That He Might Be Repaid.

    Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
    “For who has known the mind of the Lord,
        or who has been his counselor?”
    “Or who has given a gift to him
        that he might be repaid?”
    For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
(Romans 11:33-36 ESV)

You aren't awesome. You aren't a good person. You're not basically a good person with a good heart who just occasionally does bad things. You aren't righteous. You don't have what it takes to be acceptable to God. You don't do good and you don't deserve anything from God.

I get all those mean and depressing statements from Romans 3.

  as it is written:
    “None is righteous, no, not one;
        no one understands;
        no one seeks for God.
    All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
        no one does good,
        not even one.”
    “Their throat is an open grave;
        they use their tongues to deceive.”
    “The venom of asps is under their lips.”
        “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
    “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
        in their paths are ruin and misery,
    and the way of peace they have not known.”
        “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
(Romans 3:10-18 ESV) 

You are part of the "no one". No one is righteous. No one seeks God. No one does good not even one. NO ONE is basically a good person. You see, a lot of people think they are good and they just mess up every once in a while. A lot of people think that because of their good deeds God owes them something. The point of the passage in Romans 11 is that God owes you nothing. You can never do anything to make an infinitely perfect God owe you something.

“Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” You can't earn your way to God. You can not do anything to make God love you, because everything you have is a gift from God (including your faith and salvation).  God made everything and that means that nothing you have can be worthy of God.

"For from him and through him and to him are all things." In other words, God made all things and he keeps all things going. You can't be good enough to please a perfect God. It's like a little kid trying to repay his dad for all his dad has ever spent on him with the allowance his dad gave him; it just doesn't work. Doing good things so that God will bless you doesn't work. You can't be good enough to earn God's favor.

At this point you may be thinking something like, "that's not very fair. Why would God make us in a way that keeps us from him? How can God be so angry with sin if he knows that no one is righteous?" The answer to questions like that is found in verse 33. "How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!" God is the judge and you are not. God is the one who made you and now you want to turn around and judge him? You, who is not righteous, want to tell a perfectly righteous God that he's not fair? God's judgements are sometimes confusing to us but they are always good. It's ok to ask questions and try and figure out what God is doing, but it's not ok for an imperfect man to judge a perfect God.

So, in light of all this the question now becomes, how do I please God? It's impossible to please him through your good deeds. You can't live a good enough life to please him. I can't be righteous enough to seek good. You must be completely perfect to reach God, and no one is perfect.

The only way to please God, the only way to be righteous, is to receive the gifted righteousness of Jesus Christ. By becoming a Christian through faith and baptism, you become righteous and perfect before God.

      For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)

Here's how this works. Jesus Christ came to earth so that you could be righteous and acceptable before God. He did this not because you earned it but because he loves you. When he died, the sins of the world were placed upon him and he bore the punishment you should have.  Jesus died the death you deserve, and because of that you can become the righteousness of God; you can be saved.

If you are a christian then you continue to live by this principle. You don't become a Christian and then work to repay him. Being saved means that Christ repaid all of your debt, every little bit. You don't add to your righteousness through works because Christ has given you complete righteousness. When you do a good work it isn't to earn favor with God, it's simply because you love him. "To him be glory forever. Amen."

Cry Like A Christian

 ^{Psalm 42
1} As the deer pants for streams of water,
   so my soul pants for you, O God.
² My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
   When can I go and meet with God?
³ My tears have been my food
   day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
   “Where is your God?”
⁴ These things I remember
   as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go with the multitude,
   leading the procession to the house of God,
with shouts of joy and thanksgiving
   among the festive throng.
 ⁵ Why are you downcast, O my soul?
   Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
   for I will yet praise him,
   my Savior and ⁶ my God.
   My soul is downcast within me;
   therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
   the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.
⁷ Deep calls to deep
   in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
   have swept over me.
 ⁸ By day the LORD directs his love,
   at night his song is with me—
   a prayer to the God of my life.
 ⁹ I say to God my Rock,
   “Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
   oppressed by the enemy?”
¹⁰ My bones suffer mortal agony
   as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
   “Where is your God?”
 ¹¹ Why are you downcast, O my soul?
   Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
   for I will yet praise him,
   my Savior and my God.

