated their own understanding. God has sent Jesus to receive His understanding and to give it to us through the Apostles that wrote the New Testament. The more we study the New Testament, the more we will pick up on how to function and operate as heaven operates. Father God runs heaven completely; nobody does anything unless God says so. God wants that type of living to be manifested in the church. We must push the envelope and live like heaven.

God wants every man and woman to recognize that they have authority over their own lives. We’ve been given the authority to cause our lives to be blessed or the authority to cause our lives to be cursed. In Deuteronomy 30:19 God tells us,

“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.”

God reveals to us in these verses that He is not our problem. Our problem is our lack of desire to choose His way, which is life, over Satan’s way, which is death. God is not going to make our choice for us. He has given us authority over our own lives to govern them according to our own desires. When a person chooses to live in sin, that person chooses to let Satan rule over their life. But, that person also makes a choice for their children. Notice that God said in verse 19 to choose life that "both thou and thy seed may live." Our children are subject to Satan’s rulership if we choose to live under Satan’s sin-law. It is clear to me that God is doing His best to give us a good life, but God will not force His blessings upon us. We must receive God’s blessings by our choice. God will not release His blessing into our lives without us making a commitment to Him. Even though we receive God’s salvation by faith and not by works, there must be a surrender of our lives to Him after we are born again in order to receive His blessings into our lives. In Romans 12:1-2 God says,

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

The definition of the word 'transformed' is metamorphosis, which is what happens to a caterpillar before it becomes a butterfly. It must go into a state of death before it can live a new life. God gives mankind the choice to lay his life down upon the spiritual altar of sacrifice so they can come out of death into the life of God.

God’s desire for you today is that you live like He lives. He has given us His Word, and by it we kill the sinful worm that wants to limit us to simply living like the natural world lives. God wants us to soar into His Spirit life. He wants our minds to be so transformed that we choose only the life of God for ourselves and also for our children. God has given each one of us the choice to live under the cover of His blessings instead of Satan’s cursings.

Back in Deuteronomy 30:15-16 God tells us,

“See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; in that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statues and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it.”

Notice how God is giving us the ability to be blessed or cursed. He wants us to know that He will not make us serve Him. If we love Him, we will choose to obey Him and walk in His ways. I see through these verses that we’ve shared in Deuteronomy 30 and Romans 12, that God leaves it up to man to give Him his life. He will not make man choose Him. The real test of love is what we choose. If we say we love God and don’t do what He has told us to do, we are just speaking empty words that don’t mean much.

Today, God is saying to us that we can’t receive one side of the contract and not do the other. God wants us to live like He lives so we can receive the blessings of His lifestyle. I’ve talked to Christians who think they can be blessed and live in open sin. In their reasoning, they believe Jesus paid for them to be blessed. But, they fail to realize that even though Jesus paid for their blessings by His sacrifice for sin, those blessings only come into their lives by their obedience to act on the Word He gives us. In other words, Jesus bought the farm, the seed, and the farming equipment for us to receive abundant blessings into our lives, but if we don’t put forth some effort into planting the Word of God into our lives by actions, all that He has done for us will be to no avail while we’re here on this earth.

In Galatians 6:7-9 God tells us how a Christian receives blessings upon his life.

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

Notice that God said that whatever we sow we shall also reap. This tells me that if I expect to receive God’s blessings upon my life, I must choose to do something for God. We sow actions that the New Testament teaches, and we receive the harvest of those actions. Choose today to be a sower and not just a taker.