BELIEVE Review Part 3
May 13, 2016
Jeff Lampl
In part three of
BELIEVE (we called it PEELED), we learned the following 10 things about what God wants me to Become.
1. We are to become loving. Love is not a feeling, it is an act of the
will, especially when I don’t feel like it.
God is training believers to engage in actions that are directed to
highest and best for others, regardless of the degree of difficulty and
regardless of whether or not we feel like it.
Feelings follow actions. This
will inevitable result in sacrifice and suffering, yet that is part and parcel
of the joyful, higher life offered to us by God. (1 John 4:10-12)
2. We are to become joyful. Joy is not happiness, nor is it something
that comes and goes, as do amusement and despair. Rather joy is a state of being that sees,
beyond all circumstances, that God is at work and that He is reworking even the
worst of things for good. We are to
choose joy and as well do intentionally it will, over time, become a permanent
state of being. This state of being is
contagious. (John 15:11)
3. We are to
become peaceful. Like joy, peace is
a state of being. It is a state of
trust that all is well in God’s good world.
It is the inner sense that I am very, very small and God is very big,
and that He’s “got this”, whatever problem “this” might be. It is the state, regardless of my fears,
that God is working things out according to my best interest, even and
especially when it doesn’t “feel” like it.
In doing so we create a sense of God’s peace in others. (Phil 4:6-7)
4. We are to be self-controlled. God uses the everyday temptations of normal
life and uses them to train us to say “no” to the things that separate us from Him,
and yes to the things that connect us to him.
This means “missing out” on what others binge on and regret, and
entering in to things most people devalue yet unknowingly crave, things like
silence and solitude and mental and physical heath and purposeful work, all of
which are found in time with and relationship with God. (Titus 2:11-13)
5. We are to
be people who live in a hope that cannot be quenched. Not, “I hope so”, but with calmly inner
peaceful conviction, I am simply certain that I have a joyful are with God, and
that everyone I know is being attended to by God to bring them to a secure and
eternal future with God. Therefore my
hope for another is never quenched. God
gives up on no one. (Heb
6:19-20)
6. We are to
become patient. This means that
life is about a whole lot more than me.
Impatience, my insistence that the world revolved around me,
recedes and patience, the knowledge that
what God want’s done won’t be hindered by “those others who slow me down”. I am learning to be “all there” in whatever
circumstance I’m in know that God wants me to view others as valued children of
God, not as hindrances to my agenda. (Prov
14:29)
7. We are to
be kind. In a world of criticism,
blame, complaint, irritability and impatience, I am to treat each person at
each moment with kindness, with a smile that says, you matter more to me (and
God) that whatever inconvenience I am experiencing. In doing so the believer “shines like a star
in the universe” (1 Thessalonians 5:15)
8. We are to be faithful. Though it is true that none of us can ever
achieve perfect faithfulness to God, it is also true that God exhibits perfect
faithfulness to us. This is the starting
point for the Christian. As I grow in
the knowledge that I am loved and not condemned, that I can trust God’s
faithfulness to me in Jesus Christ, I also grow in trust and therefore I am
willing to risk trusting, faithful actions that display a growing, living,
acted out faith in God.
(Proverbs 3:3,4)
(Proverbs 3:3,4)
9. I am to
grown in gentleness. Because God
is gentle, believers are to be gentle.
As believers we don’t have to “force fit” anything. We can speak the truth that people need to
hear, but volume and forcefulness are not the same thing as effectiveness. Loving, gentle, kind, genuine, truthful care
for others is heard and received whereas impatient, forcefulness is not. (Philippians 4:5)
10. I am to
grow in humility. We are told humble
ourselves before God and He will lift us up.
We are also told that when any of us feels humble we can be quite sure
that pride has overtaken us. Nor is
humility thinking less of yourself in self-deprecating ways, rather actual
humility is not thinking about yourself at all.
(Philippians 2:3,4)
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