Psalm 42 is the honest cry of a very depressed man. The writer was a man who once had it all, "How I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng."(4) This great leader has become a man of a downcast soul. He once used to lead God's people with shouts of joy, but now he is a man of sorrow, of pain, of tears, of bitterness, and of mourning. The great spiritual leader is now the one who cries out in desperation, "Why have you forgotten me?"(9)

Life with God is by no means a life without pain; it is an eternal life without pain. In this life, we have hardships and God doesn't just take them all away. Living for Christ means when suffering comes, we approach it in the way Jesus did. Jesus prayed for the cup to pass from him; he wanted to be spared from the pain of death on the cross, so he earnestly prayed but accepted God's perfect will.
 
Jesus remembered who God was and dealt with his pain. When we are in pain we need to deal with it in the right way.  The psalmist when depressed said, "I will yet praise him."(5) When he cried all the time, he still said, "His song is with me."(8)


The only way to deal with suffering is to turn to the Lord. Easier said then done, right? It's easy to quote something like, "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble"(Psalm 46:1), but quite another to believe it. I think this is why the writer tells himself to "put your hope in God"(5,11). He has the same trouble we all do trusting in God.

The key to trusting in God in the times of trouble is to consistently remember who he is and what he has done. The writer clings to God, his hope and salvation. People taunt him, he is weak, he feels apart from God, and he can't stop crying, even with so much pain he turns to the Lord. In fact, his only cure for depression is remembering who God is, "My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you."


 "Therefore" is never a throw away word. Because his soul is downcast, he remembers God. Because he is in pain, he turns to Jesus. Because of his tears, he praises his savior. His pain always turned him to the Lord.

If we can grow in the attitude of the psalmist, not only will suffering be easier to handle, but God will be shown to others through us.

Are you crying like a Christian?

Show Me Your Truth

Psalm 25:4-5
Show me your ways, O LORD  teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
When I read the Bible, I do it with doctrinal glasses. I read it with my own personal theology in place. I think this is a practice we all do to some extent, but I also think it’s a dangerous one. We pick up beliefs of the church we attend, or of our family, or from the books we read. Many of the beliefs you’ve learned about God and the Bible are probably true, but some may not be.
When I read the Bible, I’m always inserting my own opinions into the text. If a difficult or challenging passage comes up I’ll say something like, “What Jesus really meant is...” or “God couldn’t possibly be saying that.” It’s a dangerous trap we fall into, but it’s one that is so cleverly hidden and so easy to fall into. The Devil loves it when we take the Word and turn it into my word. Christ loves it “...when you hold to my teaching...”(John 8:31). Jesus says his word is truth, and the truth will set you free.
Scripture is like a prisoner of war. If you torture it enough it will say whatever you what. When we look at the Bible with our own preconceived theology and beliefs, we take away some of the power. Christ wants you to be set free, and only the truth will set you free. Your own personal version of what you think the truth really means is not what sets you free. When we put our own spin on Scripture, we are cheating ourselves from the freedom we could have.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)
I think the reason we do this so often is because we get uncomfortable with what God is trying to tell us, so instead we tell God, “I know you said this, but here is what you really meant.” It is so foolish when we humans try to correct our perfect Creator. To try to correct God is to say he is not perfect. When the Word challenges you, it is doing what it’s supposed to do. It is meant to judge the thoughts an attitudes of your heart. God’s Word is meant to show you who He is, who you are, and how you should be. It reveals the problems in your heart. But we get comfortable with the way we are and we don’t want to change, because change is painful.
If you are ready to read God’s Word and not avoid the change that will come with it, then try this: Think about the verses of the psalm I quoted earlier.
Show me your ways, O LORD  teach me your paths; guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.
Think about these words often. Read them Before you do your normal Bible reading. Pray them to God. Keep reminding yourself that you are reading the Bible, not to affirm your own beliefs, but to learn the ways of the Lord. If you have the right attitude about God’s truth, it will be much harder for Satan to trap you. You will learn to recognize when you are changing the meaning, and you can stop. Always remember to pray for the Lord's truth to be made known in your life. 

