Are You Failing in Your Walk with God?

Are growing? Or are you still dealing with that same sin that has plagued you for years?  Are you dead, stale, or distracted? Are you just going through the motions?

This is not how it is supposed to be and there is a biblical solution.

First, please do not mistake times of sorrow or hardship with a lack of spiritual vitality. Satan would tell us that we must be happy and trouble-free to be truly spiritual and that is a lie. Even Jesus wept for Lazarus and was deeply troubled in Gethsemane.

So where do we look to turn our lives around?

You must turn away from the influence of the ungodly.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stands in the path of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of the scornful. (Psalm 1:1)

 One of the conditions for spiritual vitality is to manage your influences. Who or what is counseling you? Stop listening to the messages of the ungodly. We are surrounded by the counsel of the ungodly. Every screen is full of it. Music is counsel. It is one of the most effective tools for manipulation and motivation there is. You cannot be spiritually vital while filling your mind with the images, words, and values of this world.

It is simply not possible.

The greatest single hindrance to revival among conservative Christians today is our slavery to worldly entertainment in the form of movies, music, and all forms of social media. You are going to have to make a choice, God or the god of this world. You are already making a choice.

The poetry here in Psalm 1 builds. Worldly counsel produces worldly friendship. Worldly friendship produces worldliness in God’s people themselves. After all, it is the scorner that sits in the scorner’s seat.

You must delight in the commands of God.

True repentance turns from something. In this case, it is the ungodly influences of the world. However, true repentance also turns to something. In this case, it is a new delight.

The Law of the Lord could easily represent all of scripture in this context, however, it is more than what we normally think. I do not believe that the Psalmist is simply delighting in the words of the Law written on a page. He delights in the Law as a way of life. He delights in thinking about and living the law.  After all, you cannot meditate on the word of God, with all of its demands, and remain happy living in disobedience to it.

We must not view the Bible as a spiritual pill to be ingested every morning to stave off the ravages of spiritual disease or even worse yet, a spiritual discipline that brings personal or financial happiness. It is rather a love letter and guidebook revealing to us the joys of a life given over to pleasing God. Reading it is not enough. We must delight in it. We must look beyond its sacred page to see the One who gave His beloved Son for us. It is when our hearts long for Him, and long to please Him, that we will readily confess and discard the sin that besets us.

It is essential that we walk in fellowship and surrender to the Holy Spirit who enables us to have victory.

This is repentance—turning in sorrow from that which God condemns, and turning in delight to that which God commands.

There is no other way.