1S19-15: From Blame To Transformation – Owning Your Spiritual Journey

I have a question for you.

If you’re not happy with your faith life or your relationship with God, who do you blame?

Do you blame the pastor or preacher?

Do you blame your Bible teacher?

Do you blame your congregation?

Well, here’s some tough love for you homie.

You should place the blame squarely where it belongs.

You should blame yourself.

Stop blaming the boring-as-all-hell pastor…

Stop blaming everyone in your congregation who irritates you and who you secretly look down on as losers who are keeping you down…

Stop blaming the lack of this or the absence of that…

And start blaming the man or woman in the mirror.

Why do I say this?

Because complaining about how things should change isn’t gonna improve your situation.

Before you can move to that next step of growth in God, there’s one challenging step YOU have to take.

You’ve gotta let go and let God.

As I said yesterday, you’ve gotta take off the earthly and fleshly robes of pride you’re wearing now before you can exchange them for the clean, holy, and white garments the Lord wants to put on you.

You can’t wear both types of garments at the same time…

Because they won’t fit.

Ya feel me?

See here’s the thing.

You’ve probably got a furious grip on some worldly thing that you’re refusing to let go of…

And it’s that ONE thing that’s preventing your progress in your relationship with God.

It could be that secret porno habit of yours…

It could be that group of scoundrel “friends” you hang out with whose only pleasure in life is getting drunk out of their freakin’ minds and then harassing everyone around them…

It could be all of the idolatrous new age teachings out there that promise you health, wealth, and prosperity if you’ll only join their coaching program where you’ll be indoctrinated into various methods on how you can control reality by controlling your thoughts and saying 20,000 positive affirmations every day until you’re blue in the face.

Remember this.

Growth in God means you can’t stay where you are.

You can’t simultaneously keep one foot in Egypt and one foot in the Promised Land.

Here’s another concept I recommend you get privy to real quick.

When God calls you to freedom…

It doesn’t mean freedom to do whatever the heck you want…

It means freedom in Him…

The freedom and Holy Spirit power to obey His Will and keep His Commands…

It doesn’t mean freedom to sin and eat unkosher pork hot dogs…

What was the one consistent message God told Moses to communicate to Pharaoh?

He said…

“Let my people go,
so that they may worship me
in the wilderness.”

Isn’t that interesting?

God’s people had been slaves for over 400 years…

And the ONE thing God contrasted to their bondage was the FREEDOM TO WORSHIP HIM…

In other words, the opposite of slavery and bondage to Pharaoh was the freedom to worship the Lord.

God didn’t say…

“Let my people go,
so I can fly them out
to Las Vegas where they
can gamble, get drunk,
and bang whores.”

No man, true freedom in this life, and the next is the freedom to worship Adonai and obey His Torah.

I would add that obeying God’s commands is also a form of worship.

That’s the true Biblical definition of freedom.

See the problem with Saul is that he was determined to live life for his own selfish purposes.

He abused the freedom God had given him as the King of Israel.

Instead of being a servant of God who acted on behalf of the people, he turned into a power-hungry dictator who followed the selfish desires of his prideful heart.

This is the nature of the anti-Messiah.

It is a prideful, egotistic, and rebellious spirit that refuses to remove the fleshly robes of earthly authority, and by doing so rejects Adonai’s holy garments.

As a result, Saul was permanently separated from the Author of life, the Provider of peace, and the Creator of the Universe.

This separation would be permanent and final.