Seeking After the Lord With All of Your Heart

There are two themes that you will see repeated over and over many of our articles. The first theme is the extreme importance that each and every Christian enter into a full surrender with the Lord so that He can then enter them into His perfect will for their lives.

The second theme that you will see repeated over and over again is the extreme importance that each and every Christian seek to establish a good, close, intimate, personal relationship with the Lord.

When you really stop and think about the big picture and what is really most important in this life, and then study the Bible to see where all of our priorities should be set at in this life - there is one special message and revelation that comes jumping off all the pages of the Bible. This one special message and revelation is that God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit are looking to establish and make a direct, one-on-one, intimate, personal relationship with each person He has created.

God knew beforehand that Adam and Eve were going to blow it in the Garden of Eden. God knew beforehand that every man and every woman that would be born after them would all turn out to be unholy sinners in His sight - and that none of us would ever be good enough or righteous enough to be able to enter into His kingdom on our own merits or on our own good works.

At this point, God could have easily given up on the entire human race after the fall of Adam and Eve, but for some strange reason, He chose not to do so. Why?

When you really stop to think about what unholy sinners we all really are, and how fallen and corrupt our human nature really is, you have to wonder - what does God see in any of us that makes us so redeemable in His sight?

Why would God the Father go to such extreme and painful lengths to bring us all back to Himself by sending down His one and only Son Jesus Christ to our cursed earth to go through the worst and most horrible form of physical death that anyone could have possibly undergone at the time He came down to our world - crucifixion by nails?

For God the Father to go to such an extreme and painful length to get us all back to Himself shows us only one possible thing - and that one thing is how much our God really, truly and unconditionally loves each man and each woman He has ever created.

There is no way that God the Father is going to send down and sacrifice His one and only Son on a cross if He didn't have some kind of a maximum, intense, passionate, jealous, all-consuming type of fire love for each person He has ever created.

The fact that God and Jesus would ever allow this kind of scenario to unfold just to be able to save us and bring us back into Their hands and good graces is truly a maximum kind of intense and unconditional love that our human minds have a hard time in really being able to fully grasp. This kind of total, complete, and unconditional perfect love is beyond our ability to fully understand or comprehend, especially in the type of world we live in today.

So why does God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit have this kind of an intense and passionate love for each and everyone of us since we have all been proven to be such unworthy and unholy sinners in Their sight? What exactly do They see in all of us that makes us so redeemable and so pardonable in Their sight? God is obviously seeing something in all of us that is making us salvageable in His sight, otherwise He would have never wasted His time sending His Son Jesus down to our earth to save us.

After studying the Bible from start to finish, I believe there is one main reason that God and Jesus have gone to such extreme and painful lengths to bring us all back to Themselves - and that one main reason is for intimate fellowship.

I believe the main reason that God created the first man and the first woman was for intimate fellowship - and God was not only wanting intimate fellowship with Adam and Eve, but He was also going to want it with every man and every woman that would follow after them.

Though Adam and Eve blew it for every man and woman that would be born after them, God still has not changed His mind from what his original intentions were. God still has this incredible perfect and unconditional love for each one of us, and He has now made a way for all of us to be able to receive that love - and that way is through His Son and the Blood that His Son has personally shed for each one of us on the cross.

The Blood that Jesus has personally shed for each and everyone of us now gives us entrance back into the kingdom of God the Father. Our spiritual relationship with God the Father, which was completely torn and severed with the first sin of Adam and Eve, has now been fully restored through the Blood of Jesus Christ.

We have now all been made spiritually whole and complete again if we are willing to accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. We have now come full circle again! We have now got back what Adam and Eve lost in their first original paradise. Our spiritual relationship has now been fully restored back with God the Father.

Now that we have come full circle again with God the Father, there is now one more thing that each Christian must decide on in this life.

The veil has now been torn apart between us and God. There are now no more walls, barriers, hindrances and roadblocks between us and God. There is now nothing but clear and smooth sailing ahead of us as far as our own personal relationship with God is concerned. The Bible tells us that we are now all free to approach the throne of God anytime we want for prayer and intimate communication with complete confidence and boldness.

God is now waiting with wide and open arms for all of us to approach Him. And what exactly is God waiting for? Intimate fellowship, intimate prayer and communication, intimate dialogue and conversations about anything and everything, and intimate sharing of your most personal, private and secret thoughts.

Bottom line - God is looking for seekers! God is looking for those who will not be afraid to try and establish a one-on-one, personal, on-fire, passionate, intense and willing to tell-all and share-all love relationship with Him.

God is looking for a maximum intense kind of personal relationship with no holds barred. He is looking for on-fire and passionate people who will try and tear into Him, who will try and take a hold of Him, and who will try to understand Him and all of His ways.

The Scripture verses I will list in this article are the bridge, the key and the secret to being able to find and make direct contact with the Lord in this lifetime. As result of having the Holy Spirit now residing on the inside of us, we now have a direct link and a direct connection back to both God and Jesus in heaven. We can now all pray, talk and communicate direct to God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Now that the channels have been completely opened back up between us and God, each Christian must now make a personal choice in this life as to whether or not they want to make an attempt get to know this awesome and loving God of ours by establishing this kind of deep, close, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

For those of you who would really like to enter into and start to establish this kind of a deeper personal relationship with the Lord, the Scripture verses I will list below will give you the key and secret to being able to really do this in this life. You don't have to wait until you get to heaven to be able to make direct contact with God. You can learn how to establish a good, powerful, personal relationship with the Lord right where you are standing at right now.

The key and secret to being able to really establish this kind of deeper, personal, intimate relationship with the Lord in this life is dependent on one simple little thing - and this one simple little thing is that you have to be willing to seek after it!

The verses below are really spelling and shouting out this secret. Study the wording and the order of the specific words in these verses very carefully. As you will see when you study the wording in these specific verses, God is telling us that we have to be the ones to first initiate making some kind of direct contact with Him!

Seek, and then you will find God. Draw near to God, and then He will draw near to you. Ask, and then you will receive. Knock, and then the doors will opened up for you.

In each one of the verses making these profound statements, we have to be the one to first start out by doing the actual seeking, asking, knocking and drawing near to God. If we do, these verses are then telling us that God will allow us to "find Him." We will be able to make direct contact with both God and Jesus through the Holy Spirit if we show God that we mean serious business with Him by putting in a certain amount of intensity in our seeking of Him.

If there is one personal secret that I have learned in my own personal walk with the Lord in order to try and get Him to become much more supernaturally active and involved in my life - is that I have to be seeker after Him and all of His ways. If you are not willing to put in a certain amount of quality time to seek after the Lord with some level of intensity in an effort to try and find Him - and then to try and develop an active, dynamic, personal relationship with Him, then you will have very little, if any, true spiritual and supernatural activity coming from Him.

The verses below are all showing us that we have to be the ones to try and get the ball rolling with God on this seeking. I believe God is letting us know with the specific wording of these verses is that there is a spiritual law that is in operation in His kingdom - and that spiritual law is the seeking law. Seek after God, and then you will find Him. And the more that you seek after God, the more you will find of Him and the deeper and stronger your personal relationship will become with Him.

I believe there is a direct correlation between the quality and intensity of your seeking with the Lord and how much God will interact back with you. The deeper, stronger and more intense you seek after God - then the deeper, stronger and more intense God will come and seek after you!

Not only is God telling us in these verses to seek and attempt to draw near to Him, but He is also telling us to seek after Him with "all of our heart" and with "all of our soul." Seeking after God with "all" of our heart and "all" of our soul is showing us that God is wanting us to come after Him with maximum intensity, not with a half-hearted or lukewarm attempt.

This would be no different in how we see professional and amateur athletes compete with one another in the games they play. A true professional athlete will give it his best and give it his all every single time he goes out to compete in his particular sport. In the same way, God wants all of us to show Him the same amount of intensity in our own personal relationship with Him and in our own personal seeking of Him and all of His ways.

I know many Christians, when they first read these types of verses, get scared and a bit overwhelmed at the specific wording being used by the Lord. These verses need no fancy interpretation. They mean exactly what they are saying.

God is telling all of us that He wants us to be seeking after Him, drawing near to Him, trying to take a hold of Him, and trying to understand Him and all of His ways. And not only does God want us to initiate and make an attempt to do this type of seeking after Him, but He wants this seeking to be done with maximum effort and maximum intensity.

When many Christians first realize how much intensity God is really looking for in this type of seeking, they realize they are not operating anywhere near this level of intensity with Him, and they then back off never giving God any kind of real chance to help work this kind of intensity in their own personal relationships with Him.

Rome was not built overnight, and neither will your personal relationship with the Lord. All God is looking for is that you give Him the best effort you can at your current level of spiritual development with Him. If you do, then God will more than meet you halfway in this realm.

When two people first meet and start dating, they usually do not fall madly and passionately in love with one another. It usually takes a certain amount of time for this kind of true, passionate and intense type of love to form out and build up. It's the exact same with God the Father. God does not expect this kind of passionate intensity to be built up overnight. For many, this will be a slow and gradual process, with the Holy Spirit being the One to slowly guide you further and deeper into this realm with God.

Again, seeking after the Lord to try and establish a good, deep, intimate, personal relationship with Him is all part of the sanctification process that God would like to do with each and everyone of us.

Before I give you the verses on this topic, and then end the article with some of the different ways that you can seek after the Lord in this lifetime, I first want to make one more statement so that you can really grasp the importance and the incredible profound reality that we are dealing with - in that the one and only God of this entire universe is looking to make and establish a direct, one-on-one, personal relationship with each person He has ever created.

We are dealing with only one God - but one God in three separate and complete Persons - God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. All Three of Them want more than anything else in this world to be able to make direct contact with you so They can then start to establish and create this unique, special, one-of-a-kind, personal relationship direct with only you.

As I stated in my article "God is No Respecter of Persons," God the Father has an equal and unconditional love for each person He has ever created. The Bible tells us that God shows no personal favoritism to any man or woman He has ever created. What this means is that we are all equal in the eyes of God. We are all on an equal footing with the Lord. He loves you just as much as He loves anyone else in this life.

