Thoughts to Ponder in Your Walk with the Lord
READ, LINGER, PROCESS…
Paul welcomed exhaustion, suffering, poverty, dangers, and death because they helped him to grow into the image of Christ.
The important task before each of us is to be truthful to ourselves first, so we can be truthful with God. We need to be the person God wants us to be and allow Him to reign over our soul.
Understand this—God knows all about our thinking habits. It is all the negative thinking, the self-thinking we all do that He knows, and has always known, since before the foundations of life were extended from God in creation. God loves us so much, but He hates our fleshly sin nature, so He offers to help us overcome… ourselves.
God Himself filled His creation, then He had to withdraw, to separate from us. We yearn for God. God yearns for us as we were, in full relationship without sin. God loves us so much that He died to restore us to Himself. Think on these things.
Truth is what is in harmony with the nature and will of God. In truth is in Christ. Truth is that which is aligned with God. The believer may worship God, fellowship with God, talk with God, and listen to God any time and any place. How can people, especially believers, not want to be occupied with Christ?
Flesh has no future—it will die when the soul departs. So why are we so consumed by the flesh? Answer: Mankind is born spiritually dead, so we must be born-again spiritually (reborn, new birth). Fill the absence of God in your life by faith, and be refilled with God.
Christ set the standard for resisting temptation and sin, and for living life. He lived by the power of the Holy Spirit. We as believers have the same Holy Spirit dwelling in us. Unbelievers do not have a spirit, and won’t have a spirit without receiving the Holy Spirit by faith in Christ.
The knowledge of science and the laws of creation were placed by God, the same God that wrote the Bible. Many so called facts of science are in reality unproved theory. No truth of science will ever contradict the Bible, else it is untruth—if it does contradict, reject it.
There are many false ideologies in today’s world: Intellectualism, materialism, modernism, liberalism, existentialism, and occultism, just to name a few.
Unfortunately, most people are much more important to themselves than is God.
Individual responsibility in a time of collective failures—this is the message of Second Timothy, which speaks to the individual believer who may be confronted with a church that struggles in the gray, not standing on the distinct teaching of the foundations of our faith.
Eternal life has always been in Jesus Christ. Even to the foreverness of eternity—the forever and ever place. This life eternal is promised to all who believe in Christ (John 3:16-18). Second Timothy expounds on this life eternal and we find the believer is being prepared by the plan of God, based on God’s promises as presented in His eternal written word, so that we become participants with Christ in snatching out the elect and our pattern of life has purpose, all of which gives us peace and perseverance.
Tearless hearts for the Savior do not have the passion necessary to share the suffering of the Savior, but the Holy Spirit does, in spite of ourselves. If our sympathy for unbelievers loses its pang over the years, we have decreased in our passion and must revisit the cross. Be sure your testimony and faith does not wear a mask like the hypocrites.
Faith should be an abiding presence regardless of life’s circumstances because the Lord is an abiding presence in us. We, as believers, should kindle our gifts with Bible doctrine in the Holy Spirit until they become a living flame—a torch in the tunnel-vision of the world—and we must go into the dark tunnels and guide them out. God has given the believer the spirit of power and a sound mind—a peace in the soul—a quiet confidence.
Do we as children of God reach out to believers who have stumbled, or do we turn our backs? What would Christ do?
Life is pride and vanity, folly and insanity. What has become of humanity?
In thought we discovered the importance of incalculable silence.
When we place ourselves above the laws of God, we labor in error, deceiving and being deceived by the self.
The world has crucified the God of whom the world is not worthy.
One could say that spirituality is like the unfolding of a beautiful blossom on an invisible tree of life.
All quotes are by C. S. Craig unless otherwise indicated.