Denial leads to Destruction

Denial leads to Desctruction

24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 

25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

26 What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul?

27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward everyone according to what they have done.

28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Matthew 16: 24-28

      Pride comes before a fall, and denial will lead to your destruction. Sounds bad doesn’t it, and I will agree that the first part does sound really bad, but it is true, and I know because I have come face to face with my own pride and it has caused me to fall numerous times.

      The second part sound bad only if you take it that way, only if you see it as the way it has been written and not what it actually means scripturally. Carefully read through Matthew 16: 24-28, it is so important that Jesus mentions it twice, and it is mentioned in 2 other books in the Bible, Luke and John also mention this phrase. In Matthew 10: 38 Jesus says “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. “

      So now why do I combine denial and destruction?

      It is simple really. When you deny yourself you deny that you are important, you deny that you have it all figured out, you completely wreck your thought process and your outlook on life. You are destroyed, but here is the good thing, now you are ready for God to make you new. Now that you have realized that you don’t have it all figured out, and the whole universe does not revolve around you, God can truly start to work in your life. I can tell you honestly that when God moves in to your life, anything is left that you haven’t destroyed, or that is not of Him will be destroyed.

      When you deny yourself you allow God to move in and when he moves in He will destroy everything that is not meant to be. Denial leads to your destruction, and there could be nothing better than that.

      You have to be wrecked to be made new and sometimes that means you take down the very foundation that the building was on, you tear it all down and let God build a new foundation. And that can be really hard, because when you think about it, most foundations are pretty sound, and they take a lot of work to break down, and a lot of blood sweat and tears will go into it. But it is so worth it because his foundation is always stronger, and more steadfast. You have to start a new way of thinking, and your life will be better for it.

      When you deny yourself you will find it easier to love your neighbor, to forgive those who do wrong against you, to trust God with your finances, your family and your life. The negatives seem a lot easier to deal with (they are not gone, and don’t ever tell anyone that I said they were gone).

      I will tell you one more thing though, that denial of self is a daily thing, you have to make a conscious decision to do it each and every day, you must choose to die daily, to take up your cross deny yourself and follow Him. You have to wake up in the morning and say to yourself that you are not living for yourself and ask God to continue to work on your foundation, to make you new, and to let him rule your day. Every single step of the way. 

Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

By the way, you can now follow me on twitter @guyfromchurch :)

What do you do when it all goes wrong?

What do you do when it all goes wrong?

      An interesting question, and one that does not have an easy answer. In fact the answer can be so hard to bear that it can break you, it will test your foundation, your faith, and question your purpose in life. Your values and your future rely on it though because at some point it will happen to you, at some point something will go wrong and you will find your heart filled with doubt, at some point things will get hard and you feel alone and the burden of life will become to much to carry.

      I know there are those of you who have gone through these things, or are going through them right now like me. You came to a crossroad in your life and you had to chose one path or the other. Both paths seemed great, both paths would make you happy and both had negative things about them that you didn't like. You know that only one path is what God want's you to chose, one is His perfect will and the other His permissive will. So you chose, without thinking about twice you chose and you wish you had never gone down that path, you wish you had taken the other path and you would do anything to take it all back again.

      I am going through this right now, I wish I had never made the decision that I did, I wish that I had taken the other path, or that I would have at least thought about the current one a lot more than I had. I had unfortunately chosen God's permissive will, because I did not seek Him in it, I never even asked Him which one was the right path, I never prayed to Him, sought Him in scripture or listened to the advise of others because I was so sure that I was right. Now, I have to deal with the consequences of my actions.

      So what do you do when you realize all of this? Do you roll over and call it quits because you made that mistake, do you push on and push through in perseverance, do you yell scream and blame others for something that was your fault? Or do you kneel, repent and ask God for forgiveness for not following His will for your life. This is why I said that it can make or break you,  unfortunately we are human, and our pride tends to get in the way and will not let us kneel at His feet, our humanity blocks us from admitting we were wrong, our fear refuses to let us turn back, and our anger does not let us move forward. If you do not chose to kneel though it can tear you apart, you and those around you. Doubt in yourself and doubt in God can destroy you, and it is a powerful tool that Satan loves to use because it is so easy for us to become doubtful.

     Repentance is hard, and I mean extremely hard. You have to admit that you were wrong, you messed up and that you want forgiveness for it. Sometimes it is easier to give forgiveness than it is to ask for it.

     Not only that is it puts you at a crossroads once again, you will face 2 choices once again, and they are a lot harder to chose from because instead of seeing positives all you can see are the negatives, all you can see is that the choice you made has made things more difficult than you thought when you first decided. 

      Look past the negatives though, and don;t forget you have someone to turn to in all of this. It may be hard, even harder this time because you did not turn to Him the first time, but remember He loves you and: 

"26. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 

27. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
28. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."  

Romans 8: 26-28

      He is your strength in the weakest of times, He can erase all of your doubt and insecurities, but only if you turn to Him, repent of what you did, ask for Him to forgive you, forgive yourself and move forward. Don't let you bad decision break you, don't let the devil use what you fear as a weapon against you. 

4. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

1 John 4:4 

       Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!