What this means is that you can establish and develop just as much of a special and deep personal relationship with God as anyone else can. God will give you just as much time, attention, effort and intensity as He would with anyone else.

Just stop and think for a moment what kind of reality we are dealing with - that the one and only God of this entire universe can become your best Friend and your one and only true Father! I repeat - your best Friend! A true best Friend who will never harm you, hurt you, mistreat you, lie to you, leave you or forsake you!

So many people in this life have been abused, hurt, wounded, mistreated and discarded by their parents, by their spouses, and by some of their so called good friends. As a result, they have a hard time in being able to trust anyone - including God Himself.

Per the article we have on "Trusting in the Lord," the Bible tells us that we have to learn how to fully trust in the Lord. God is the only One who is perfect in His very nature and personality - and He thus is the only One that you can perfectly trust in this life. All other men and women in this life are fallen and imperfect creatures. This is why each and every Christian has to learn how to place all of their faith and all of their trust in the Lord - not in the world, and not in all of the other people in this world.

God has already shown each and everyone of us how much He really does love all of us by being willing to send down and sacrifice His one and only Son. All God is asking for from each one of us is that we be willing to fully trust Him, and then be willing to enter into this special, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

For those of you who are really looking for true love - true love can only be found in a perfect Being - and God is the only perfect Being in the entire scheme of things.

Though we are to do the best we can in establishing good, healthy, personal relationships with all of our friends, our mates and the other members of our family - realize that only God is totally perfect in His very nature and essence - and only God can give you a perfect, true and unconditional love that no one else will be able to give you in this life.

If you place all of your love and all of your trust in the other people in this life rather than direct to God Himself, then sooner or later you will find yourself hurt, wounded and bitterly disappointed. Imperfect people are not capable of giving you any type of perfect and unconditional love - no matter how hard they try, and no matter how hard they will try and tell you otherwise.

So many people are chasing after other people and other material things in this life in an effort to try and find perfect happiness, perfect peace and perfect fulfillment. And then sooner or later it happens. All of their marriages, all of their good friends, all of their earthly wealth and possessions, and all of their personal accomplishments leave them feeling dead, empty and lifeless on the inside.

All of the good friends they may have made, and all of the earthly material wealth they may have acquired and accumulated in this life fail to fill the void and emptiness that is on the inside of each and everyone of us.

God has purposely created all of us with a void and a vacuum on the inside of each of us, and the only thing that can fill that void and emptiness is the Lord Himself. There is nothing else in this world that can fill that little hole that is in all of our souls. This hole can only be completely filled by God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Some people manage to find this revelation and truth in their lives, but sadly, most people do not.

As Christians, we all have something that no one else has in this life - we have the real God in God the Father, we have the one and only real Savior of this world in Jesus Christ, and we have the one and only Holy Spirit who will come and live on the inside of us once we have accepted Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. As the Bible has told us, we literally have the kingdom of God residing on the inside of us once we have become saved and born again.

We literally have the one and only true fountain of perfect happiness, perfect peace and perfect fulfillment - and that is the Lord Himself! And it is all there for the taking for those who are willing to dive into Him and start to seek and drink from Him.

Jesus has already told us that He Himself is the fountain of living waters and that we will never hunger or thirst again if we would only be willing to drink directly from Him. The water is Him - and the drinking is our seeking to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with Him.

God is waiting for each and every person He has created to come to Him to try and establish this kind of powerful, intimate, personal relationship with Him. The bridge, the link and the connection to the Lord will be your willingness to seek after Him with all of your heart, with all of your mind and with all of your soul.

Now here are some of the main verses from the Bible giving us this incredible and profound secret and revelation direct from the Lord Himself. I will break these Scripture verses down under 5 separate captions so you can see exactly what the Lord is trying to convey to us in these verses.

1. God Is Looking For Seekers

These first two verses will perfectly set the stage for all of us in reference to us learning how to develop a personal relationship with the Lord.

This first verse will tell us that God the Father is actually looking down on this earth from His heaven for those who will seek after Him and who will try and understand Him. The second verse perfectly completes this first verse when it tells us that God is looking for those who will try and take a hold of Him.

Put these two verses together side by side, and God the Father is telling all of us, loud and clear, that He is looking for passionate and intense seekers who will try and take a hold of Him, who will try and figure Him out, and who will try to understand Him and all of His ways.

Here are two powerfully profound verses giving us this incredible piece of revelation:

1. "The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any who understand, who seek God." (Psalm 14:2)

2. "And there is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of You ..." (Isaiah 64:7)

To think that this one and only all-powerful God is actually looking down on this earth from His heavenly throne to try and find people who are willing to seek after Him. This verse is shouting from the roof tops two very powerful words - open invitation!

God the Father is giving every single one of us an open invitation to come in and make some kind of attempt to seek after Him. And what will happen next if we make some kind of attempt to seek after Him? This will now lead us into the next set of verses.

2. Seeking After the Lord

These next set of verses will tell us that not only does God the Father want us to seek after Him, but they will tell us that if we make some kind of attempt to seek after Him, that we will actually "find Him." In other words, we will end up making some kind of direct contact with God.

Think of the ramifications of what these next set of verses are trying to tell us - that if we make some kind of attempt to seek after God, that we will be able to find Him, that we will be able to make some kind of direct contact with Him where He can then start to communicate back to us in any way that He should choose to do so.

Study these next set of verses very, very carefully. Meditate on what the Lord is trying to tell us. These verses in particular are giving all of us of a major and profound secret in that this incredible and awesome God of ours can actually be "found" to some degree in this life if we are willing to make enough of an effort on our end to seek after Him.

1. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." (James 4:8)

2. For thus says the Lord God to the House of Israel: "Seek Me and live ... Seek the Lord and live ..." (Amos 5:4,6)

3. "Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!" (1 Chronicles 16:11)

4. "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart." (Jeremiah 29:13)

5. "... and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul." (Deuteronomy 4:29)

6. "Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart!" (Psalm 119:1)

7. "For it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness on you." (Hosea 10:12)

8. "With my soul I have desired You in the night, yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early ..." (Isaiah 26:9)

9. "Then they entered into a covenant to seek the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and with all their soul ..." (2 Chronicles 15:12)

10. "If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever." (1 Chronicles 28:9)

11. "O God, you are my God; early I will seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water." (Psalm 63:1)

12. "As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God." (Psalm 42:1)

13. "... and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6)

When you read each one of these verses one right after the other - the message is coming through loud and clear. God is looking for intense seekers who are willing to seek after Him with all of their heart and with all of their soul. He will not settle for anything less.

These verses are not only telling us that God wants all of us to seek after Him - but He is also telling us that we will be able to find Him to some degree and to some extent if we keep pressing in to make this kind of direct connection with Him. Our seeking will not be in vain. The last verse tells us that the Lord will reward those who are willing to "diligently seek" after Him.

3. God Created Us For Intimate Fellowship

As I said at the top of this article, I believe the main reason God created the human race was for intimate fellowship - and that is intimate fellowship direct with Him, His Son Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit.

The different Bible dictionaries and commentaries describe the word "fellowship" as the following:

• Sharing together

• Communion with God

• Sharing things in common with others

• Companionship, friendly association, mutual sharing

• The bond of common purpose and devotion that binds Christians together and to Christ

Not only does God want us to learn how to fellowship with other people in this life, but He also wants us to learn how to fellowship direct with Him, His Son and His Holy Spirit. Here are two very powerful verses giving us this revelation that we can have fellowship direct with all three Persons of the triune Godhead.

1. "... that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." (1 John 1:3)

2. "Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit ..." (Philippians 2:1)

The first verse tells us that we can fellowship direct with both God and Jesus. The second verse tells us that we can have fellowship direct with the Holy Spirit Himself. Put both of these verses together side by side, and God is telling all of us loud and clear, that He wants us to have intimate fellowship with both Him, His Son and His Holy Spirit.

4. Talk to God Like You Would Talk to a Best Friend

Probably one of the greatest stories in the Bible about someone who was not afraid to approach God and attempt to commune and talk to Him like you would a best friend has to be the story of Moses.

In the Bible Stories section of our site, we have two articles on the Story of Moses and the incredible adventures he personally had with God the Father over the last 40 years of his life. The title of these two articles are "The Story of Moses" and "Lessons From the Story of Moses."

Without question, this man's story and adventure in God will go down as one of the greatest God-stories of all time. This one man, in a 40 year period, was able to talk direct to God, see God personally manifest His presence from His back side, receive all of the 10 commandments and help prepare a younger generation to go in and possess the Promised Land.

As a result of his incredible face-to-face encounters with the Lord, God ended giving this man two of the highest compliments any human could ever hope to receive from the Lord in this lifetime. Here are the two verses giving Moses these two incredible compliments:

1. "But since then there has not risen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." (Deuteronomy 34:10)

2. "So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend." (Exodus 33:11)

The first verse says that Moses "knew" God face to face. The word "knew" is implying that Moses had established a very good personal relationship with the Lord. The second group of words, where it says that Moses knew the Lord "face to face," is also implying that he made a good type of personal connection with the Lord in an effort to try and get to know Him better.

Notice that Moses was seeking after the "face" of God, not after His hand. Too many Christians only seek after the hand of God, which represents what He might be able to give you or help bring your way. Seeking after the "face" of God means that you are seeking after God in an effort to try and get to know Him better as a Person. You are seeking after God to get to know His personality.

The Bible tells us that no one can see the face of God and live. God told Moses, when He was getting ready to manifest His presence before him, that He would not be able to show him His actual face, but only His backside. So when the Bible uses the words that Moses knew God "face to face," it is showing us that Moses ended up coming to know God in a very personal and intimate way. It is not referring to Moses being able to actually see the face of God.

This now leads us to the revelation that is in the second verse. This second verse then goes one step further and tells us that Moses spoke to God face to face "as a man speaks to his friend." This is where I am picking up the revelation that we are to learn how to talk to God as we would with a best friend.

