In Search Of A Better Tomorrow

We glorify God by what we believe

We glorify God first by what we believe about God. God desires we know Him. The more we know God, the more intimate the relationship with Him, and the more we choose to obey and serve Him. The more our knowledge of God, we have of Him, the more we can trust and believe in Him, during all life events, including trials. Knowing God, though, means more than having intellectual knowledge about Him. “You may know of the President, but you don’t actually know the person intimately.” God doesn’t want us to know about God, He wants us to know Him intimately. Abba Father desires a close relationship with each of us, to give us everything we need in life, in every dimension, as we serve and obey Him in love. He desperately wants us to have deep, intimate conversations (prayer) to Him, as He also wants to talk to us – through His Word and into our hearts. He, though, demands faithfulness to Him and His purposes for our life, and to obey Him. What we believe about God, influences heavily our desires to know Him more and to please Him in all our decisions. It also impacts how much we trust in God and our willingness to be faithful to our life purpose, especially when we suffer and face adversity, for His name sake. What we believe affects how much we desire God in our relationship with Him and to do His will, and affects our decisions we make – in essence, what we believe about God influences how much glory we give to God.

The first step in knowing God is to have a relationship with God. We talked about that previously. Without having a relationship with God, and thus, having eternal life in heaven, you cannot know God and thus, you are unable to glorify God at all. Most fundamental and important way to glorify God is to believe in, and put your trust in, the gospel of Christ.

Next, it is important to understand some of the things God does and wants to provide for His children. Those being a child of God will be perfectly loved and cared for by God, will experience eternal life in heaven, inherit an inheritance in heaven, plus have the opportunity to serve God and be compensated for every good deed done for God’s glory, can live a successful and prosperous life to extent it obeys God’s commands, experience protection, provision, and direction for right living by the Shepherd, and experience true joy in an intimate love relationship with Abba Father whose perfect love never changes, receive discipline from wrongdoings for spiritual growth, to grow in perseverance and character through trials, all for our own good, and for God’s glory.

In essence, God wants to give you and me freedom and benefits in countless ways, but we must make wise decisions to take advantage of His goodness – for we have been given free will.

 2 Corinthians 3:17 says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” To experience it fully, we must follow the Lord Shepherd’s directions always, guiding us in our decisions: in Psalm 32:8, “The Lord says, ‘I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you.’” To further this point, Joshua 1:8 adds: “Study the Book of Instruction (the Bible) continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do.” As you do this, and become one of His sheep that follows the direction of the Lord Shepherd regularly, God will take care of your needs sufficiently: “The Lord is my shepherd: I have everything I need” (Psalm 23:1).

God gives every day man another chance to better themselves. Each day we have a decision to either follow our sinful natures and live like how we used to live, or start anew and following leadings of the Bible and God’s wisdom, which leads us toward a successful and prosperous life, in the way God intended. Galatians 5:1 says: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

The more you know about God by studying His Word daily, the more accurate your understanding of Him, and the more you know Him (intellectually and intimately), the more you trust Him (especially during trials) and recognize the voice of the Lord Shepherd whose there to protect, provide provision, guide you to your purpose, and lead you in paths of righteousness. Learning God’s commands by daily studying of the Bible helps us to learn how to successfully and prosperously live in the way God intended for us to live. When we don’t follow God’s leading, and obey His commands, we make unsound decisions, creating unnecessary trials and hardships that we must overcome, and depending upon the decision, possibly undermining personal freedoms for self and possibly, those around us, making us feel miserable and possible regretful for bad mistakes made. God wants us to be free creatures, for that happen, we must make sound decisions, and God gave us His love laws found in the Bible, to “lead us into paths of righteousness for His name sake”.

We were created to be free creatures for God’s glory. That is the purpose of every man and woman. When we live free lives by making sound decisions – this is the third step toward reflecting God’s glory (#1: become a Christian; #2: desire to know God more by studying His Word; #3: obey God’s law and make sound decisions).

How do we reflect God’s glory, when His creation doesn’t behave like Him and fail to live a life of freedom, the way God intended? We cannot. It doesn’t glorify God when His creation behaves contrary to His will, when it is disobedient, and constantly creates unstable conditions that threaten to tyrannize self and others. Our world today is lawless, violent, and unloving – because of man’s free will, our actions fail to glorify God often. Our decisions is influenced by what we desire and believe.

We glorify God by what we believe. Believe that God’s law is perfect, and should be followed the best we can each day. And the more we believe in that, and abide in Him by following His love laws: the more overabundant joy we experience in an intimate, abiding, loving relationship with God in the meantime (note John 15:10-12).

The more we obey Him, the more we know Him and experience His perfect love, joy, and peace in our lives. And the more we know Him, by studying His Word, and learning to recognize His voice talking to us, the more accurate our knowledge of Him, and the more we trust Him. This all begins with a belief that it is crucial to obey God commands, which starts with a belief (that grows into a desire and leads to a decision) that God’s Word should be studied habitually.

