Friday, September 30, 2011
God-Centered
Living
To know and do
God’s will, you must deny self and return to A God-centered life.
Part of the book
of Genesis is the record of God’s accomplishing His purposes through Abraham. It is not the record of Abraham’s walk with
God. The focus of the Bible is God.
The essence of sin is a shift from God-centeredness to
self-centeredness. The essence of
salvation is denying self instead of affirming self. We must deny ourselves and return to
God-centeredness in our lives. Then God
has us in a place where He will accomplish His eternal purposes through me.
This
is a hard concept for me. Not so much
the denying of myself but the not affirming myself. I think it’s because I have spent so many
years in therapy learning how to affirm myself.
I don’t disagree with this I just don’t understand the line between
affirming myself and not putting myself down (I don’t even know if this makes
any sense, my head is still working this out).
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A Self-Centered
Life
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A
God-Centered Life
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Above
I have highlighted in yellow the things I am, in green, where I am gaining
understanding and in red where I still have a way to go before I am living a
God centered life. As I can see from
examining this list I still have a way to go.
My definition
of:
Self-centered: When I look to myself and my experiences to assess a
situation and decide how to act. It is
also focusing on what John C. Mac Iver has done instead of what God has done
for and through me.
God-centered: Is looking to
God and His purposes and will and trying to see things from a God perspective
and then decide how to act.
Verse describing
God-centeredness:
2 Chronicles
14:11: 11 Then Asa
called to the LORD
his God and said, "LORD, there is no one like you to help the powerless
against the mighty. Help us, O LORD our
God, for we rely on you, and in
your name we have come
against this vast army. O LORD, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you."
These
passages are about the same guy!
Verses
describing Self-centeredness:
2 Chronicles
16:1-3: 1 In the thirty-sixth year of Asa's reign Baasha king of Israel went up
against Judah and fortified Ramah to prevent anyone from leaving or entering
the territory of Asa king of Judah. 2 Asa then took the silver
and gold out of the treasuries of the LORD's temple and of his own palace and
sent it to Ben-Hadad king of Aram, who was ruling in Damascus. 3 "Let there be a
treaty between me and you," he said, "as
there was between my father and your father. See, I am sending you silver and
gold. Now break your treaty with Baasha king of Israel so he will withdraw from
me."
I
like these two passages because they describe me and how I react to
situations. My usual way of reacting has
been to rely on myself and my experiences to guide me. However, increasingly I am finding myself
relying on God and being more kingdom minded, and reminding myself of the verse Jeremiah 19:11 “For I know the plans I have for
you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to
harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” When things seem like they are going to be
really bad for me and may even change the life I now so enjoy, I remember that
I have given it all over to God and I can do this with confidence because I
believe Jeremiah 19:11!
Self-centeredness
is a subtle trap because it makes sense from a human perspective. Like King Asa, I can avoid it at one time and
fall into its trap at another. God-centeredness
requires the daily death of John C. Mac Iver and submission to God.
John 12:24-25: 24 I tell you the truth,
unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single
seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 The man who loves his life
will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
I
guess I’m going to keep my life for eternity!
To live a
God-centered life, I must focus my life on God’s purposes, not my own
plans. I must seek to view situations
from God’s perspective rather than from my own distorted human outlook. When God starts to do something in the world,
He takes the initiative to reveal His will to people. For some divine reason He
has chosen to involve His people in accomplishing His purposes.
Let’s use Noah
as an example. What about his plans to
serve God? They would not make much
sense in light of the coming destruction, would they? Noah was not calling God in to help him
accomplish what he was dreaming of doing for God. God
never asks people to dream up something to do for Him. We do not sit down and dream what we want to
do for God and then call God in to help us accomplish it. The pattern in Scripture is that we submit
ourselves to God. Then God shows us what
He is about to do, or we watch to see what God is already doing around us and
join him.
What was the most meaningful
statement or Scripture I read today?:
We
do not sit down and dream what we want to do for God and then call God in to
help us accomplish it.
My Prayer is:
Daddy, I realize
that you do not want me to dream up my own plans for what I want to do for
you. Instead you want me to look to You
for what You are already doing or wait for You to tell me what You want. Please help me to do that and to stop making my
own way. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.
What does God want me to do in
response to today’s study?
I believe God wants
me to wait.
The Memory verse for this unit
is:
“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name
of the LORD our God.”
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The doctor told me that I had multiple ulcers and wanted to know where all my stress was coming from. I told him I have multiple relatives.
-John C. Mac Iver