Jesus Himself further expounds on this friend analogy with what He has to say in the following verse:

"You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you." (John 15:14)

Jesus is calling us His friends. God the Father is telling us that Moses learned to how to speak and talk to Him like you would a good friend. Put all three of these verses together, and God and Jesus are telling us that They want a best-friend type of personal relationship with each one of us. If God has to be number one in your life, then it is only logical to conclude that God wants to become your best Friend, over and above any other best friends that you may have in this life.

These two verses on Moses' personal relationship with the Lord may only be two short one-line sentences in the Bible, but they are both giving us an incredibly profound secret in the Lord - and that secret is that we learn how to develop a best-friend type of personal relationship with the Lord. God does not want to settle for anything less.

What Moses managed to accomplish with the Lord should serve as a powerful example for all of us on how we are to interact with God and what we should really be seeking and striving after in this life.

Without question, our number one goal and priority in this life should be to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with the Lord. I believe that trying to establish this kind of close personal relationship with the Lord is even more important than completing whatever divine assignments and calls He may be asking you to complete for Him in this life.

You could end up doing great and mighty works for the Lord in this lifetime, but if all those works are not being done operating in a good, close, personal relationship with Him, then you could end up feeling sad, lonely and despondent.

All of the good works that you can do for the Lord in this lifetime will not fill that hole and void that is on the inside of your soul. The only thing that can fill that hole and void is the Lord Himself, not the actual works that you are doing for Him. And the only way that you can get the Lord to fill that hole and void is to enter into a good personal relationship with Him.

5. God is Looking for Passionate and Intense People

Not only are the above verses telling us that God is actually looking for seekers, but He is also looking for people who will seek after Him with a certain amount of intensity in their seeking of Him.

These next three verses will put the icing on this entire cake. The first verse will tell us that Jesus Himself will spew us out of His mouth if He finds that we have become too lukewarm in our own personal relationship with Him and in the works that we will do for Him in this life. This verse is so extreme, that Jesus is telling us that He'd rather find us to be too cold than too lukewarm. At least if you are too cold, you are operating at the other extreme end of the scale.

I believe the reason Jesus is telling us that we have to learn how to seek after Him with a high level of intensity is because nothing will kill a personal relationship faster than if one or both of the parties start to go dead and lukewarm in the way they interact with one another.

Many spouses end up wandering into the arms of another lover behind their spouses back as a result of the deadness and lukewarmness that has infected their marriage relationship. Just as this same kind of lukewarmness can kill a good marriage relationship, it can also hurt or possibly kill our personal relationship with God Himself.

God has made all of us after His own image and likeness. As a result, God has created and wired all of us for maximum intensity. Just as our God is a God of maximum intensity, this same God has created and wired all of us for this same kind of maximum intensity. This is why God will not settle for any type of lukewarmness in our own personal relationship with Him.

This is why so many people are such avid sports fans. Sporting games and sporting events give all of us a chance to release maximum intensity for the teams or players that we are rooting for.

When you really study this part and aspect of God's personality - we are seeing a God who is not dull, boring or lukewarm. We are looking at a God who is extremely passionate and intense.

In the same way, God is wanting all of us to learn how to live this life at a higher level of passion and intensity. He is wanting all of us to learn how to live more of this life at a full throttle - at a full pedal to the medal type mentality in how we serve Him, in how we interact with Him and how we work for Him in this life.

There is nothing more contagious, more infectious and more energetic than to be around a true Spirit-filled Christian who is fully alive in the Lord, and who is serving and working for the Lord with maximum passion and maximum intensity.

Now here are three very special verses from the Lord showing us what He is really looking for in how we interact and work for Him in this life.

1. "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth." (Revelation 3:15)

2. "These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me ..." (Matthew 15:8)

3. "For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns - broken cisterns that can hold no water ... Know therefore and see that is an evil and bitter thing that you have forsaken the Lord your God, and the fear of Me is not in you," says the Lord God of hosts. (Jeremiah 2:13,19)

Not only is the Lord looking for on-fire, passionate and intense people, but this passionate intensity has to be coming from our heart. Notice in the second verse that Jesus is ripping on those who are just paying Him lip service. These types of people may talk a good game, but they are not really talking about God and serving God from their heart with any kind of real passionate intensity. It's all words and show, with no real substance behind their words, actions and behaviors.

The last verse perfectly sums up what God the Father is thinking about people who end up eventually forsaking and leaving Him. He is telling anyone who is willing to forget, forsake and leave Him - that they are committing an evil and bitter act against Him.

I'm afraid with all the luxuries and material wealth this world has to offer, many Christians have forsaken and abandoned their God and have traded Him in for a life of total carnal pursuit.

The last verse stated above is a real bone-chilling verse when it says that is an evil and bitter thing to have forsaken the Lord for all the material wealth of this world that has nothing but leaks and holes in it and will never hold any real water. All of the earthly wealth you may be able to collect and accumulate in this life will never be able to hold any real water because it will eventually rot and perish away.

In other words, all of the earthly wealth and possessions that this world has to offer has leaks in them, and they will all sooner or later completely perish and be taken away from you on your deathbed. And the only thing that will be left standing, when everything is all finally said and done, is you standing totally alone before the Judgment Seat of Christ, with Jesus judging you on how well you have served and followed Him in this life. None of your earthly wealth and possessions will be going over with you when you finally die and cross over to meet Jesus head on for this personal judgment.

God has so plainly and so clearly laid out how He wants all of us to live this life and exactly what it is that we all should be seeking after - but yet so many Christians keep missing the mark and fail to get their priorities straight in how they should be living this life, and exactly what it is they should be seeking after in this life with the Lord.

Our two main goals in this life should be to first seek to enter into a full surrender with the Lord so that He is free to guide us into His perfect plan and destiny for our lives. The second thing that each fully surrendered Christian should be willing to do is to seek after God with all of their heart and with all of their soul so they can start to establish and enter into this maximum intense kind of personal relationship with Him.

5 Ways To Seek After the Lord

Now that we know the Lord is definitely wanting all of us to seek after Him - exactly how do we go about really seeking after Him?

I will give you 5 basic ways in which you can seek after the Lord in this life so you can improve the quality and depth of your personal relationship with Him.

Without question, the number one way that you should seek after the Lord is in your own personal private prayer life with Him. Your personal prayer life with the Lord has two sides to it.

On the one side is where you are praying to God for something very specific, whether it be directly for you or for someone else you may be praying for. We already have a Prayer Section in our site that specifically deals with this part of your prayer life with the Lord, so I won't go any further on this part of your prayer life with Him.

The second part to your prayer life, and this is the one that I really want to concentrate on for this article, is where you walk and talk with God much like what you would do with a best friend. This is not where you are asking God for anything in particular. You are just walking and talking with God just like you would do with a best friend.

If there is one major whopper secret that will open up the door to God's heart, it has to be the secret of learning how to talk and communicate with Him much in the same way as you would do with a best friend. For those of you who have a best friend or who used to have one - you will know exactly what I am about to talk about. A true best friendship is without question, the most unique and special of all the personal relationships that you can have with anyone else in this life.

Granted, there is nothing like the bond and love that exists between parents and their own natural children. But as great and powerful as that bond is, a true best-friend relationship can actually go farther and go deeper than what can transpire between some parents and their natural children. It would really be nice if all of the relationships between parents and their children could turn into and develop into true best friendships, but for many in this life, this never really happens.

This type of best friendship should really be occurring between parents and their children, and between spouses in their marriages due to the large amount of close interaction that occurs in a family unit. But for many different reasons, this type of best friendship really never develops in the way that it should in many households across this world, and you thus have many parents and their children living and breathing right next to one another with no real passionate love and intimacy ever being established and forged with one another. As a result, many people are forced to try and find a true best friend outside the family unit.

There is obviously nothing wrong in making best friends with other people outside the family unit, but every family, if they are walking right with the Lord, should also be making and developing many of these best friend relationships right there in the middle of their own household - husbands with wives, parents with their children, and children with the other siblings in the household. There is so much quality time that everyone is spending with one another in a family unit, that this kind of quality time should be leading to more people in a household becoming best friends with one another.

But as we all know, for many different reasons, this does not occur with everyone in the family unit. As a result, many people are forced to try and find a true best friend outside the family unit. I can't even begin to count the number of married men and women I have personally met who no longer feel their spouse is their true best friend. And they are now stuck feeling totally isolated and alone right in the middle of their actual marriage.

As I said at the top of this article, the real reality is that imperfect people are incapable of giving perfect love to one another - so most people have to be very careful when they start to search and seek after a true best friend. But when you do find one, you have found a true treasure in this life.

The one thing that is so unique and so special about a true best friendship is the incredible comfortableness you will feel in the relationship. All guards and shields will start to come down. You can totally trust this person. You can totally be yourself around this person.

As a result of being so comfortable with this person, you feel totally free to express your most intimate and secret thoughts with one another. There is literally nothing that you can't talk about or freely discuss. You can tell your best friend things that you could never tell your spouse or your own children. You feel like you and this best friend are one in spirit and one in mind. You start to get to the point where you can sometimes read each other's thoughts and mind. You can sometimes feel their pain to the same degree as they are feeling it.

For those of you who have this type of best friendship with someone, you know exactly what I am talking about.

This type of special, unique, close and deep personal relationship is exactly what God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are looking for from each one of us. The Bible tells us to seek after the "face" of God, not after His hand, which represents what He might be able to give to you. Seeking after the face of God means that we are to seek directly after who God really is. We are to seek directly after His personality so we can start to get to know Him in a much better, deeper, and closer way.

Bottom line - we should seek after God in the exact same way that we would seek into a true best friend. All of the above verses are telling us that we will be able to "find" this awesome God of ours if we are willing to expend some quality time and energy to seek directly after Him. And once we find Him - then the doors will be opened up between Him and us!

God will now be willing to open up His heart, His mind, His ways, some of His thoughts, and some of His actual emotions direct to us. In other words, God is looking to share a part of His personality with us if we would only be willing to do the same with Him - just like what we would be willing to do with a true best friend. Except with God, we are dealing with a Being who is totally and completely perfect in His personality.

We are thus looking and gazing on a perfect Being who has the ability to transmit and release perfect, true and unconditional love in a way that no other human will ever be able to do in this life.

