Oswald Chambers, that grand writer from England, said God’s not interested in our doings but in our character…it is the only thing we can take with us into eternity. Think about that…we could work/serve Him all our lives, doing all kinds of wonderful, kind things and have them count for nothing when we appear at the Judgment Seat of Christ. And why?????? Because He is interested primarily in what we “are”…what we have allowed the Holy Spirit to accomplish IN us! We kind of loose sight of the fact that we are born in sin, with a very active sin nature that just about always wants us to do what we shouldn’t. And of course that starts with our thought processes…think it, entertain it, finally do it.
There are lots of places in the Word that speak to the renewing of the mind. If anything needs a makeover, our minds do. Especially when you think of them as a computer with a humongus hard drive. Everything that gets fed in, gets filed away for future reference. And all those accumulated thots and ideas are like filters, through which we run our experiences and observations, good, bad, somewhere in between. They definitely color our actions and re-actions to life situations, how we handle most things. When most of our input is negative and ugly, we see most of life from a negative and/or ugly perspective, then we act accordingly. We need to “unlearn” those points of view and the only one to enable us to do that is the Holy Spirit. That’s probably the hardest part of His job…bringing us to the place that we can see our bad thinking and behavior. When we mature to the point we can actually be aware of our crookedness and sinful thinking, we are making good progress down the path to fullness in Christ.
I once read an old tract that was called,”others may, you may not..” I only had one and lost it some place along the way. The point of it was that God is preparing us for whatever place He has for us to serve. Most places are unique to the one serving so it makes sense that the training would be equally unique. What God will allow one follower to do, He may not let you do. Why? You may never know until you are face to face with Him. But…He knows why you can’t, and you may be sure there is a reason. Obedience…one of the most critical character qualities but obviously one that matters very much to Him…obedience. Do you think Abraham WANTED to kill Isaac???? I’m sure He did not, but he followed the instructions God gave him, to the letter, without understanding. Could you? Could I? I wonder…
Another part of character changing is learning to “not go with the Flo.” We are living in a time period that the Bible describes as “calling right wrong and wrong right,” but that doesn’t mean we must do what we know is wrong, even just “a little” wrong. So many of God’s instructions for us, especially for family life, are completely turned around. Marriage has become “unnecessary” in general. Living together or multiple relationships are common. Divorce is commonplace. Affairs, one night stands, all are done everyday. And the affects on any children is disasterous in most cases. No wonder our character is so warped and twisted when all around us is totally contrary to what God has instructed in His Word. He says, “one man, one woman, for life.” Most of us don’t want to go through the character-building exercise of working through a marriage, creating security for children, actually making a family…with His help all the way. Character…it isn’t changed and built overnight, it takes time and a lot of hard work, but I believe eternity will tell us, it was worth it.
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