Saints, we should not
be deceived by our own perception of our own perfection and faithfulness.
Nowhere is the old adage “The blind leading the blind” more to the point than
when we try to evaluate our own righteousness. Remember what God said about
satan “the anointed cherub … full of wisdom… perfect in beauty” who stood upon
the holy mountain of God standing guard over the throne of the Most High
God: “You (satan) were perfect in your ways from the
day you were created, Till iniquity
was found in you.” We have the
same free will satan has, and look how far he fell from the grace of God.
Iniquity is simply any and all unrighteousness, anything that removes us from
right standing with God. We tend to accept our little “shortcomings”, such as
pride, anger, hostility, selfishness, unforgiveness, contentions, jealousies,
divisions, envy, slander, deceit, hatefulness, foolishness, and the like; and of
course, idolatry… putting anything before God in our desires and love. These
are all iniquity in God’s eyes. The great deceiver of mankind traps his human
prey with the bait of iniquity he finds in their hearts, or, as James puts it,
we are “drawn away by our own desires and ensnared.” It takes “Knee Time”
before the Lord to “cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of
the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God”, Knee Time!
Notice
that holiness must be “perfected”, brought to maturity, and it all starts with
the desire to be like Jesus… the desire to be holy. Iniquity contaminates
everything it contacts, so it is a bit difficult to desire godliness with
iniquity lurking about in our heart. Now this is not rocket science, but it is
God science. Remember, “The fool
has said in his heart, “There is no God.” Doubting God or His word, the Bible, in any
fashion is unbelief… iniquity, and places us in the category of the fool. The
root of sinful deeds lie within our heart, “For from within, out of the heart
of man, proceed evil thoughts.” Life is lived first in our mind; our thoughts
are our playground. Unfortunately, our thoughts are satan’s playground also: We
live out our thoughts as actions and words, so wrong thoughts can be most
deadly to our spiritual life. As saints, we need to clean up the cow-pies in
our playground by “bringing every thought
into captivity to the obedience
of Christ” as we “set our mind on things above”, and
put up no trespassing signs to the powers of darkness. They won’t dare trespass
if our playground is holy ground!
KEEPING OUR HEART
RIGHT
(Ezek. 28:15; Gal. 5:19-21; Mk. 7:19-23; James
1:14-15; 2 Cor. 7:1; Ps. 14:1; Mk. 7:21-23; 2 Cor. 10:5;
Col. 3:2)
No comments:
Post a Comment