Words Of Encouragement For Your Day ( Monday 10/22/2012)

I Am Working Mine

Philippians 2:12-16 Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹² Therefore, my dear ones, as you have always obeyed [my suggestions], so now, not only [with the enthusiasm you would show] in my presence but much more because I am absent, work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverence and awe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ). ¹³ [Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight. ¹⁴ Do all things without grumbling and faultfinding and complaining [against God] and questioning and doubting [among yourselves], ¹⁵ That you may show yourselves to be blameless and guileless, innocent and uncontaminated, children of God without blemish (faultless, unrebukable) in the midst of a crooked and wicked generation [spiritually perverted and perverse], among whom you are seen as bright lights (stars or beacons shining out clearly) in the [dark] world, ¹⁶ Holding out [to it] and offering [to all men] the Word of Life, so that in the day of Christ I may have something of which exultantly to rejoice and glory in that I did not run my race in vain or spend my labor to no purpose.

            The one thing I have learned is to appreciate individual differences.  I think that when I found out that I was mixed with many different races and had so many different cultures to identify with, it made me appreciate the rainbow of people that God has created even more.  It gave me the ability to see the fact that we are all different, and the amazing thing about it is that God loves us all.  He did not just die for you or me; He died so that we “ALL” might have a right to the tree of life. I have learned to love people for who they are even when I do not agree with their opinions, lifestyles and cultural beliefs or traditions but I have learned there is a difference in respect and acceptance; just as there is a difference it what is right and having rights.  As a woman who has skin pigmentation and is visibly ethnic, I would not want someone to judge me because of those things, or because of a stereotype that has been attached to a group of people, or hear say.  I would desire that people would understand that even if they do not agree with me or understand me or my ethnicity that they would understand that I deserve humane treatment and I have rights and chooses just as they do.

            Sometimes we as Christians look to the letter of the law instead of the Spirit of God (read Galatians 3:10-14) by faith and the spirit of the Word of God.  We want to live according to the Word when it suits our agenda, and then we want to berate others for their beliefs, attempting to condemn them by the word of God. But should our focus not be on working our walk out first and foremost.  Should not our daily prayer be, to be clean before God, to become a vessel that is holy and acceptable before the one that matters most?  We are quick to take up a cause, but not to live for the cause of Christ which leads others to be reconciled.  If we become inhumane and closed minded to what is around us, will we win people to Christ or push them away?  Especially if we are so busy trying to get others to change that we forget we have work that needs to be done in us.  We seldom ask God to search us and know us, to clean out the things that are not like Him; instead we are busy trying to judge others, clean them up, without thought and practice ourselves.  God promises us that judgment will begin at His house first, but we are choosing to ignore that we are a part of His house that needs to get things in order.  Haggai reminds us that we often are busy building and taking care of the outside or our house and leaving His in ruins.  That does not just pertain to the esthetics or a building but to us as the temple of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

            Someone twitted this morning, “I am who I am, your opinion is neither desired nor required,” I laughed because I feel as long as I am good in my Heavenly Father’s sight, I am sorely not interested in the opinion of others, especially when they have not taken the time to check what is going on inside of them and to work their salvation out in the manner God has asked.  “Christian values,” is often just like an opinion which is like a nose everyone has one they are just shaped differently and their size is different and the color may be different.  But to work it out with God the way He is asking us to only comes from allowing God to go in to the deepest parts of who we are and show us ourselves, our motives and what we have allowed to become resident that He really wants out in order for us to come into the fullness of who he desires us to be. It is walking after the spirit of God and not the flesh of man or even what man says is important.  So if you are sincere about really wanting to be in right standing with God, let Him all the way, and let Him deal with the things people may not be able to see in us but that He sees very clearly!