Psalms 101:1-4 NASB
“I will sing of mercy and justice;
To You, Lord, I will sing praises.
I will carefully attend to the blameless way.
When will You come to me?
I will walk within my house in the integrity of my heart.
I will set no worthless thing before my eyes;
I hate the work of those who fall away;
It shall not cling to me.
A perverse heart shall leave me;
I will know no evil.”
As followers of Jesus Christ we worship the One True God,
creator of the Universe – Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit. He is
both a God of mercy (goodness, kindness) and a God of judgment. So, we should not
trifle with him thinking he is all love and grace and that he will not judge us
for our wrongs. Yes, when he forgives us our sins he removes the punishment of
our sin, which is hell, but he also delivers us out of our slavery to sin, and
he empowers us to walk righteously before him all our days.
But that is not the end of the story. There are conditions
to his grace to us. We must forsake our lives of sin and follow him in
obedience to his commands (New Covenant), for if we do not we will not inherit
eternal life with God. All throughout the New Testament we are warned to take
God seriously and to obey him and to not take his grace for granted. And we are
told over again that if we walk in sin and not in righteousness and holiness, and
not in obedience to him, that we will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
Too many people today are taking God’s grace for granted or
they are misinterpreting what God’s grace is really all about. For it is not
just about forgiveness of our sins so we can go to heaven when we die. By God’s
grace we are crucified with Christ in death to sin, and we are raised with him
to walk in newness of life in him, created to be like God in true righteousness
and holiness. By his grace we are able to walk in obedience to his commands and
to forsake our lives of sin, all to the glory and praise of God!
So, knowing all that, we should walk in the fear of the Lord
with our lives fully surrendered to him to do his will. We should honor him
with our lives and do what he says. And we should walk with integrity in
honesty, faithfulness, moral purity, uprightness and godliness, and sin should
no longer be our master. We should no longer walk in deliberate and habitual
sin, but we should live holy lives which are pleasing to God. For to this Jesus
gave his life up for us that we would die to sin and live to him.
And we should not set before our eyes anything that is
worthless, vile, vulgar, wicked, evil, corrupt, crooked, or base (dishonorable,
improper, and immoral). And this can include the news sometimes, or
commercials, or little videos which are intended to entertain us, or nudity
(even partial), or movies with sexual situations or which are glorifying
adultery, theft, lying, cheating, etc. Even some “Christian” music videos are
in this category of things we should not be watching. And pornography is
obviously a BIG NO!
But we should also not be viewing anything that mocks God or
that belittles our faith in Jesus Christ or that alters the character of God
and of Jesus Christ or that is teaching a false gospel of salvation or that
pokes fun at the Scriptures. If we are truly following Jesus with our lives
this kind of stuff should offend us. We should be grieved by it. We should not
be entertained by it. And we should be testing it all against the Scriptures in
context so that we don’t ourselves get caught up in the lies that are made to
sound good.
And perverse (obstinate, deviant, disobedient, rebellious,
wicked) hearts shall be far from us, and we will know nothing of evil, i.e. we
will not ourselves be intimately acquainted with evil via our own ways in which
we live and via the things we choose to set before our eyes and listen to and
take into our minds. And in today’s world, we have to be very diligent about
this for evil is lurking everywhere – via the media, especially, and on the
internet where a whole world of evil can be at our fingertips.
A
Believer’s Prayer
An
Original Work / July 31, 2012
With my whole heart, Lord, I pray
To be Yours, and Yours always.
Lead me in Your truth today.
May I love You and obey.
Lead me in Your righteousness.
When I sin, may I confess;
Bow before You when I pray;
Live for You and You always.
Love You, Jesus, You’re my friend.
Life with You will never end.
You are with me through each day,
Giving love and peace always.
You will ne’er abandon me.
From my sin You set me free.
You died on that cruel tree,
So I’d live eternally.
Soon You’re coming back for me;
From this world to set me free;
Live with You eternally.
Oh, what joy that brings to me.
I will walk with You in white;
A pure bride, I’ve been made right
By the blood of Jesus Christ;
Pardoned by His sacrifice.
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