Set Apart

Your Commitment
How is your commitment going?

It has been very hard to focus and stay on track! I know for me it is a lot easier to keep a commitment that everyone else is also keeping. There is synergy in numbers and when everyone else is doing the same thing is makes it easier to hold my word. How about you? But that's not really how life works, right? In the real world there are people all around me who are not keeping their word or have a different moral compass then I do. This years commitment has challenged me to remember that I am set apart for God. As God's child He called me to be different. He commands me to be light. He extorts me to be "holy" because he is holy. This literal means set apart from everyone else in the world. Followers of Jesus Christ are supposed to be different then the world around them.

What do you think?

How do you think this years commitment will help you in the future?

What has been most difficult?

Does your commitment set you apart?


-Andy Matzke

I picked this up from my brother. He wrote a blog thought that I think would be good to read and think about today...


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Your Spiritual Journey

Your spiritual journey needs to be primarily about truth, NOT feelings! Let me expand...

When it comes to the truth in the Bible, avoid at all cost the mistake of concentrating on your feelings. Above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central. Many people make this mistake and are doomed to be unhappy because this is not God divine order for our spiritual journey. Truth first, then emotions will follow, but only if the truth is really believed (not just known). Many theologians/Christians know some truth, yet don't really believe because they don't know love, grace, wrath, and all the emotions that follow belief.

What we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not an emotional stimulus and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to the truth that feelings follow! When we focus first on truth, sooner or later feeling will follow. And they will be reliable feeling, because they're anchored in truth.

How do you feel about this or what do you think are the last questions that should be asked. The starting point is "do you believe this truth?" The starting place is choosing to believe the truth regardless of how we feel or if we thinks is fair. Otherwise, we end up actually shortchanging ourselves emotionally and experientially, since deep and profound feelings are the inevitable effects of Scripture rightly understood and believed.

As you read and meditate and think seriously about what's in your Bible, and believe and accept it, then ultimately you will indeed experience it, and you'll feel the effects of it. There's heart transforming truth in Scriptures, but you won't encounter it by first trying to feel it.

Knowing and wholeheartedly believing truth will always bring you, in time, to a trustworthy experience of the truth. But if you trust your feelings first and foremost, if you exalt your feelings, if you invest your feelings with final authority...they'll deposit you on an emotional roller coaster which will stunt our spiritual journey, make us shallow followers of Christ, and weak Christians.

How is your spiritual journey towards truth!

may God feel (emotionally) blessed.....

-Andy Matzke

Day 15

How to drift from God.

HOW TO DRIFT FROM GOD

· SATAN WANTS TO DESTROY YOUR FAITH.

But I’m afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 2 Cor. 11:3

19 When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. 20 The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. 21 But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. 22 The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. 23 But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown." Matt. 13:19-23

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Heb 2:2

HOW TO DRIFT FROM GOD IN 5 EASY STEPS
 

1) NEGLECT YOUR TIME WITH GOD.
O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you,
my body longs for you… Ps 63:1

2) IF YOU DON’T LIKE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES, BLAME GOD.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding… Prov 3:5

3) HANG AROUND BAD INFLUENCES.
Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character...”  
1 Cor. 15:33

 4) GIVE INTO TEMPTATION.
14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. James 1:14-15
5) LOVE THIS WORLD MORE THAN YOU LOVE GOD.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. 1 John 2:15


·IF ALL ELSE FAILS: FAKE IT!

The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me… Isa 29:13

I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Rev 3:1

RETURNING TO YOUR FIRST LOVE

…You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first... Rev 2:4-5