“Let’s get serious about where we really are in our walk with God. Ask yourself some hard questions, be honest with yourself, and locate your spiritual growth as measured from God’s perspective instead of yours. Questions like, am I walking with God or merely sitting in His presence?”
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By James Holland, Sr.
Let’s get serious about where we really are in our walk with God. Ask yourself some hard questions, be honest with yourself, and locate your spiritual growth as measured from God’s perspective instead of yours. Questions like, am I walking with God or merely sitting in His presence? Many today are guilty of singing “standing on the promises” while they are merely “sitting on the premises”. We must be mature enough to judge ourselves by God’s work, not by our emotions, our carnal thinking, or someone else’s opinions.
I read the story one time of a family that had moved into their first home. While moving in, they discovered a yardstick in one of the closets. Once they had settled in, they began the task of measuring the windows for curtains. They used the yardstick they had found in the house. However, much to their dismay, when the curtains arrived and they began the task of putting them up, the found that none of them fit properly. Believing that the clerk of the store had made a mistake, they proceeded to return them. Yet, once at the store, they re-measured them and found that they were the exact dimensions they had previously ordered. After much heated conversation, they returned home to try again. The results were the same, and the curtains didn’t fit. The husband went to his work truck and got his measuring tape to re-measure yet again. Once he had measured the windows with another tape, he found that the yardstick that had been left behind was apparently a trick yardstick. The measurements on it were not correct! That is exactly what Satan wants to do to us. He wants to give us a trick yardstick to measure our lives, only to find out in the end that they don’t fit properly. Don’t ever get caught in the trap of measuring yourself against someone else. Use what is always correct, and that is the word of God.
Neither can we judge our spiritual success by our emotions. We all have them. In fact, God gave them to us. Yet, God tells us to walk by faith, not feelings. Our emotions, as great as they are, are not a good indicator to how we are doing. Our emotions will deceive us. When things are good, our emotions will try to convince us that things will always be good. When things are bad, our emotions will magnify the difficulty and sorrow, and try to convince us that not only are things bad, but that they are not going to get better. This is not true, so we must walk by faith based on the word of God, not on emotion. People that live in an emotionally based relationship will eventually crash and burn. Most of them do not need a devil to help them or anyone else. They will accomplish this on their own because their foundation is not sure. Satan is always ready to assassinate and rob us of God’s will. This is easy to do with emotional based servants. They believe that if they don’t feel a certain way, God isn’t there; or if the music doesn’t reach a certain pitch, God isn’t moving. When trouble comes and their emotions do a turn around on them, they find themselves in a great dilemma.
Jesus promised His disciples three things in this life. He said they would be wildly happy, completely fearless, and constantly in trouble. The question isn’t will we have difficulty and trouble, but rather how will we respond to the trouble (John 6: 47- 48, John 16:33).