If there is one major, whopper, profound, can't shout it out loud enough secret that God is looking for from each one of us - it has to be this revelation that we try and seek to establish this type of best-friend relationship with Him.

Talk to God just like you would talk to your best friend. Share your most intimate, private and personal thoughts and feelings with Him that you would never, ever, consider sharing with anyone else.

Be willing to completely open yourself up to the Lord, with no holds barred. Be willing to lay yourself totally bare. Be available to God 24/7, not for just 2 hours a week in a Sunday church service. Be willing to talk and communicate with God anywhere and at anytime.

Just like you have total freedom to call your best friend up anytime you want, do the exact same thing with God. The Bible tells us that God never sleeps or slumbers. He is always on duty, day or night, rain or shine, storm cloud or no storm cloud. He is always there for you, 24/7, 365 days every year.

God already knows all the thoughts of your mind and heart, so there is nothing you can hide from Him anyway. And not only does He know every single thought and word that is floating around in your mind and heart to begin with - but He knows what you are going to say and think before you even begin to say it or think it, since He has perfect knowledge on all future events, including what will be coming out of your mind or mouth.

If you are willing to open yourself up to the Lord with this kind of open and honest intimacy with Him, then you will have just touched the heart of God - and He will now more than blow you away with what He will do with you and how He will handle your life from here on in.

I believe this best friend type of personal relationship that God is looking to establish with each one of us is the main reason that He has created the human race. God is so jealous and so possessive of the human race that He has created, that He has purposely made all of us to only be able to live in this life and the next life to come only if we are willing to bond and graft directly into Him through the Blood that His Son Jesus has already shed for us on the cross.

In other words, we either learn how to directly bond and graft into our Lord with the kind of close, intimate, personal relationship that He is really looking for - or we will eventually die and be cast off from Him forever.

Jesus Himself is telling us that He will spew us out of His mouth if we ever get to the point of taking Him too much for granted or start to get too lukewarm in our own personal relationship with Him. The last verse above perfectly spells it out for all of us in that if we ever forsake or turn away from our Lord, then we will have committed an evil and bitter act in His sight.

2. Reading and Studying From the Bible

The next big way that you should attempt to seek after God is by reading and studying from the Bible. The Bible is God's only true Word to us in this life.

God has given us everything that we will ever need to be able understand Him, His Son, His Holy Spirit and all of His ways in just this one Book. And all of this information, knowledge and revelation is all contained in just one simple Holy Book.

Just as God made it as easy as possibly He could for Adam and Eve by telling them to stay off one simple tree - in the same way God has made it as easy as He possibly could by putting all of the information, knowledge and revelation that we will ever need to find and understand Him in one special Holy Book. And yet most Christians will go their entire lives having never read this one special Book in its complete entirety. As a result, they never really get to learn much about God, His ways, and how He likes to work and operate.

I believe the Bible is serving as a real litmus test between us and God in this life. If you are a true, saved, born-again, on-fire Christian, then God is going to sit back and see how much of a desire you really have to try and get to know Him. There are two main ways that He is going to do this.

The first main way that God is going to test you on this is to see how far and to what extent you will attempt to make some kind of personal contact with Him in order to try and establish a good personal relationship with Him. The second main way that God is going to test you is by watching to see if you will make some kind of attempt to learn more about Him by reading and studying from the Bible.

If you are really in love with God, and are really wanting to increase the depth and quality of your own personal relationship with Him, then you will have a strong natural desire and hunger to want to get into His Word so that you can start to feed off all of the knowledge and revelation that is in this Book.

There is simply no other book on this earth that we can feed off of that will give us the amount of direct revelation and knowledge about God and who He really is as the Bible can. And again, God has made it as simple and easy as He possibly could by putting everything that we would ever need all in this one Book.

This is why I say the Bible is the real litmus test between us and God - as it will be what will separate the true, passionate, on-fire seeker from the lukewarm, lazy, carnal and worldly Christian who could really care less about God and any of His ways on how we are to live in this life.

With the Blood that His Son Jesus has shed for all of us on the cross, God the Father has now opened up the gates to His heaven and the gates direct to Himself.

All we have to be willing to do is to believe and accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior - be willing to seek after God by making some kind of an attempt to enter into a good personal relationship with Him - and then seek to learn more about Him and all of His ways by reading and studying from His Word. If we do, then we will spiritually grow and mature in this life beyond anything that we ever thought was possible.

3. Reading and Studying From Other Christian Books

In addition to the wealth of knowledge and revelation that is in the Bible, there is also an enormous amount of information and knowledge in other good anointed Christian books.

God the Father has anointed many teachers in this day and age to be able to teach from His Word. Many of these teachers have written some very good books covering a wide range of issues and topics that will also help us grow in the knowledge and ways of the Lord.

For the real seeker in the Lord, there is a whole treasure chest of goodies at your local Christian bookstore. You can find good anointed books covering just about any topic or issue you may be interested in. In the Christian Book section of our own site, we have a list of some very good books covering a wide variety of topics.

If you can combine the study of Scripture with the reading of other good anointed books, you will spiritually grow at a rate that will truly astound you. Going into this kind of heavy seeking mode trying to acquire as much knowledge as you can about the Lord will really move the Holy Spirit to want to work on your behalf.

If you are willing to spend some good quality time trying to increase your knowledge base on the Lord and all of His ways, then the Holy Spirit will really start to move to help you out in understanding and assimilating what you are reading so that true spiritual growth can occur in this life. This is a direct supernatural work that the Holy Spirit can do for every single believer who is willing to put forth the time and effort to try and learn more about our Lord.

4. Fellowship With Other Believers

Another powerful way that you can seek after the Lord is by being willing to fellowship with other like-minded believers. When you are attempting to fellowship with other believers, you are willing to share your walk, your testimonies and your knowledge base with them - and they in turn will do likewise with you.

As a result of sharing your stories, your testimonies and your knowledge base with one another, you will get to learn more about the Lord from these other believers. God will be doing different things with some of them than maybe what He has done with you. As a result, you can each learn from one another in the personal experiences that you have had in the Lord.

I can't tell you how much more my knowledge base has increased in the Lord over the years as a result of learning from some of my other close seeker-friends and what God is doing in their lives. And I'm still continuing to learn from each and everyone of them as they continue to share their walk and their journey in the Lord with me.

By being willing to learn from other believers, you will be showing the Lord your strong desire to want to learn more about Him and all of His ways and that you are leaving no stone unturned in your seeking and pursuit of Him.

God loves to be the center of attention, and He loves it when His people sit around and talk about Him and share their knowledge base with one another. When you do this with other believers, you are seeking after the Lord.

5. Watch For the Lord to Move in Your Everyday Life

This next area is one area that many Christians are missing out on. Once you enter into a full surrender with the Lord where He is now free to guide you into His perfect plan and destiny for your life, and then you combine that with seeking directly after Him in order to establish a strong personal relationship with Him - you will have opened up major supernatural door with the Lord, and He will now start to move in many areas of your life to help you maximize your walk and call with Him.

And this is where it really gets fun, interesting and exciting. Once you put the pedal to the medal with the Lord in your seeking of Him, then God is now going to move very strongly on your behalf and He will now start to show Himself to you in a wide variety of miraculous ways.

What this means is that you now have to keep your radars up each and every day, as you never know when, where or how God will move next. Your job will be to try and pick it up when God does move in some kind of supernatural way to help you out.

God can move in your life in a wide variety of ways and in a wide variety of matters. God can move to help give you favor with your bosses and supervisors at your places of employment. He can supernaturally open up doors to the next new job that He may want to promote you into.

He can help you with the everyday activities of your job. He can help you with the raising and parenting of your children and all of the everyday activity that goes on in the family. He can help you solve problems, handle different types of emergencies and help warn and protect you of oncoming dangers.

There are literally an infinite number of things or situations that God can get actively involved in within your normal everyday life. God is much more active in people's lives than most people actually realize or see.

If you are willing to go into this kind of intense seeking mode with the Lord where you have your radars up each and everyday looking for God to move in your life in some way or some fashion - then the Holy Spirit will help open up your eyes and help increase your ability to be able to spot it, recognize it and actually see it when it does occur so that you can fully appreciate it and be very thankful for it when it does happen.

The Bible calls the Holy Spirit the Helper, and there is no area of your life that is too small or too trivial that He will not be willing to give you a helping hand on when His help is really needed.

Conclusion

For those of you who have never attempted to draw close to the Lord in your own personal relationship with Him, study the specific wording in all of the above verses very, very carefully.

All of these verses are giving us a major life changing secret - and that secret is that the Lord is calling each and every person that He has ever created to come into intimate fellowship with Him.

If a person is willing to come to God the Father by accepting Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior, then all roadblocks and barriers between them and God will now be totally removed forever - I repeat, forever! Any true born-again believer now has direct access to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit 24/7, 365 days a year. There are now no more barriers between us and God.

Since God is no respecter of persons, you will have just as much of a chance in being to establish a close, intimate, personal relationship with Him as anyone else would. God will not be playing favorites with anyone in this realm.

You seek - and then you will find God. You draw near to God - and then God will draw near to you. The more you seek of God, the more of God you will find. You give God a 100% effort on your end - and God will more than give you a 100% effort from His end.

Of all of the articles that we have in our site covering a wide variety of topics and issues, the revelation and knowledge that is contained in the above verses are in my opinion, the most important of all for each Christian to try and get worked into their personal walk with the Lord.

Once you have become saved and born again by accepting Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, then the next big step that will await you is whether or not you will attempt to enter into an intense, passionate, personal relationship with the Lord.

God cannot make you come to Him. All God can do is give you the knowledge from His Word that this is what He is really looking for from each one of us more than anything else in this world.

All of the above Scripture verses are as clear as they can be. God has created all of us to have intimate and close fellowship with Him. God has created us to come into close communion with Him. God not only wants to be your perfect heavenly Father, but He also wants to become your perfect best Friend.

He has nothing but your best interests at heart. He will never hurt you, harm you, bad-mouth you, forsake you, leave you or abandon you. He wants nothing more than to be able to draw you close to Him so that He can help you get through this life in one piece and accomplish everything that He would like for you to get done in this life.

