These days very few writers talk about the fear of the Lord because I think that they probably don’t understand the topic from God’s perspective in the scripture and because they think it is only an Old Testament concept which is outdated because Jesus came. So, is the topic useful to those who believe in Jesus or is it an outdated concept for Bible believing Christians?
People are born with an innate desire to build relationships and friendships. God made us to be “Social Creatures.” But, what happens if we encounter bad relationships or friendships? These bad encounters can, and often do, hinder our willingness to be open and transparent with people which is a building block in cultivating future relationships. This includes building a healthy friendship with God.
In the first article on healing I talked in great detail about God designing our bodies to self heal and without that design no doctors or medicines would be able to heal us. Secondly, I talked about being in harmony with God in order for his additional blessing in our healing process. Many Christians today have been taught to confess that they are healed when they are walking contrary to how God intended. Confession is a positive element in healing as long as we are walking as God intended. If you have not read the first article, I suggest you do so because I laid out a foundation for how I will proceed with this topic.
This is the third article on myths we believe in. If you have not read the first two, please read them first to understand why I am calling these topics myths. When Christians read the scriptures we take our cues about how to understand what God is saying from so called “Intelligent” people who claim they know Greek and Hebrew words and sentence structure. But, have we been brainwashed to believe false ideas about what God is saying? History is not always right, especially when it comes to scripture.
When you listen to many in the Christian community who profess they believe the Bible is the word of God and the ultimate authority in their lives you might want to dig a little deeper to see if that is in fact the truth or if what they really mean is they support their Christian doctrine with their particular slant. There are many who profess they believe that scripture is the final word in their lives when it is not.
Just because people surrender to Jesus Christ doesn’t mean they are living and thinking like the Lord would desire. The apostle Paul spoke about the need to “NOT” be conformed to the thinking of the world but to be “TRANSFORMED” in our thinking so our choices and actions would be pleasing to the Lord and our lives would be blessed. The problem is that we so often exchange transformation of thinking for learning doctrine, which often hardens our hearts rather than making them softer towards the Lord. Transformation is a process rather than a belief and transformation doesn’t happen without God’s help and our cooperation.
What if we could have more confidence in prayer? What if we could pray with greater confidence and really see things change, rather than just praying with little expectation like too many of have a habit of doing, would you and I pray more or pray less? My belief is we would love to pray with confidence, except much of our praying seems more like wishful thinking than confidence.
If you find some things in scripture that are hard to swallow, or hard to apply, you are not alone. I have walked with God since 1969 and still find some things difficult that God calls me to do or believe. Some things cause me to outright argue with God or at least invoke in me desire to avoid them. Why? Because my salvation is still in progress and God is not through helping me to get a Kingdom mindset rather than a selfish worldly one. This leads me to voice a concern I have with modern preaching and teaching in the body of Christ.
This is now the fourth article exploring whether God changes his mind. What we think about God’s willingness to change things based on how and why we pray makes all the difference in the world as to if we are motivated to pray as we are challenged by scripture to pray. If you have not read articles 1-3 please do so before reading this one.
This is the second part in a series on the “Myths” we as Christians have embraced as if they were biblical when in fact scripture speaks otherwise. The hard part is to know what is biblical and what is not in our beliefs when the only sources we rely on are sermons on Sunday morning or various books pastors might recommend. No pastor or teacher has a market on the truth of scripture and that includes me so what I’m advocating is to study the scripture and not just rely of what others say just because they are good pastors or good teachers.
