We read in Psalm
86:11 (NIV 1984):
“Teach me your way, O
Lord,
and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided
heart,
that I may fear your name.”
How does the Lord Jesus teach us his ways?
First of all, we have to have willing hearts to obey
whatever it is that he teaches us. We gain nothing at all if all we do is
collect a bunch of head knowledge about God and concerning his word. This kind
of knowledge puffs up, say the scriptures, but love builds up.
We also have to take time to listen to our Lord speak. We
can’t spend just a few minutes a day reading a passage of scripture and
praying, and then spend hours upon hours in pleasing ourselves through
entertainment, social media and recreational activities, and then expect to
hear God speak his truth to our hearts. We also can’t hear God speak if we are
filling our minds with all sorts of garbage this world has to offer via TV,
movies, the Internet, and the like. And, we can’t hear God speak if we are
holding on to unconfessed sin in our lives.
As well, we have to obey what he teaches us. We must not
merely listen to the word, but we must do what it says, say the scriptures (see
Jms. 1:22-25).
Then, once we are in the right frame of mind to hear God
speak, we have thrown off all that hinders our walks of faith with Christ and
the sin that so easily entangles us, so that we can run with perseverance the
race marked out for us (see Heb. 12:1), and we have begun to obey, then the
Lord Jesus can teach us his ways. And, his ways can be learned through careful
and prayerful study of scripture.
Then we can order up our lives according to the truth of
God’s word and what it teaches us with regard to the ways of God, i.e. the ways
of his righteousness and holy living in order to please God, instead of living
to please ourselves or to follow after our own selfish desires.
When we choose to not walk in the ways of this world and of
our culture, with its own value system and traditions of men, and we choose,
instead, to learn and to walk in the ways of God, his truth and his
righteousness, then we can begin to know through experience what it means to
have undivided hearts that seek to please God in all that we do.
And, this is the way in which we demonstrate (live out) our
love, honor and respect for God; for Jesus Christ, and for all he has done for
us in saving us from our sins and in giving us new lives in Christ Jesus, our
Lord.
Hello! My name is Sue Love. If you have any questions
regarding what was shared today, you can find me at www.originalworks.info.
No comments:
Post a Comment