I know some people have a fear of drawing close to God as a result of being terribly hurt or wounded by some of the other people in their lives. But if you believe that our Bible is truly the inspired and infallible Word of our Holy God, then you have to believe what all of the above verses are trying to tell you.

If the Bible tells us that God has no darkness in Him and that He cannot commit any kind of evil, then you have to believe and ground on these types of statements and learn how to override all of the hurts you may have suffered in your past from other people.

Our God is a faithful, loyal, loving and perfect God. He is totally trustworthy since He is totally perfect in His personality. This means you will be on perfectly safe ground once you decide to approach Him and enter into His realm. He will perfectly handle you at whatever level of spiritual development you may be operating at, no matter how low of a level you think that may be.

This kind of an intense personal relationship with the Lord will not be built up overnight. God will work to bring you up into this level at a nice, slow, comfortable pace that you will be very comfortable in working with.

As I said at the beginning of this article, most romantic love relationships between men and women do not start off with any kind of maximum intensity. It usually takes a awhile for the real true sparks of love to build up. It's the exact same way with God the Father. All God is asking for is that you just give Him a few baby steps to work with and He will more than prove Himself to you that you can learn to fully trust Him and eventually fall passionately in love with Him.

This kind of a close, intimate, personal relationship with the Lord can happen in this life. You do not have to wait until you get to heaven to be able to establish this kind of intimate personal relationship with the Lord.

You already have the Holy Spirit residing on the inside of you. He is already there, ready and waiting for your green light to help draw you closer to the Lord. The Holy Spirit will help you in being able to draw much closer to God and Jesus in your own personal relationship with each of Them if you let Him know that you really want to take this kind of a plunge.

But the choice will always remain with each individual believer. All God can do is let you know that He is there for you.

God has done everything that He possibly can to draw each person back unto Himself. He has sacrificed His one and only Son to pay the penalty for all of our sins and transgressions - and He has given us His Word, which has given all of us the knowledge and revelation that we will ever need in this life to be able to understand Him and the big picture on how everything has been set up.

Be willing to seek after the face of God like Moses did in order to establish a best-friend type of personal relationship with Him - and I guarantee that you will find the fountain of true youth, happiness and fulfillment that you will never find in all of the worldly pleasures of this life.

Michael Bradley Bible Teaching, Knowledge, Commentary and Over 150 Free Articles Copyright © 2005-2007 by Michael Bradley.

Bible Trivia

 

Have you visited the new Bible trivia page that I added to my site yet? A new Bible trivia question is posted each and every day. Give your noodle a workout at: http://www.thebossychurchlady.net/free_Bible_trivia.html

Questions and Comments

Q. When I forgive someone, do I have to trust that person too?

A. In Matthew 18:21-22, Jesus said that we are to forgive people “seventy times seven” every day. As far as trusting the person who hurt you, that's another matter entirely as trust must be earned.

Resources

I'm always delighted to present each new resource that I find because it's my hope that every one that I include in my newsletters will help you grow in Christ. If you know of any resources that you would like to share with the other readers, feel free to write to me and let me know about it so I can include it in the newsletters.

><> Christian Greetings Cards - Christian Greetings Cards for churches and people who want to send a faith promoting message to those they care about.

><> soulful-gospel-music-lyrics.com - Soulful-gospel-music-lyrics are a celebration of music that literally stirs and moves the soul. The lyrics may change but the mission remains the same, to up-lift the name of the Lord.

><> Does your husband, boyfriend, or teenage son hate going to church? Are the men in your congregation sitting there in the pews with their arms crossed and their lips pursed? Discover how your church can encourage participation by even the most stubborn of men. Without even realizing it, the men in your church will be active, willing participants who can’t wait for next Sunday to come around. http://www.churchformen.com/

><> Listen to the Old Testament and the New Testament Bible online at: http://www.thebossychurchlady.net/free_online_Bible.html

><> Cross Faith Ministry - Biblical History and Scriptural Literature from the Lord's Library. There are in-depth studies on the books of Romans, Galatians, Luke, Daniel and Ruth. There are sermons, poetry, FREE Graphics, Jesus Slide Show plus, a Free Computer Bible at: http://crossfaithministry.org/index.html

90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death & Life By Don Piper with Cecil Murphey / Baker.After a devastating car accident, Baptist minister Don Piper is pronounced dead at the scene. During the next 90 minutes, he remembers hearing beautiful music, meeting those who had a spiritual impact in his life, and experiences deep peace--until suddenly he is brought back to "real life" through another minister's prayer in this amazing true story.

23 Minutes in Hell: One Man's Story About What He Saw, Heard, and Felt in That Place of Torment By Bill Wiese / Charisma House.What does an eternity in torment look like, and how can it be avoided? God allowed Wiese to spend time in the devil's lair, and now he shares what he saw, heard, and felt. Along with hundreds of Scriptures referencing hell's horrors, Wiese shares his insights to commonly asked questions such as "Is hell a literal burning place?", "Where is hell?", "Do you have a body in hell?" and "Can 'good' people go to hell?"

NEW! Answers To Your Burning Questions About God Are you witnessing to an unbeliever and need some super duper quick answers about God and Jesus... like yesterday? Get this f.r.e.e e-book and use it as a witnessing tool to silence the doubters! Give it away to your friends! Get the book in PDF Format Get the book in MS WORD Format-Printer Friendly Version

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The Bossy Church Lady's Newsletter For New Christians

6-01-2008

Warm Fuzzies

"Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." 1 Peter 2:11-12 (NIV)

Because I feel it's important for all Christians to learn how to become sanctified in the Lord, during the next few newsletters, I will be running a series of articles written by Michael Bradley that expound upon the sanctification process. If you want to learn how to become a stronger and better witness for the Kingdom of God and if you truly want to be the very best you can be for the sake of the Lord, you'll make sure to read this all important series.

A little more about the series by Michael Bradley: "The Bible tells us that God wants to transform and sanctify us by the renewing of our minds and by learning how to become more holy like He and His Son Jesus. This process involves learning how to develop right thinking in your thought process and working with the power of the Holy Spirit to develop you into the kind of person God wants you to become in Him."

Thank you to all of my subscribers, without you, the new Christian, this newsletter wouldn't exist. I would love to hear from you, but please do not hit reply to contact me because I won't receive your response. If you need to contact me you can email me at sandra @ thebossychurchlady.net (without the spaces in the address).

I'd love to hear what you think! And, if you want to share something with the other readers in a future issue of this newsletter--such as a testimonial, or a poem, devotional, a story that God has inspired you to write, or even if you want to advertise your own site-- you can send it to me at sandra @ thebossychurchlady.net (without the spaces in the address).

Your privacy is important to me; therefore, I will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. At any point, you can select the link at the bottom of every email to unsubscribe.

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(The current newsletter is always at the top of the pages.)

><> About The Seven Deadly Sins And Their Opposites: The Seven Heavenly Virtues
><> Help With My Unbelief!
><> The Fear of the Lord by Michael Bradley
><> Resources

About The Seven Deadly Sins And Their Opposites: The Seven Heavenly Virtues

 

What are the seven deadly sins and their opposites the seven heavenly virtues?

Though the seven deadly sins is Roman Catholic doctrine and I'm a Baptist, I'll do my best to answer this question simply because I believe that it's important to understand that some of our nasty behaviors, which stem from our hearts (Matthew 15:19-20) can cause us to sin. When we're living sinfully, we're creating a rift between God and ourselves.

Another thing to note is though there are no Bible verses pertaining to the seven deadly sins per se, the mention of the sins themselves is not unscriptural. To give you my Baptist take on the 7 deadly sins, I've listed them, their opposites, which are known as the seven holy virtues and sometimes called the heavenly virtues, and Bible verses that will help you combat that sin.

But before I do, I'd like to make you aware that there are many more than just seven sins that can cause us to travel down the road that leads straight to spiritual death or hell and I've listed those as well.

1) Pride

What it is: Conceit, thinking too highly of ones self. Arrogance. Not recognizing that it is God who does everything good and without Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5–6). A person can also be full of pride when he or she thinks asking for help is beneath him or her. Men are oftentimes too proud to stop and ask for directions.

Opposite: Humility, humbleness.

How to overcome it:

• Follow the apostle Paul's advice from Romans 12:3, which says: "For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith." The apostle Paul considered himself to be the chief of sinners. Meaning that even though he was an apostle of Christ Jesus, he never saw himself as being any better than the rest of us.

• Keep in mind what Jesus said: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." (Matthew 5:5) Not only did He preach this, but He lived it. If we're to follow after Jesus, we need to try our best to live the way He did.

• Remember, you don't have to take care of everything yourself. Jesus promised that God would take care of your every need (Luke 12:24). God longs to help you, to take care of you, to be your Father. He's waiting for you to ask Him for help. Jesus humbling Himself and thanking our Father in heaven for whatever He received sets an excellent example for the rest of us. By giving the credit to God, we acknowledge that we depend on God for everything. In addition, thinking that just being a child of God entitles one to riches is a trap. Consider what Jesus said in Luke 9:58: "The Son of man hath not where to lay his head."

2) Greed

What it is: Self-indulgence. Stinginess: never sharing with others. Always wanting more. What you have is never enough.

Opposite: Charity, Kindness.

How to overcome it:

• Ephesians 5:3 says: "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people." (NIV) Emphasis mine. Not only can greed can kill our relationship with God, but it can cause problems in other relationships. When we're in pursuit of more, we end up putting our relationship with God on the back burner when He should be our first priority. Greed also causes us to blow off our families.

• Colossians 3:1-2 tells us, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” (KJV) Everything we gain here on earth is temporary, but what we have in heaven is eternal. When we die, everything we've accumulated on earth becomes meaningless. Solomon, the wisest man ever known, said in Ecclesiastes that the pursuit of riches is pointless.

• "Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys." Luke 12:33 (NIV)  If we're seeking God and His face, we'll have no thought of the worldly stuff.

• In Acts 20:35, the apostle Paul said: "'In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" As Christians, we are to help the less fortunate and the weak. When we do so, not only are we heaping up treasure upon treasure in heaven for ourselves, but we'll see just how much that God has richly blessed us.

