"Lord I believe! Help with my unbelief!"

E go to Christ for forgiveness, and then too often look to the law for power to fight our sins. Paul thus rebukes us, "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" Take your sins to Christ's cross, for the old man can only be crucified there: we are crucified with Him. The only weapon to fight sin with is the spear which pierced the side of Jesus. To give an illustration—you want to overcome an angry temper, how do you go to work? It is very possible you have never tried the right way of going to Jesus with it. How did I get salvation? I came to Jesus just as I was, and I trusted Him to save me. I must kill my angry temper in the same way? It is the only way in which I can ever kill it. I must go to the cross with it, and say to Jesus, "Lord, I trust Thee to deliver me from it." This is the only way to give it a death-blow. Are you covetous? Do you feel the world entangle you? You may struggle against this evil so long as you please, but if it be your besetting sin, you will never be delivered from it in any way but by the blood of Jesus. Take it to Christ. Tell Him, "Lord, I have trusted Thee, and Thy name is Jesus, for Thou dost save Thy people from their sins; Lord, this is one of my sins; save me from it!" Ordinances are nothing without Christ as a means of mortification. Your prayers, and your repentances, and your tears—the whole of them put together—are worth nothing apart from Him. "None but Jesus can do helpless sinners good;" or helpless saints either. You must be conquerors through Him who hath loved you, if conquerors at all. Our laurels must grow among His olives in Gethsemane. - Charles H. Spurgeon


The simplest of things is the hardest of things. I lose faith all the time and I forget how to have faith to begin with. I forget how to open my heart and love Jesus freely without struggle. The Christian life is the easiest and most wonderful life there is. The simplicity of it is what makes it so very, very complicated. Our minds corrupt the simple and good if we let it think on things too much. Faith, the simplest of simple. We use faith everyday. Trusting the wheels of our cars, the foundations of our homes, belts to hold our pants up...But trusting in Jesus with no doubting is the hardest thing in the world and is a constant work. Jesus summed up the Christian life very simple when people asked Him what they must do..

"What shall we do that we may work the works of God? Jesus answered and said, "This is the work of Him who sent Me, that you believe in the One whom He sent."

The work is to trust, to rest, to relax, to have faith and confidence in Jesus Christ and the power of His death and resurrection. Faith is more than saying "Lord, I am a sinner" or repeating the sinners prayer. Being saved from the penalty of sin is not saying words, nor is it being baptized. So, likewise, being saved from the power of sin is not doing things, but trusting in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Tired

Um. It's early. I'm talking 8:25 in the morning early.

We are going to a tailgate party at Winthrop Lake today. Winthrop, being our college..With a lake. Yeah. I figured it would be good for me to stretch my legs and be around people. I've noticed it's when I'm sitting at home quiet when I get in my moods, because I'm not used to being around people. The main reason I get angry is because I get comfortable being alone and then people come in and are noisy and peppy. That really burns my cabbage. Thats right. It burns my cabbage.


Anyway, I think the Lord is wanting me to do this for a number of reasons. To help rid myself of my fear of people and crowds and to help with my irritable issues. To sum things up, I am trying to love people. All people. Not just the pretty people, smart people or people whom I have things in common with. I want to love all people. I don't necessarily think I am able to like all people, but Jesus has commanded me to love all people. Not just the ones I like. This will help in getting my feet wet. Or, foot. I feel like I have all these new and exciting powers in myself that I want to let out of this box of a body. I want the power of love. Real love. The kind God has for us. Not the sappy, shallow and rootless love that the world today tries to con you into buying because of it's small price and instant satisfaction. Love is also commitment. But my problem is I can't even be consistent in cleaning the house everyday.

Love

I think maybe God is teaching me something about His love for me and for all humans.

I think back to a verse in Revelation. John talks about the wedding the Church and Christ and the beautiful dress the bride wears for Christ are the righteous deeds of the saints.

I thought came into my mind as I was praying to God about how hard it is to grasp and receive His perfect love. I said it before I even thought it, but It had been somewhere other than my mind before it came from my mouth. "I want to be lovely for You, Father." ...It is a common thing you hear that wives can have a hard time accepting their husbands love and their continuous reassurances of how much the husband loves them even without make up, wearing pajamas.

