323. ARE YOU LIVING THE WORD?

(The Information & Edification Series – Batch 11)

It is good to spend time STUDYING God’s Word, to grow in the KNOWLEDGE of it and to TELL OTHERS about what you have read and learned. However, as a Christian, the Lord doesn’t want you to just KNOW about his Word as contained in the Bible and to TALK about it but to LIVE his Word.

What does this mean?

Well, to LIVE God’s Word is to OBEY what he tells you to do, as opposed to doing as you please. It is to follow his instructions, his directions and his commands, while abandoning your own ideas, desires, wants and wishes.

This is what it means to be Spirit-led and Spirit-controlled and it is not something that happens magically. It is a choice that you decide to make, to crucify your flesh, to deny yourself, to take up your cross and to allow Jesus Christ, the Lord of the scriptures, to increase, while you and your ego and your self-will decreases.

To live God’s Word by DOING what he says to do is what it means to walk in freedom: To give up what looks like the liberty of your flesh (but which is really bondage to sin), to embrace the liberty that is in the Spirit (which is true freedom from sin).

To live God’s Word is also what it means to be blessed of God. For it is the DOER of the Word of God, not the TALKER or the KNOWER, that is blessed by him.

God calls us therefore to stop just TALKING about his Word and being content to KNOW about his Word but to do something that is rarely practiced, which is to OBEY his Word.

His position is clear on so many issues, as made clear in his Word. It is up to each and everyone of us, to make a personal decision to let go of the sinful will, dictates and lusts of the flesh, be it gossip, malice, immorality, rebellion against authority, anger, pride, self-importance, competitiveness, unforgiveness or whatever it is, to pursue after and submit through OBEDIENCE, to the will of God.

God calls us to lay these things down at the altar, these very things that our hearts desire to cling to and find hard to let go. He requires us to change, to grow, to release our grasp of these fleshly and carnal things, as we pursue after the things that pertain to the Spirit. There is no other way to become spiritually mature than through obedience, through whole-hearted surrender, through a denying of ourselves and the stubborn and rebellious ways, attitudes, behaviors, tendencies and responses that our flesh so love and crave.

Will we as professing Christians answer the call to OBEY or will we continue on the same?

Make no mistake, to OBEY is painful because it requires us to determinedly deny the will of our flesh which wants its own way. It wants to speak evil of that brother and sister. It wants to hold on to unforgiveness. It wants to harbour resentment, bitterness, jealousy and envy. It wants to be considered the most important, the most spiritual and to shine the brightest while suppressing others. It wants to be glorified, to not be told that there is anything wrong with us and that God is pleased with our conduct. But is he really?

To OBEY God by stepping into the domain of DOING not just TALKING about his Word or filling our heads with the knowledge of his Word, requires us to CRUCIFY our flesh. This connotes great pain and our flesh will fight back for survival but conquering it so that we can do the things that please our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father is worth it.

Romans 6:11-13 states:

“…reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

Galatians 5:16-25 also states:

“This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also WALK in the Spirit.”

(Written on 13th September, 2021, added to thereafter)

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