Living for God in 2015

Happy first Monday of 2015. I pray your holidays were joyous.

I was inconsistent last year with this particular set of posts, but this year I have made a commitment (not a resolution) to pursue God more than I ever have before. Part of that is digging deeper into His Word. I’ll be using Monday Musings to share what I’m learning. I pray it blesses you.

I’m conflicted this morning on what to share. I’m reading a nonfiction book, and I’m only part way through it, so I won’t mention the title just yet. There have been a few things I didn’t agree with, but for the most part it is all based on Scripture, most of which I’ve read, but never really thought about. And I’ve never heard it preached from a pulpit.

I’ve shared a few of the Scriptures on my personal FB page, but I wanted to share them here as well.

IMG_01641 John 3:4-6, “Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins, and there is no sin in him. Anyone who continues to live in him will not sin. But anyone who keeps on sinning does not know him or understand who he is.“(NLT, emphasis mine)

Rom. 6:1-2, 6-7, “Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? 2 Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?…6 We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. 7 For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin.” (NLT, emphasis mine)

One of the things I pointed out from 1 John is the sentence, “Anyone who continues to live in Him will not sin.” While I’ve read that before, for some reason as I was reading this book (and the writer was pointing it out), we shouldn’t be sinning. At all. We have the ability to not sin.

We sing about the curse of sin being broken, but do we really believe it? Do we live like it? Or are we still slaves to sin?

We use the saying, “Sinners saved by grace” to justify our flesh. Yes, we were once sinners saved by grace “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” but that doesn’t mean we HAVE to continue in our sin. We are capable, and well equipped, to stop sinning.

Check out these verses from 2 Peter 1, “By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. And because of his glory and excellence, he has given us great and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share his divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.

In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness,and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.

The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.

10 So, dear brothers and sisters, work hard to prove that you really are among those God has called and chosen. Do these things, and you will never fall away. 11 Then God will give you a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (NLT, emphasis mine)

I’m not writing all these things for your benefit, though I pray it does help you. All this is to remind me of all the things I wrote about in the month of December. All of those come with the condition that we abide in Him. How can we abide in Him and continue to sin? We cannot.

Okay, enough for today. I’m going to let this sink in.

Blessings,

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