Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6
Do you know the good works of the Lord? Today’s message is really about this, because very few find the narrow path to salvation. And many believe they have. But the question becomes why do you think your religious views on salvation are correct and others are not? Or why are all religious views correct or OK with God?
Man comes in with a question like this and has their answer based on what they want to believe. But Yeshua said it will be given to you as you believe. And Paul wrote God would send the grand illusion so they would believe the lie. So why is your doctrine correct and not the grand illusion? Have you ever asked or seeked the truth of Yeshua about it? Or are you basing it on what some men teachers tell you and what you want to believe is true?
The verse above spells things out pretty clearly, that the Lord who started a good work in you will complete it. So what is the good work?
The long and short of it is when you start to hear the Lord speak and do what he tells you, you start to see what he is after and who he is. You see the evil works you have been doing and accepting as good in your own mind all the years prior. And you start to focus in on the change of habits and way to live which then line up with the works spoken of in the bible. The bible is not written to be your god and not to tell you so much about sin as it is to show you what sin and dysfunction is like apart from God so when God corrects you (shines his light into you). You recognize the evil you are doing.
The teaching of fear is one of the biggest. It is not necessarily sin in and of itself. But it is a warning sign to tell you that you are not right with God if you have fear. Perfect love drives out all fear.
I see fear in people all the time about dying or when a person dies. Yesterday a young man whom Cinthya my wife knows the family of died in a car accident. He was 24 years old, the same age as Cinthya’s son. So it hit hard with her. Immediately she jumped to the conclusion we should not live down here because it took 2 hours for anyone to arrive at the accident. So in their minds he died because of this. I made the point, when it is your time it is your time, nothing is going to make it happen sooner or latter. Nothing is by chance in this world.
Second thing is why is it such a big deal to die? Aren’t we all going to die someday? Although we do not focus on that happening all day long, we all know it will happen. But most have a fear of dying, or losing other people. I remember my dad telling me when my mom died how she with her very last words was saying no, no… He was proud of her for fighting up to the last second to remain alive. At Least that was his story of why she said no over and over. But I would argue it was for a different reason. Because why would a person who was all but dead from cancer, in serious pain and sleeping almost 24 hours a day. Why would they say no to dying and going to a perfect place in heaven and leaving this temporary body with all the pain and suffering, especially in her state?
It is obvious if she met the Lord and he was with open arms saying enter into my Kingdom, she would have been screaming yes Lord, or something like that. But never would she say no, no…
This is why we fear dying, we do not know the Lord. When we come to know the Lord, and he shows us all things and leads us into all righteousness and understanding. Then one of the first things to change is our focus from the short term life we have here onto an eternity with or without God. We start to see clearly what he is after and how the evil one satan works to keep us from the peace of the Lord and his righteousness. When we choose to disobey in some areas of our life we see the fruit and we see in others that bad fruit. But we also see how the people handle it when the truth is staring them in the face and how they respond.
The first thing is very few people even care about finding truth, they stay 100% in their sinful ways of life, playing the religious game. But those who do start to know the Lord, it still remains the same. Many follow the Lord for a while, but when the Lord’s commands get difficult we revert back to our selfish ways which are controlled by satan. satan knows all your hot buttons to push to keep you in sin, but so does Yeshua. In the truth of the Son, he will set you free from those hot buttons, he will call satan off so he cannot use them against you any more. But you must stop fighting the light when it comes. You must let it do its work in you. But this is the problem, we do not like the light or anyone telling us what we are doing wrong and how to do it right. We do not let the Lord finish the good works he started in us, we push him off, ignore him, and maybe even call him an evil spirit. And we keep something or a few things from the light and truth and remain in the sin. Yeshua said he who is guilty of a few things no matter how small they are, is guilty of them all.
This is what he said working out in your life if you do not allow him to let his light shine into your life completely. And the other problems is we then do not see the truth and way and can easily attach the way of God in others because it does not line up with our way or belief of how things should be according to God. And we then make a stronger case in our heart against knowing the light because we do not like what we see in a man of God. Yes they marvel at the peace, and the joy they find strange in us. But they do not like many things about the ways of God. And this is why they would rather remain in their religion and make believe they are saved in it, then come to know the one who can and will clean you up if you simply hear him and obey him.