I had a thought that possibly God is shouting His love to us the same way, yet we don't fully receive it or trust it. I know it is a struggle for myself and plenty of other Christians. How could God, knowing us fully, in and out, completely and wholly naked before Him, love us? Because God is a being of love. We hear it all the time that God loves us, not because of who we are, but because of who He is. A good remedy for these doubts is to look at Christ Jesus. God willingly gave up His son to the most brutal life, rejection and death anyone could have faced. God gave as much as infinitely possible. His own self. He tore Himself in half. God was separated from Himself on the cross. He tore His own being in half to bring us to Himself.

Love fulfills the law

I have a desire to be someone for God that I'm not sure He wants me to be. I realize maybe the person I want to be for God is just the person I selfishly want to be myself, to make myself feel righteous and "clean". I despise the dirty feeling of sinning or feeling like you act like everyone else in the world, when you want so much to be a child of God, while I fail to realize I am already a son of God because I received God's Son Jesus.

Even the good qualities I think I may have may actually be selfish qualities. The desire to do good, sometimes can be a self-righteous desire. The desire to be holy, if coming from a self righteous or selfish motive, can be unholy. I am already holy because Christ Jesus is holy. But I desire to be like Him. But what motivates that desire? I don't want to dig too deep and over analyze myself, because that always ends in depression and worry for me.


Some things I want to be include the following...

. Humble
. Self-less
. Assertive and bold for God
. Gentle
. Kind
. Consistent
. Forgiving
. Good to my enemies
. Courageous


These things do not come from within a human heart. These things are not attainable through self-discipline. Only through love. Sincere love for God. I want to be in love with God.

I don't mention her much anymore to anyone, but I want to love God in a similar way to the way that I loved Jamie. Looking back, I willingly gave of myself to her. I didn't go anywhere. I didn't hang out with friends or buy myself anything. Love is not selfish. Love is a fuel that can burn forever. Love willingly gives of itself rather than looking to a law or list of commands.

Self-discipline and Christian programs to spiritual success are not the answer. Genuine, loving relationship is the answer. If it doesn't come from love, then it comes from selfish desire. I can't put in myself those things mentioned above. But God can put them in me by revealing His love for me as I seek Him.

"No one can snatch them from My Fathers hand."

I am still dealing with questions in my mind along with small pieces of doubt here and there. I do push them away, but they are very annoying. It makes it hard to see clearly.

My beautiful friends prayed for me last night. They are very encouraging and reassuring. I am very glad I have them.

The joy of the LORD is our strength

"Holy is the LORD God Almighty. The earth is filled with His glory."

I am suffering doubts and temptation, but I do have joy in the midst of them because I am sharing in Christ Jesus sufferings. The doubts have been tremendous, but Jesus has been more than a conquerer in me and through me. This is what I'm talkin' about. Bring on the hurt. It grows my faith and joy. Seems like a contradiction or a paradox, but I feel so alive when I am under trial, because my faith in Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, God in the flesh, growing. The LORD answers prayer. I prayed the day before yesterday that He would give me His best and increase my faith and the LORD answered my prayer by letting the doubts and trouble come. He is so wonderful and amazingly faithful. "His love endures forever".

Learning

I was reading Romans chapter 6 today. Paul said we are to consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God.

In essence, Paul was saying that believers natures are now righteous because Christ is righteous and we are united with Him. "For if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him" (1 Timothy 2:11). When we put our trust in Jesus Christ, that He died for our sins and was raised on the third day for our justification, we died with Him. Our sin nature died with Christ. How can we consider ourselves dead to sin, if inside, we're still sinners? We couldn't, but Thank God through Christ, we are no longer sinners. God's Word says believers are Saints. Our inner man is who we are.
(2 Corinthians 4:16) Though the flesh is still with us, we must choose to walk in the spirit. Because we are now of the spirit, not of the flesh. We must consider ourselves righteous (dead to sin) but alive to God. By this, we live by faith in Jesus Christ. We have faith that His death and resurrection has saved us from hell and the dominion of sin.
"If the Son sets you free you are free indeed." (John 8:36)

The hard part is remembering this everyday and believing this when you are tempted.
Remembering that we don't have pleasure sinning anymore when our flesh is crying out for it is very difficult sometimes. We have to keep in mind how we will feel after we sin and know that it is just the painful feeling of the flesh dying. Temptation, the cries of the flesh are only for a time. If we resist them, firm in our faith that Christ has set us free from sin, we will reap eternal life from that. Jesus said "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the One true God"
(John 17:3).


I've read Romans quite a few times and I always go back and understand things
deeper than before.