100%

What is your heart?
It was once said, "The heart is the state of reason and will. The heart is the source, or spring of motives; the seat of passions; the center of thought processes; the spring of conscience.”
It's your personality, your will, mind, emotions, and your conscience; whatever is in your heart is what you will become. It is so profoundly affected by what comes in and takes root there, which is why we need to fill our hearts with God and not with worldly things.
In Proverbs, it talks a lot about the things of our heart. In 2:10 it talks about wisdom, evil and deceit in 6:14, lust, in verse 25, joy, in 12:20, folly, 12:23, anxiousness, in 12:25, happiness, in 15:13, Knowledge, and pride in 16:5. And many more.
As you can see, both the good and the bad things in life come from our hearts. In the Old Testament alone the word heart appears 855 times. What we let in our hearts is very important.
We need to commit all of our heart to the Lord, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”
God doesn't want 50%, or 70%, or even 99.9%; God wants all 100%
Does the hymn go, "Seek ye second the kingdom of God..."? No it says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God..." We are told to keep Jesus first in our lives and we can only do that if our hearts our 100% committed to him.
So we need to give our hearts to God, but how?
First we need to guard our hearts from sin. Martin Luther put it this way:
"To fight against sin is to fight against the devil, the world, and oneself. The fight against oneself is the worst fight of all."
We are called to fight all of these things; we need to deny ourselves daily and take up our cross.
A man named Charles Bridges said the heart is the citadel, and we must be careful to guard it:
“Let it be closely garrisoned. Let the sentinel never be sleeping at it's post...If the citadel is taken, the whole town must surrender. If the heart is seized, the whole man-the affections, desires, motives, pursuits-all will be yielded up. The heart is the vital part of the body. A wound here is instant death. Thus, Spiritually as well as naturally, out of the heart are the issues of life. It is the great vital spring of the soul, the fountains of actions, the center of the seat of principle, both sin and holiness. The natural is a fountain of poison. The purified heart is a wall of living water. As is the fountain, so must be the streams. As the heart, so must be the mouth, the eyes, the feet. Therefore, above all else, keep your heart. Guard the fountain, lest the waters be poisoned...”
Above all else we must keep our hearts.
We need to get close to God.
Lets say you have a little child: he's a good kid, he's respectful, kind, obedient, and he loves his parents. But then he starts hanging around with a foul mouthed, rude, mean kid. Pretty soon your nice, kind kid is going to act like the rude one. He will start to mouth off to his parents, he won't do what he's told, and he'll throw fits.
Who the kid spent the most time with effected him, what he let in his heart affected him.
What are you spending the most time with? Your TV? Your computer? Your friends and family? Or are you spending the most time with God?
Whatever you spend your time with is what you will grow like. Make sure the things you spend your time on are good, and make sure your spending time with God.
How do spend time with God? It's easy.
Listen to him, you don't need to hear him physically to listen. Read his word! Sometimes we act like a young art student who said, "I can't learn to paint till I get a teacher. All I have is a book called How to Paint by Leonardo Da Vinci." He had the teaching of a master. So do we. Read it. Study it. Learn from it.
We also need to pray. God speaks to us though his word, and we need to talk to him through prayer.
Praise him.  You don't need to be at church to sing songs to him. You can sing anywhere, in your car, in the shower, or, if you're like me, while cleaning a pig pen. But singing is not the only way to praise him, tell God how awesome He is, He already knows but doesn't it make you happy to get a compliment?
Lastly, be honest. Tell God you’re not as close to him as you should be, ask him to come in to you, and help you be more committed.

