Skip to main content

Principled Life

Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for? (Mark 8:36)

Let him lead - how do we actually do that? Most of us actually believe we want him to lead, but we have absolutely no clue how on earth we accomplish this in our lives. We 'intend' to let him lead and then all of a sudden, like an alien possesses our soul, we are doing what we want to do and forget all about letting him take the lead. What happened? It wasn't that we weren't desiring to let him lead - it was that we just didn't know how to do it. We are going to unpack this a bit, and it may not be what you want to hear, but I think it is what we need to hear!

The more principles we learn from the Word of God, the less we have to pray about what to do in life. The less likely we are to get off track with wrong choices. That isn't rocket science, but believe it or not, there are hundreds of believers who barely know God's Word. They hear it at church on Sunday, but they don't get into it on their own. Why? They don't realize how important it is to get into it and let it get into them. Jesus tells us to follow him and he will show us how to live with him in control - forsaking all the effort toward 'self-help' we may want to proclaim we are embracing.

Principles found in the Word of God are what will sustain us in times when we face suffering. Wonder why you cannot 'embrace suffering'? You likely haven't embraced God's principles because you have allowed yourself the time to actually get into his Word and allow his Word to get into you. We trade the principles of God for the principles this world offers us through media, self-help books, and social media posts. What? You mean those principles aren't trustworthy? No, they aren't! Even when the thing we are studying is based upon the Word, we aren't 'in the Word' until we test that 'study' against what the Word says!

Do you think God just wants us to trust every 'fly by night' set of principles that come along? Absolutely not! In fact, he tells us to explore him - his principles - so that we can be so acquainted with his truth that every element of truth that we hear resounds and impacts our lives; every untruth that we hear becomes so apparent that we discard it immediately. The principles we learn today will protect us tomorrow when we are exposed to things we are not to embrace at all. Do you realize we keep 'lists' of what we believe God is and how he acts? These lists are not always accurate, though. When we don't get into the principles of God's Word and learn who he is, we will have an 'inaccurate' list of his plans, purpose, and power.

If we want to follow, we have to let him lead. If we want to let him lead, we have to get to know how he leads. How do we learn this? You got it - you get into his Word and you get to know him. The principles of God's Word aren't just 'good news' - they are evidence of how he moves, what he prioritizes, how he sees the world (and you), and even what he expects of each of us. Maybe that is why we avoid the Word so much - we don't want to discover his priorities because they might just impact ours. We might not like it, but we need to discover this stuff, my friends! Just sayin!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What did obedience cost Mary and Joseph?

As we have looked at the birth of Christ, we have considered the fact he was born of a virgin, with an earthly father so willing to honor God with his life that he married a woman who was already pregnant.  In that day and time, a very taboo thing.  We also saw how the mother of Christ was chosen by God and given the dramatic news that she would carry the Son of God.  Imagine her awe, but also see her tremendous amount of fear as she would have received this announcement, knowing all she knew about the time in which she lived about how a woman out of wedlock showing up pregnant would be treated.  We also explored the lowly birth of Jesus in a stable of sorts, surrounded by animals, visited by shepherds, and then honored by magi from afar.  The announcement of his birth was by angels - start to finish.  Mary heard from an angel (a messenger from God), while Joseph was set at ease by a messenger from God on another occasion - assuring him the thing he was about to do in marrying Mary wa

A brilliant display indeed

Love from the center of who you are ; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply ; practice playing second fiddle. Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. (Romans 12:9-12) Integrity and Intensity don't seem to fit together all that well, but they are uniquely interwoven traits which actually complement each other. "Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it." God asks for us to have some intensity (fervor) in how we love (from the center of who we are), but he also expects us to have integrity in our love as he asks us to be real in our love (don't fake it). They are indeed integral to each other. At first, we may only think of integrity as honesty - some adherence to a moral code within. I believe there is a little more to integrity than meets the eye. In the most literal sense,

Do me a favor

If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. (Philippians 2:1-4) Has God's love made ANY difference in your life? What is that difference? Most of us will likely say that our lives were changed for the good, while others will say there was a dramatic change. Some left behind lifestyles marked by all manner of outward sin - like drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, or even thievery. There are many that will admit the things they left behind were just a bit subtler - what we can call inward sin - things like jealousy,