To follow God and fulfill our life purpose, especially during trials, we desperately need to learn to trust Him. And how can you trust God without daily spending time studying His Word (hearing His words talk to us) and in prayer (we talk back to God). Relationships and trust are formed by taking time to get to know someone. Believe that it is crucial to study God’s Word, not just to learn God commands, but also so you can study God’s Word, to know God more intimately.

We glorify God by what we desire

The more habitual daily we are in studying His Word, the more knowledge of God, we gain of Him. To gain knowledge of God requires more than just reading His Word. When we study the Bible, we just meditate upon His Word, to ponder and think intensely what it means. We should listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit talking to our souls, giving us inspiration to what it means. As we learn something new about God and about ourselves, in relation in how we should act and live, we should make decisions about making possible changes in our life.  More than just striving to intellectually gaining new information about life, yourself, and God, we must also trust or believe in what you learned, and then surrender to God and strive to obey and put into practice, God’s Word in our lives.

“Prayer is a personal, communicative, response to the knowledge of God.” After we make a decision upon what you learn of God in your Bible study, we communicate that response (of the new knowledge of God that we learned from God’s Word) in words called prayer. Our hearts of prayer should be of helplessness, and dependency upon God, and of surrendering your will and thus, choosing God to be the Lord of our lives. When we let the Trinity control our lives, not only does it speed up the process of knowing God more intimately, but we also experience joy in the process. Jesus said in John 15: 9-12: “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you”.

The two greatest commandments, in which every law of God, is the basis of the following: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:36-40).

When we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, we glorify God to the fullest. Loving God supremely involves delighting in God completely and surrendering will to God totally. When we love God completely, we desire to glorify Him totally.  And part of loving God totally is loving people in this world completely. Doing this involves surrendering to our life purpose to be the person God desires of us, and doing the work He purposed of us, for His glory – which involves many things, one being, to model our lives to how Christ lived through the power of the Holy Ghost, to the best we can, and reflect the light of Christ, working in our lives in us, toward those in darkness, so this lost world can see the value or worth of God’s glory, creating a change and better our lives. If our testimony of Christ is pure, if the world can see the light of Christ and the glory of God creating success and freedom in our lives, they can hopefully bear witness to the fact that they may need Christ too, and desire to experience the glory of God working in their lives also. In addition, those who have the light of Christ already in them (Christians) also need to see our light of Christ in us, too. Christians should live the way God intended for them to live, so they can be models of how to live the Christian life, not only to other Christians, but also to the unsaved person.

“Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.” ― C.S. Lewis,

Glorifying God requires daily choosing to walk by the spirit

When Adam sinned, every human ever since was born with a sinful nature or flesh, that craves to do evil. When people surrender to the temptations of the flesh, they sin. Fruit of the flesh behaviors include according to Galatians 5, “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.”

Once a Christian, the Holy Spirit creates a new heart and spirit in us. Ezekiel 36:26-27 says, “A new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you . . . I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.” This new heart and spirit, when in control of the Christian, produces fruit of the spirit, which never sins. “Love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”: these are the fruit of the spirit. (If a believer wants to obey love thy neighbor as thyself” command, it is essential that he or she allows fruit of the spirit love be evident in that individual’s life.)  Exhibiting fruit of the spirit fruits is essential to obeying the laws of the Bible and a part of making sound decisions, which is needed to be prosperous and successful the way God intended for us to live. Unfortunately, there is a battle in the life of the Christian of what spirit and heart is going to be in control: sinful nature (flesh), which desires to produce fruit of the flesh fruits, which is sinful and leads to destruction, or our new Holy Spirit-created one that produces fruit of the spirit fruits, which is critical toward sound decision making, freedom, and obeying God’s commands.

We are to walk by the spirit, which is “what we do when the desires produced by the Spirit are stronger than the desires produced by the flesh.” “Walking by the spirit” is essential to obeying God’s love laws, and not sinning, and living a life of freedom which benefits us and glorifies God in the process. Here are five steps toward “walking by the spirit”:

Five Steps Toward Walking by the Spirit

1. Acknowledge in our heart we are helpless, apart from enablement of the Holy Spirit, not to sin.  (Romans 7:18, John 15:5)

2. Pray: Ask Spirit to take control of our lives, to be Lord of my life, and to empower me not to sin.

3. Trust: Must believe Spirit will prevent me from sinning. (faith)

4. Act in the way that thou should act. (Must do steps 1-3 first, all your actions would be works of the flesh, not fruit of the spirit)

5. Thank God for any virtue attained or any good deed performed.

When we are walking by the spirit, we don’t gratify the desires of the flesh and thus, don’t sin. For the sake of freedom, it is critical we take these steps to yield to the desires of the fruit of the spirit. Daily we are faced with choices of what spirit (sinful nature or our Holy Spirit new heart and spirit) of what is going to be in control. If one doesn’t control the desires of the flesh through the Spirit’s empowerment habitually, there will be presumably be much more instability in the life of the Christian, obviously depending upon the nature of the sin and the consequences that the fruit of the flesh fruits produce. To glorify God, and to be used by God for His purposes, we must habitually choose to let the Spirit control us, and not our sinful nature.

There’s Freedom In Glorifying God article, Day 3