• Read Acts 5:1-10.

3) Envy:

What it is: covetousness, jealousy. Always wanting what you don't have. Never being satisfied.

Opposite: Contentment, satisfaction.

How to overcome it:

• Philippians 4:11 says: "Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." (KJV) Our eyes are constantly finding things that we think we want, however, we're supposed to be happy with what we have. One of the worst things we can do is compare ourselves to others. Being a female, I can relate to looking at another woman and wishing that I was as pretty as her or as thin as she is or whatever, but that's envy. And guys, don't be jealous of the man next door who seems to have it all.

• Proverbs 23:17 says: "Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long." (KJV) Yeah, you may think they have it all, but how would you like to have to answer to God like they will?

• Envy is the seed of hate. When you harbor envy in your heart, that kernel of jealousy will wax into a gigantic sore called hate. Think about Cain and Abel from Genesis. When Cain saw that Abel's sacrifice pleased the Lord more than his, he became so envious, he became so jealous of his brother that he killed him.

4) Wrath:

What it is: Anger, bitterness, lack of forgiveness. People who are full of wrath are known to have an ill temper. This type of person holds grudges against everyone and has the tendency to drive everyone away.

Opposite: Patience, Love, Forgiveness

How to overcome it:

• Matthew 18:21-22, “Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.” (KJV) Being only human, I know that it's difficult to forgive certain people, but if we don't then God won't forgive us (Matthew 6:14-15). Whenever I get mad at someone and I stop and think about all that Jesus has forgiven me for, it makes it so much easier to have compassion on the person who has wronged me.

• Ephesians 4:32, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.” (KJV) Think about this: Even when Jesus was hanging on that cross, naked, bruised, and humiliated, He asked our Father to forgive those who persecuted Him.

• James 1:19, “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” (KJV) Keeping your temper in check is a sign of strength, not weakness.

5) Lust

What it is: Perversion. Want kicked up several notches. Self-indulgence.

Opposite: Chastity, self-control.

How to overcome it:

• Ephesians 4:22: “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.” Not only is this verse addressing sexual lust, but also our desire to have everything, even things that are harmful to us. When we give in to our lusts, we step onto a path that we don't ever want to be on.

• Proverbs 6:25: “Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids.” Practice self-control and keep your pants on. Sex is only sanctified if it's between marriage partners.

• Galatians 5:16: “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.” Where would you profit eternally if you're in pursuit of your lusts all day?

• James 1:14-15, “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Our lust comes from the desires of our own hearts. Without a doubt, even Jesus was tempted, but He practiced restraint. Even though Jesus wasn't very comely, with all the power He possessed, He most likely could have had any woman He wanted, but He chose to remain a virgin for our sakes, so He could be a Holy and pure sacrifice that would be pleasing to God.

• 1 Corinthians 9:27, “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” Even preachers are subjected to temptations and some have taken nasty falls because they gave in to their lusts. Consider this: Nothing done in secret will be a secret forever. In other words, since secrets have a way of surfacing and biting us in the behind when we least expect it, it's better to abstain from doing anything that will embarrass us later.

6) Gluttony

What it is: Overeating. Too much drinking or abusing alcohol, abusing drugs and whatnot. Not only that, but it is doing anything harmful to the body.

Opposite: Temperance, self-Control, moderation.

How to overcome it:

• Matthew 11:19, “The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children.” Eating and drinking in moderation is good, but anything beyond that is harmful.

• Philippians 3:19: “Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)” If a person sits around and eats all day, or is in constant pursuit of something else to eat, then he or she will become obese. Additionally, if a person's mind is on food, then how will he or she think about God?

• Proverbs 23:21: “For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." Have you ever met an alcoholic who remained rich? One way or another, whether by car accidents or foolish spending, an alcoholic always parts with his money.

7) Sloth:

What it is: Idleness, laziness. Not doing anything productive whatsoever.

Opposite: Fruitful, industrious.

How to overcome it:

• Colossians 3:23-24, “And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: for ye serve the Lord Christ.” (KJV) Whether you're at work or at home, do everything like you're doing it for God. If you do, you'll always do the very best job you can.

• Matthew 12:36: "But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Idle talk is meaningless garble. It's unproductive. It doesn't serve a purpose. It neither lifts up nor edifies another.

• Proverbs 19:15, "Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger." Have you ever noticed how the most employers tend to give the hardest workers the choicest hours? It's because the people who do their best at work are the ones who can be depended upon and trusted to do a good job.

• Ecclesiastes 10:18, "If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks." (NIV) Need I say more?

In addition to the above seven sins, I've listed several more below, all of which are an abomination to the Lord:

• Telling a lie or any form of deceitfulness: Even a small lie or a white lie, omission of facts, or embellishment of the truth is a sin. “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” (1 Peter 2:1, NIV)

• Cheating: See stealing, lying and adultery. I hope I don't need to tell you that cheating someone else out of anything is the same as stealing. Even just standing or sitting around and "milking the clock" at work is cheating your boss out of their money. 1 Corinthians 6:9 says, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind."

• Stealing: Ephesians 4:28: “Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” (KJV) Also see envy and sloth above. Working and paying for your own stuff is very satisfying. It's a reward for your hard work. My dad always told me that a man who would steal from his brother would kill him, and I believe that's true.

• Murder: In Genesis 9:6, it says: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.” (NKJV) In Matthew 27:3-5, after Judas Iscariot betrayed the Lord, he felt so guilty about it that he hanged himself.

• Abortion: Jeremiah 1:4-5, “Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.” (KJV) The Lord knew and loved us all from before the foundation of the Earth. Isaiah 44:24, “This is what the LORD says— your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself.” (NIV)

• Suicide: Isaiah 44:2, “Thus saith the LORD that made thee, and formed thee from the womb, which will help thee; Fear not, O Jacob, my servant; and thou, Jesurun, whom I have chosen.” (KJV) If you kill yourself, the last act you commit is murder. Moreover, you're telling God that you don't believe that He will take care of you. You're telling Him that you don't believe that He has what's best for you in mind.

• Disrespecting your parents or elders. When you do, you're disrespecting God because you're choosing not to obey the fifth of God's commandments found in Exodus 20:2-17. If you follow the advice given in Hebrews 13:17, you'll be doing good: “Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.”

• Bearing a false witness against someone: Lying about someone is the same as slander. So is telling the police or the courts a lie about someone that can get that person either wrongfully jailed or freed. When you go to court, you're asked to swear on oath, usually with your hand on the Bible and you're asked to repeat an oath an officer of the court that's very similar to this: "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... so help me God." What that means is that if you lie, you're lying to God's face. Don't think it's any big deal? Read the books of Exodus, Revelation, and Acts 5 so you can discover for yourself what God has in store for liars. He hates them.
  
  For now, I'll give you this verse to show you how much that God hates lying: “These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” (Proverbs 6:16-19 KJV)
  
  If you're a man who is reading this, I can imagine the wheels turning in your head right now... I can hear the question that's formulating in your brain as I'm writing this. I'll be honest here: rather than hear the half-truth or a sugar coated truth, if any of my pants, skirts, shorts, dresses or whatever makes my backside look big, I really do want to know! At least then I'd have the chance to put on something presentable. Yeah, I realize that most women are sensitive so here's what you do... you say something like: "Hey Hon... What about that--inject another pair of pants, skirt, or dress here that you know fits her better than what she has on. I think you look GORGEOUS in it!" Then, so you can get away with the distraction, go and give her a huge kiss. (In case you haven't noticed, I'm a master at manipulating others. Thankfully, I don't do it very often.)
  
  And ladies, maybe you're thinking that if you tell your friend that her new hairdo looks awful, she'll cry, but you don't have to be so blunt. Once or twice, when I've had a bad haircut, my sister nicely began to play with my hair and made it look better. I got the hint. See the advice I gave to the men above? You don't have to give your friend a huge kiss, but you can say, "I saw you get so many looks with your hair done such and such way." Or, "With your hair done such and such way, it really brings out your--eyes, lips, cheekbones or whatever here."
  
  See, if you follow the advice I gave above, you don't have to lie and you're doing something kind for someone else. :)

• Committing adultery: See lust, stealing, lying, cheating above. This is the seventh commandment and trust me, it is there for a reason. By the way, when you commit adultery, you're stealing your husband's or wife's time. You're forcing him or her to waste their time and energy on someone who is unfaithful. Not only is adultery cheating on one's spouse, but it is also following after other gods. If we worship other gods, we're cheating on God. When we're in pursuit of the almighty dollar, we're making money our god and we're cheating on the One true God, thereby breaking the first of the ten commandments. 1 Corinthians 6:18 tells us, “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.”

• Cussing: Just like cigarette smoking, this one is such an easy habit to pick up and so hard to get rid of. Parents, don't cuss around your children. Remember, monkey see, monkey do. The worst cuss word of all, however, is to take either God's or Jesus' name in vain or misuse the name of God.

Here's my rule of thumb about sin: If it won't glorify God, you probably shouldn't be doing it. If we heed the apostle Peter's advice, we'll be doing much more than just good, we'll be doing our very best, which is what God expects from us: "Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us." (1 Peter 2:11)

Recommended Verses:
1 Peter 2 (Yes, read the entire chapter!)

* Copyright 2008 Sandra Purdue. You may swipe anything I write as long as you leave the byline intact.

Help With My Unbelief!

Having trouble with your faith? Like the father with the demon-possessed child in Mark 9:22 who said, “But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us,” we too have a tendency to feel doubtful from time to time. When the Lord responded by saying: “‘If you can’? Everything is possible for him who believes,” I don’t believe that the Lord's question was directed to the man only. I think He was also addressing the doubts that the people nearby may have had and, knowing that this exchange would be recorded for future generations to read about, He was also speaking to us in the here and now.

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had some sort of doubt—even if only once or twice during their life—about God’s willingness or ability to rebuke sicknesses, demons, and every other form of human suffering.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if God always responded immediately to our plea by performing the miracles that we ask for whenever we ask? And wouldn’t it be great if whenever those old doubts begin to creep into our minds, we could ask the Lord to help us with our unbelief like the man did, and God would do away with them right then and there? But if He did, would we really learn anything? If God gave us everything we wanted, would it strengthen our faith in Him? Would it make us more dependent upon Him for everything, upon His grace to get through the tougher times in our lives? I seriously doubt it.

