I recently had a conversation with a man about the Word of God. He told me that he’s been a Christian a long time, but he no longer feels the way he used to. He’s challenged by an absence of peace and said the brief moments of peace he now experiences are nothing compared to what he used to encounter. He believes he’s far from where he once was and is looking to get back what he lost. Engaged in certain popular new age practices of meditation and physical stretching, he told me that these give him glimpses of the peace he once knew. He asked me about spiritual practices that he can engage to get back to a place of continual fulfillment, peace, and contentment.
2Peter 1:2-3(NASB20) says, “2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 for His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.” The fulfillment, peace, and contentment we experience in life will always be in proportion to our trust and belief in this passage of 2Peter 1:2-3. There can be no question that the blessings of God through the Lord Jesus Christ are experienced in our lives according to our faith in God’s Word and the promises He has made to us. In order to have faith in God’s Word and the knowledge of Him, we need to know the Word for ourselves.
God tells us in Hebrews 11:6 that without faith, it is impossible to please Him. By this we can know that pleasing God requires us to trust and have faith in Him. There is nothing that you and I could ever do or possess in life that will substitute for the rewards we receive from having faith in God. In truth, our Heavenly Father, Himself, is life’s reward! By pursuing Him through His Word, we are demonstrating that we believe and trust His sovereignty. We are showing Him that we know He alone is worthy to be pursued, praised, worshiped and adored. All glory belongs to Him.
It is impossible to repay God for all that He has done for us. He has determined and decreed that our faith is an acceptable response to Him in gratitude for His manifold blessings, including the greatest blessing of all, the life, sacrifice, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So, the actions, practices, and conversations we engage will either point to our gratitude and faith in God or they will point to something else, and the something else is dangerous business.
1Peter 5:8(NASB20) tells us, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” To be of sober spirit is to get your head in the game about something that deserves your highest attention. We have an enemy, an adversary, and he is on a mission to come through any door we leave open so he can destroy us. Some of our habit patterns, attitudes, mindsets, and confessions run counter to thankfulness. Instead, they suggest that God doesn’t honor His own Word, that He’s not overwhelmingly committed to it or that He doesn’t mind if we don’t honor it.
2Peter 1:3 tells us that God has gifted us everything (All without exception) that relates to life and Godliness, and this is increased in our lives through the TRUE knowledge of God. He’s the One that called us by His own glory and excellence, and our responsibility and privilege is to give that glory back to Him with everything that we do. When we dabble in new age practices or those spearheaded by those who worship idol gods, we have opened a door that doesn’t belong to Jesus Christ and is outside of God’s glory and excellence. Anything that isn’t of God is of satan, and it belongs to satan’s kingdom of darkness. When we dabble with unholy things, we’re going to pay a price, because those things don’t belong to God, they belong to satan. Because we tiptoe into his territory, demonic thoughts reap havoc on our mental and emotional well-being. We must understand when we let satan into our minds and bodies, we forfeit the enduring peace that Jesus Christ offers. We can make an infinitely better choice than that, and we should.
The truth is that the enemy has no power other than the power we give him, and some of us have been forking over our goods to his kingdom for a long time. My experience is that when we tell some believers the truth about what they’re doing and how their undermining their relationship with God, their first response is to offer excuses or tell you about some of the Christ-like things they are doing. “No, I’m just doing it for exercise…” they say, or “I have my hand on my Bible, thinking about Jesus Christ the whole time.” That’s the thinking that got Adam and Eve in so much trouble. God put them in the Garden of Eden, a paradise too wonderous for our imaginations. He told them to be fruitful and multiply and enjoy all that He had provided. There was only one thing that they could not do, and it was to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they disobeyed that command.
God’s Holy Spirit lives in the bodies of believers. 1Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit within us, and that our bodies do not belong to us. We don’t get to do whatever we want with them. They belong to God, and He purchased them with the highest price that could be paid, and that’s the life of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. The blood of Christ was shed for our sins. He redeemed us from the curse the devil was able to land on humanity through Adam and Eve’s sin. We are commanded to reject their betrayal of God and give God the glory He so richly deserves through our faith and commitment.
Galatians 5:1 (NASB20) says, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” We must be exceedingly careful not to invite or yield to demonic influences. Through Jesus Christ, God has set us free from the bondage of darkness and oppression. As children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ, our commitment should be to reject any practice that isn’t covered by the blood of Christ and doesn’t honor his name. Our responsibility and privilege are to give glory to God in all that we do. If it doesn’t bring glory to the Father of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, what’s the point? Our God has equipped us with all spiritual blessings, and our responsibility is to read and study His Word, to meditate on it and pray continually. When this is our motivation and practice, our lives will be pleasing to God and fulfilling and meaningful to us as well. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
New American Standard Bible 2020Copyright (c) 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995, 2020by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, Calif.All rights reserved
“Give All the Glory to God”, written by Vince Mack. Blessing Beads and More© 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
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