Check Your Temperature

"Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain." - A.W. Tozer
“ ...What a a beautiful gift it is to have the one you love look you in the eye and say, ‘I love you. Not your beauty, your money, your family, or your car. Just you.’ Can you say that to God?” -Francis Chan
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.  You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” -Revelation 3:15-17
There is a deadly disease infecting our churches. I see it all the time. There isn’t one person who is immune, but there are a few who survive this cancer and live to tell about it.
I’m talking about complacency.
So many of us “Christians” have become lukewarm. We lack the true desire, love and devotion our Savior demands. We want a nice comfortable balanced life. We go to church, we do good things and give to charity now and again, but these things are not what being a true Christian is all about.
Francis Chan writes in his book Crazy Love:
“Lukewarm people say they love Jesus, and He is, indeed, a part of their lives. But only a part. They give Him a section of their time, their money, and their thoughts, but he isn’t allowed to control their lives.”
Christ doesn’t want lukewarm followers, He wants people who are fully devoted to doing his will. To be a Christian is to follow Christ. Following Christ involves taking up your cross daily, denying yourself, and loving the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Are you doing these things? Can you honestly say Jesus is all you need? Would you forsake everything and follow Him? Do you love Him with every fiber of your being? Sadly, most people do not. Even in the church, it is hard to find truly devoted Christ followers. Most people just don’t think God is worth it, though they never say it. Most people never truly know God, nor do they want to.
Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian. Following Jesus with all your heart makes you a Christian.
God doesn’t want fake love. Fake love is love that involves little or no sacrifice and commitment. Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” If you are not obeying His commands, you do not love Him. It may sound harsh and judgmental, but that is what the Word says. We often get confused about what is necessary to get to Heaven. Do we need to do good works? Do we only need to say a prayer? Do we really need to give God our lives?
I’m not God and I’m in no place to judge others salvation, but what I think God really cares about is our hearts. He really does want you and me to give Him everything. If we have given Him everything, we will have no problem obeying His commands. In fact ,following his will becomes a joy. God wants you to step out of the crowd and be His. Only His. He doesn’t want you to be a lukewarm person, who is partly in God and partly in the world. He wants you to be hot, to be on fire! You must burn for Christ!
God is the Greatest good. Actually, he is the only good. The love he has for you reaches further than the universe. He doesn’t need to love you, but he does. He is perfect and chooses to love us imperfect, foolish beings. What he wants back is our love. He wants us to live a life where our love for him is shown to all the world, and His love for us. I know it’s not easy, but a time is coming when we won’t even have to try to love Him. We will see Him face to face. We will be made perfect, and be in perfect unity with our creator.  

My Goal

As Christians, I think many of us lose sight of what this life is about. We think this life is all about us. Arrogantly, we assume that if we live good lives, God will bless us. If I am good, God will give me a big house, a nice car, and a smokin’ hot spouse, right? Wrong. Christ has actually promised us trouble and persecution. In the words of Jesus, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).
This world is not our home, and we must always remember that. If our focus is set upon our creator, we will have joy even in our trouble, for we know our reward is not of this world. When you see the rich person living the good life remember that for the unsaved, this world is the closest they will ever get to Heaven, but for us, the Christ follower, it is the closest we will get to Hell.
My goal in this blog is to help believers grow in their relationship with Christ, and to focus their lives on him. I'm not the smartest, or the most eloquent person, but I love the Lord. If he can use me in someway to help someone, then my efforts will be worth it.
If you have any questions about the Bible or living for Christ I would love to hear them. Like I said, I’m not the smartest, but I will do my very best to find you an answer from the Word. If you have any comments or questions shoot me an E-mail. driverbenjamin92@gmail.com