Since God only wants what’s best for us, (Jeremiah 29:11), His answer must sometimes be no. It’s like when a parent has to tell his or her child no. The answer isn’t given to be mean, it’s given to protect the child. When we get no for an answer, we need to keep in mind that it’s never good to lean on our own understanding, but to lean on God’s. Because we’re not omniscient, we have no way of knowing that if God gave us what we wanted every time we asked, some of those yes answers could do more damage than we could ever imagine.

An example of a yes answer that could have done unimaginable and long lasting, harm, let's take look at Matthew 26:39. In this verse, we can see that even Jesus had to go through something so horrible, so terrifying that He fell facedown onto the ground and pleaded: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (NIV) Not only did He ask this once, but He asked God to let Him out of it three times. Nevertheless, Jesus accepted God's answer by going to the cross and God did what was best for everyone. The end result: the gift of Salvation is freely given to all who sincerely seek it and Lord Jesus is at God's right hand.

Verses to read:

Matthew 26:42-44


* Copyright 2008 Sandra Purdue A.K.A. The Bossy Church Lady. You may swipe anything I write as long as you leave the byline intact.

Though this article isn’t the first in the series, I’ve decided to run it first because it’s vital to our spiritual growth.

The Fear of the Lord

If there is one special revelation that we have received from the Lord that can help keep all of us out of major trouble with Him - it has to be the revelation of being able to develop a good and healthy fear of Him and all of His ways.

The verses I will list in this article about having the right kind of a fear in the Lord have scared many Christians almost to death. As a result of not learning how to develop the right kind of healthy fear in the Lord, they have become neurotic and paranoid in their personal relationship with God.

As a result of this abnormal type of fear and paranoia, they no longer have the courage to draw close to the Lord in their own personal relationship with Him. They have become too afraid to draw close to Him or to try and establish any type of intimate communication with Him.

Then you have other Christians who are operating at the other extreme end of this revelation. They no longer have any fear of the Lord and the judgment they will face at the end of their lives, and they are thus out doing anything and everything they want, not caring who they hurt, wound or damage in the process.

Many churches do not like to teach and preach about this revelation that we are receiving from the Lord. Try preaching this revelation at one of your Sunday services and watch how many people will start to squirm and grimace right there in their seats.

As a result of the uncomfortableness that this kind of revelation will bring to many in the flock, many pastors and churches have decided not to talk or preach about it, and as a result, many in their flocks have become complacent and lukewarm in their own personal relationship with the Lord and how they live their lives once they are outside the four walls of the church.

As you will see when I give you all the verses below on this topic, God the Father is giving us this revelation for our own good and for our own protection. For many Christians, the only thing that will keep them from crossing over into some of these heavier sin areas is to have a good healthy fear of the Lord and all of His ways. The first verse I will list below tells us that having a proper fear of the Lord will help one to depart from evil.

From time to time, the flock needs to hear a good fire and brimstone type message. The hammer needs to come down every so often to remind people that God the Father has two sides to His personality.

To preach and teach only on the one side of God the Father's personality is doing a great disservice to the flock. They need to hear the full scope and the full message of the gospel, not just watered down portions of it just so you can make everyone feel good and comfortable in their seats.

Many Christians have had their lives totally ruined and destroyed as a result of not having a healthy sense of a fear of the Lord properly instilled and ingrained in their mindsets during their earlier growing years in the Church.

As a result of leaving out this very important revelation from their lives, a very weak spiritual foundation ends up getting laid, and many of these Christians end up being easily led right off the end of some very serious cliffs as a result of not having enough of a fear in the Lord properly instilled in them in that they should not be attempting to cross over into some of these forbidden areas to begin with.

For many in the flock, this one principle and revelation alone will mean the difference as to how long they will end up living on this earth, and whether or not they will end up accomplishing everything that God would have had in store for them in this life. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin will be death, and for some, it will mean an early departure from this life as a result of crossing over into some of these heavier sin areas.

How many Christians have departed from this life before their time was really up in the Lord as a result of getting addicted to alcohol or to some of the heavier drugs? How many Christians have been killed or murdered as a result of choosing to hang out with the wrong type of people or crowd as we see in a lot of the gang activity that is still prevalent in many of our major cities?

How many Christians have completely lost their good marriages as a result of not being able to stay true, loyal and faithful to their spouses? How many children have had to suffer the extreme pain of a painful, messy and bloody divorce, all because one of the parents could not stay loyal and faithful to the other?

I could go on and on with all of the "death" that has occurred to some Christians as a result of crossing over into some of these heavier sin areas. And in many of these cases, one of the main reasons that some of these Christians were willing to cross over into some of these heavier sin areas to begin with was due to having little or no fear of the Lord.

Many people only live this life for what they can get out of it right now. They want immediate gratification of their impulses and desires, and they will usually stop at nothing to try and satisfy those desires. They don't stop and think of the consequences of their actions. They don't stop to think what will happen if they get caught and how many other people they will end up hurting and wounding. They don't stop to think what God Himself may be thinking about their actions and behaviors.

Bottom line - God the Father has drawn a major battle line in the sand for each and everyone of us. Per the article that we have titled "In the World, But Not of the World," God is asking each and everyone of us to stay on our side of the fence in our walk with Him.

He is letting all of us know loud and clear what we can and cannot do in this life. He is letting us know what areas we can tread and walk into, and what areas we are to avoid like the plague. In most of these sinful and forbidden areas, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that these areas are wrong and sinful in the eyes of God to begin with. We all know basic right from wrong.

But yet, we still have so many people in this life, including some Christians, who will still tempt their fate and hand with the Lord anyway and still cross over into some of these forbidden areas.

This is why this particular revelation is so important and so needed in every Christian household. We have all been born into this world with a fallen and sinful nature. Every single one of us still has to battle this sin nature and make sure that we do not give into the desires of it. The Bible tells us that we have a flesh side to our personalities and that we have to do everything we can not to fulfill the desires of that flesh.

And one of the ways that you can battle the desires of your flesh is to have a full understanding and a full appreciation of this revelation in being able to have an appropriate kind of fear of the Lord. Once you have a full understanding and a full realization of what this kind of healthy fear is really all about, this will go a long way in being able to help you stay on the righteous side of the fence in your walk with the Lord.

Before I get into the actual Scripture verses on this revelation, there is one more thing I need to point out to you so that you do not get out of balance with this revelation.

This revelation from the Lord has two sides to it. It is like looking at a two sided coin. This two sided coin are the two sides to the personality of God the Father. On the one side of the coin is the loving, merciful, gracious and tender side to God's personality. On the other side of the coin is the righteous judgment, wrath, and anger side of the Lord.

As I said at the top of this article, many Churches are afraid to preach and teach about the judgment and wrath side of God the Father's personality. I have heard some of them say that you will catch more people with honey and sugar than you will with fire and brimstone. This saying may be true for some, but for some others, this will not work. Some people need to have a healthy fear of the Lord properly instilled in them, as this may be the only thing that will keep them from crossing over into some of these forbidden areas to begin with.

The Bible tells us that if we spare the rod, we may end up spoiling the child. The rod represents the judgment, discipline and chastening of the Lord. Some of God's people never really spiritually grow up and mature in their walks with Him. As a result, they end up becoming very carnal Christians whose only desire is to live this life for all of the carnal and fleshly pleasures they can get out of it.

However, for the other Christians who have developed and matured in their walk with the Lord, they have to watch themselves so that they do not go to the other extreme end of this revelation. On the one end of the extreme, you have Christians who have little or no fear of the Lord, and they are out breaking any law and any commandment they see fit so they can satisfy their own fleshly and carnal desires. However, there is also the other end of this extreme. This other extreme end is where some Christians get so scared and so paranoid that they are not walking just right with the Lord, that they start to get too scared of God, and they then start to pull away from Him in their own personal relationships with Him. They are so scared and so afraid that they are not doing everything just right in the Lord, they no longer think He finds them pleasing in His sight.

The only way to properly look at this revelation is to realize that we are dealing with a two sided coin. Bottom line - God the Father has two different sides to His personality. On the one side is that loving, caring, nurturing, merciful, tender and gentle side. On the other side is the righteous judgment, wrath and anger side that can and will manifest if we try and push the envelope too far with Him.

This is no different than what we would see in a normal and healthy type of family and household. Children need to know that their parents will draw major battle lines in the sand so they know what they can and cannot do, and that they will get called out on it if they try to break any of those rules and regulations that the parents have set up for them. Many children have been prevented from falling into drugs, pre-marital sex, and gang and criminal activity as a result of the enforcement of these rules and regulations by their good parents.

It's the exact same way with God the Father. God is our Father, and as such, He is laying down all of the rules and regulations that we are to abide by in this life - with all of it being for our own good and protection.

So when you look at God the Father, make sure that you see both sides of His personality. If you are walking right with the Lord, expect Him to deal with you in a very loving, caring and nurturing manner. But if you decide to push the envelope with Him and cross over into some of these heavier sin areas, don't expect Him to turn a blind eye and not make some kind of attempt to convict and call you on the transgression.

God will only give you a certain amount of time and a certain amount of rope to run with before He will make an attempt to pull you back in. If you are not willing to see the errors of your ways and thinking, then sooner or later God will come after you. And for some, this will mean that some type of judgment will be rendered against them. Sin has consequences, not only with the other people in your life, but also with God Almighty Himself.

The Bible tells us that every single one of us will have to face a personal judgment with the Lord when we die and cross over. The Christian will face a personal judgment for everything that he or she has ever said or done in this life at the Judgment Seat of Christ. The unsaved will face their personal judgment at the end of the millennium in what is called the Great White Throne Judgment.

Again, many of the churches are not talking about these judgments and the importance that each and every Christian develop a good and healthy type of fear of the Lord in this lifetime.

I know I have heard many people say they don't want to always be hearing judgment and fire and brimstone type messages. This is obviously not something that you want to talk about and harp on at every single service. But from time to time, these kinds of messages must be delivered to the flock so that they never, ever, forget what kind of God we are dealing with and that there will always be consequences to our actions - especially the kinds of actions that will lead us into crossing over into some of these heavier sin areas.

If more pastors, teachers and churches would include these kinds of messages in their sermons from time to time, I really believe that many more Christians could be kept from crossing over into some of these heavier sin areas. The fear of the Lord should be a major and basic fundamental 101 principle and revelation that should be taught to each and every single Christian as they are growing in the Lord.

I am afraid with all of the permissiveness in our world and society in general, many Christians have become lax and lukewarm in their own personal relationships with the Lord, and they are thinking that He will either not really care, or that He will turn a blind eye if they decide they want to try and cross over into some of these heavier sin areas.

Now here are some very good verses on the importance that each and everyone of us learn how to develop a good and healthy type of fear of the Lord.

The Scripture Verses

Before I get into the actual verses, I first want to give you some of the basic definitions of what the fear of the Lord is really all about. Some of the different Bible dictionaries describe the fear of the Lord as follows:

• Reverential awe

• An awe-inspiring reverence

• Personal awareness of the awesome and majestic sovereignty of God

• True reverence for God

• Reverential fear

• Holy fear

• Feeling of reverence, awe and respect toward the Almighty

I will go ahead and list these verses one right after the other, and then highlight and point out several of the key phrases in some of these verses.

1. "... and by fear of the Lord one departs from evil." (Proverbs 16:6)

2. "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate." (Proverbs 8:13)

3. "Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure with trouble." (Proverbs 15:16)

4. "The fear of the Lord leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction; he will not be visited with evil." (Proverbs 19:23)

5. "Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling." (Psalm 2:11)

6. "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." (Hebrews 12:28)

7. "Do not let your heart envy sinners, but in the fear of the Lord continue all day long; for surely there is a hereafter, and your hope will not be cut off." (Proverbs 23:17)

8. ... says the Lord, "But on this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word. " (Isaiah 66:2)

9. "The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him ..." (Psalm 147:11)

10. Then Peter opened is mouth and said: "In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him. " (Acts 10:34)

11. "In the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence, and His children will have a place of refuge. The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to avoid the snares of death. " (Proverbs 14:26)

12. "The fear of the Lord prolongs days, but the years of the wicked will be shortened." (Proverbs 10:27)

13. "By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life. " (Proverbs 22:4)

14. "Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses. He himself shall dwell in prosperity, and his descendants shall inherit the earth. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him..." (Psalm 25:12)

15. "Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in His commandments. His descendants will be mighty on earth; the generation of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches will be in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Unto the upright there arises light in the darkness ..." (Psalm 112:1)

16. "Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table. Behold, thus shall be the man blessed who fears the Lord." (Psalm 128:1)

17. "Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied." (Acts 9:31)

18. "Then they will call on Me, but I will not answer; they will seek Me diligently, but they will not find Me. Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord, they would have none of My counsel and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled to the full with their own fancies. For the turning away of the simple will slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to Me will dwell safely, and will be secure, without fear of evil." (Proverbs 1:28)

19. "And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I say to you, fear Him! " (Luke 12:4)

20. "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it is good or whether it is evil. " (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

Notice the very first verse tells us that it is by the fear of the Lord that we will be able to depart from evil. As I said at the top of this article, many Christians are falling into some of the heavier sin areas as a result of not having enough of a fear of the Lord properly instilled in them.

The second verse then perfectly follows up from this first verse when it says that the fear of the Lord is to hate evil.

Notice some of the incredible blessings a believer can receive from the Lord if they can learn how to have a reverent and godly fear of Him and all of His ways. A proper fear of the Lord can lead to the following blessings:

• Life

• Happiness

• Satisfaction

• Strong confidence

• Prolong your days on this earth

• Your children will have a place of refuge

• Wealth, riches, honor and prosperity

• Dwell in safety

• Will not be visited with evil

• Will be able to avoid the snares of death

The last verse is coming from King Solomon. Per the article we have on "Seeking After the Knowledge of God," God gave this man one of the most incredible gifts that anyone can be given in this life, and that gift was to have the knowledge of God flowing through him in such a way that no man would ever be his equal in this gift.

So when this man makes a statement starting out with the words "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter," and then goes on to state that the two most important things are that we learn how to fear God and keep His commandments - you know we are talking about a major and profound revelation from the Lord!

When you read all of these verses one right after the other, not only can you feel the power on this revelation, but you can also see how vital and important it is that this revelation get burned into every believer's mindset and way of thinking in this life. For many, it will be a matter of their own life and death if they are ever tempted to cross over into forbidden territory.

Conclusion

Without question, this revelation from the Lord in that we learn how to properly fear Him and all of His ways is truly a life-saving revelation. This revelation is being given to us by the Lord for our own good and for our own protection. With the current lukewarm condition of many in the Body of Christ, I am afraid many Christians have become too lax and too lukewarm in their own personal relationships with the Lord.

Our God is a God of maximum intensity. He is not a God to be trifled with or taken for granted. Many Christians are trifling with God and taking Him for granted when they think they can cross over into some of these heavier sin areas and think that He will just look the other way condoning what they are wanting to do.

God will only give you a certain amount of time and certain amount of rope to run with before He will pull you in to render some type of judgment. As Christians, we should never, ever tempt our fate or our hand with the Lord by crossing over into areas that we know will get us into major trouble with Him. God can and will manifest righteous anger, wrath and judgment on those who will attempt to push the envelope too far with Him.

The Bible says that God the Father is slow to anger. It really does get quite a bit to push Him to that edge to where He is going to blow. Through the convictions of the Holy Spirit, God will strive, wrestle and convict you if you start heading down wrong and dangerous paths.

But if you keep ignoring the convictions and strivings of the Holy Spirit and go to far into some of these heavier sin areas, sooner or later God will render some kind of personal judgment against you and you will end up paying a very heavy price for your sins and transgressions against Him.

This is why this piece of revelation is so vital and so important for each Christian to have full knowledge and understanding of. This revelation should be taught very early on in every Church and Sunday school.

With all of the different temptations our young children are now facing with the release of the kind of pure evil we are now seeing released upon this earth - for some, this one revelation may end up being the difference as to whether or not your child ever decides to cross over into areas of pre-marital sex, drugs, alcohol, gang or criminal activity, or delving into any parts of the occult, the different cults or some of the other forms of alternative spirituality that will attempt to lead them away from the saving grace of their Lord and Savior.

All of the above verses are as clear as day. Just as God told Adam and Eve to stay off one simple tree, God is telling all of us the exact same thing. His Word has given all of us the information and knowledge that we will ever need on how to live this life the way that He wants us to live it and what sins and transgressions that we are to stay out of.

Bottom line - Fear God, fear His ways, fear His commandments and fear His judgments. Jesus Himself could not have said it any better when He says that we should not fear man or what man can do to us, but to fear God the Father who has the power to render everlasting judgment and punishment.

Our God is an awesome God. He is a very loving God. The Bible says that He is a God who is full of abundant mercy, kindness and goodness. He is simply asking each and everyone of us to stay out of these heavier sins and transgressions not only for His sake, but for our own sake, and for the sake of our family and close friends.

Some of these heavier sins will not only ruin and destroy the sinner's life, but it may also end up ruining and destroying some of their families and good friend's lives. How many mothers are crying and weeping themselves to sleep every night as a result of their son or daughter being in jail for the rest of their earthly lives as a result of getting involved in some kind of criminal or gang activity? How many children have been ripped and torn apart as a result of the infidelity and adultery of one of their parents?

Sin not only has severe consequences for the one who is sinning and transgressing against the Lord, but it can also have severe consequences for some of their close family members and friends. This is why the Lord is really laying down the gauntlet on how we are to live this life and the things that we are supposed to stay out of.

Many people do not like to be told what they can and cannot do. But when it comes to God's realm, it is either His way or the highway. You cannot have it both your way and God's way. God is always right, and His ways and commandments for us on how to live out this life are all for our own benefit, safety and protection.

As part of your sanctification process in the Lord, make sure that you burn this revelation into your mindset and way of thinking in this life, and then seek to burn this revelation into your young children's mind at a very early age so they never, ever forget who they are serving and following in this life. This is a very powerful revelation being given to us by our Lord and Savior - with all of it being for our good!

Michael Bradley Bible Teaching, Knowledge, Commentary and Over 150 Free Articles Copyright © 2005-2007 by Michael Bradley.

Bible Trivia

 

Have you visited the new Bible trivia page that I added to my site yet? A new Bible trivia question is posted each and every day. Give your noodle a workout at: http://www.thebossychurchlady.net/free_Bible_trivia.html

Questions and Comments

Q. What is the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?

A. The Spirit of God gives extraordinary gifts, also known as spiritual gifts, freely to the members of Christ’s body. Moreover, there are certain jobs and roles within the body of Christ that some Christians are called to do, which are also considered gifts.

I should mention that the gifts of the Spirit aren’t the same as fruit of the Spirit, mentioned in Galatians 5:22-23, as the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit within a Christian can come immediately or come over time as the Christian matures in Christ.

In addition, Spiritual gifts are different from our natural, inherent talents that we’re born with. Upon converting to Christianity, the Holy Spirit begins to dwell in a believer’s body, mind, heart and soul and he or she is given a spiritual gift from God. This is otherwise known as Baptism of the Spirit. Each gift given has a different degree or strength; no two people posess identical gifts. Think of it like this: there are varying shades of the color blue, so it is with the gifts of the Spirit. Two people may have the same gift, such as Discernment, but the degrees are different. Imagine your hand: you have a thumb, an index finger, a middle finger and so on. Each serves a different purpose, but they are all part of the same body. Just like our fingers, all who are in Christ are members of the same body, but each person serves a different function. Like people, no two gifts are exactly the same.

Resources

I'm always delighted to present each new resource that I find because it's my hope that every one that I include in my newsletters will help you grow in Christ. If you know of any resources that you would like to share with the other readers, feel free to write to me and let me know about it so I can include it in the newsletters.

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Love The Bossy Church Lady

God Bless!

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