Learning the Ways of God –
Point 1
God is set against His children walking in their own way. Sometimes we question God as to the reason we cannot walk in our own way. The Lord answers us through His Word in Isaiah 55:8-9
Isaiah 55:8-9, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts
Part of Satan’s strategy is to encourage us to continue to walk in our own ways. He knows that as long as we keep doing our own thing we won’t be doing God’s thing. We will never embrace the will of God nor walk in it. Trying to live the Christian life outside the will of God produces miserable, frustrated and unhappy people. It is only as we walk in the will of God that we find His presence, His purpose, His provisions and His power. If our adversary can keep us from exchanging our ways for God’s ways, he can keep us directionless, quickly discouraged and easily defeated in our Christian walk. Doesn’t it really make sense for us to trade in our ways for God’s ways?
Point 2
Five reasons why we need to learn God’s ways:
1. A New Birth -Our ignorance of His ways requires it of us. We were not born into this world knowing God’s ways, much less anything about them. They were Not included in our DNA. They are completely alien to man’s thinking. Again, God says this about it in Isaiah 55:8-9. When we come to Christ, we come knowing a lot of things. The ways of God are not one of them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when we got saved we all line up in a line and the minister would lay hands on us and we would fall down under the power of God and when we got back up we would be filled with the knowledge and wisdom of God’s ways? Forget it! It’s not going to happen that way. We couldn’t handle the whole package all at once if He did unload it on us. But here is how God does instruct us in His ways. He brings it into our lives as Isaiah says in 28:10:
“For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept line upon line, line upon line, here a little and there a little: Isaiah 28:10.
He wants us to know He gives truth to us as we are able to assimilate it. The more we desire to know, the more He illuminates His Word to us.
2. A Glorious Church -Jesus wants to present to Himself a “glorious church.”
That he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish” Ephesians 5:27.
Learning God’s ways produces this result in the people of God as they are instructed on the lifestyle that is pleasing to the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit empowers the believer to live it to please their Father in heaven.
3. A New Quality of Life – God wants to present to the world a people who are His and who will display a quality of life that He produces in them and which the world cannot duplicate. He wants to present a people who will demonstrate to the rest of the world what life is really like for a people when God is their everything. His people are those who submit to learn His ways and who obediently walk in His paths.
4. A New School of Training – We need to learn the ways of God because when we come into the church as new believers, we bear a striking similarity to the Children of Israel when they came out of Egyptian bondage. The book of Exodus tells the story of Israel’s deliverance from 400 years of bondage and slavery in Egypt. God had set them free and taken them unto Himself as His people, but they were a people with a major problem that God was going to have to deal with to train them in His ways.. All of the Israelites had been born in Egypt. Egypt’s lifestyle had molded their lives. They had learned Egypt’s ways of life, and they acted like Egyptians. They had an Egypt mentality and a slave mind set. God had delivered them out of Egypt, but now He was going to take Egypt out of them. The people of Israel needed their thinking changed. God was going to retrain and reeducate them from Egypt’s ways to learn His ways. Israel must learn that they are what God says they are now and not what Egypt said they were then. It was important that they be introduced to the laws and principles of God. God was giving them His laws to live by as His people that were bound for their promised land in Canaan.
When you and I were delivered from the Kingdom of darkness and brought into the family of God, we came with a problem similar to Israel’s problem. Still clinging to us was a world mentality and a slave mind-set that was going to be dealt with. Like Israel, we too needed our thinking changed and we needed to be instructed in the ways of God that He expects His church to live by.
5. A New Government -God’s people live under a new government. It is important that they learn to know how God’s government operates. Most of us are familiar with the Constitution of the United States. Our schools have classes that acquaint us with its systems of laws and principles of operation. It is to our hurt if we neglect to educate ourselves in this area. Are we to think that God would be any less specific in giving to the citizens of His Kingdom the information that is crucial for them to know on how His Kingdom functions and how the laws that govern it operate? I don’t think so! God has given to us in His Kingdom a “handbook” called the Bible. In it are all the information about His ways that we need to know so we can live successful, productive and victorious Christian lives pleasing to Him.
Point 3
Walking in the Will of our God:
The Apostle Paul’s conversion on the Damascus Road and his reaction to it is a good example for us to follow when Christ confronts us. The story is told in Acts, Chapter 4. Saul of Tarsus was a fanatical zealous Pharisee Headed to the city with a fuming rage against the followers of Jesus. Suddenly, he was intercepted by the risen Lord Jesus. A blinking flash of light exploded around him, knocking him to the ground and blinded him. He heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why persecute me..” Trembling and astonished, Paul asked two questions in return. “Who are you Lord” and “Lord, what will you have me to do?”
These are the kinds of questions that please God and that He takes pleasure in answering. I can hear the Lord say (paraphrase mine), “Paul, I’m really glad you asked those questions. Here is what I have in mind for you to do.” From that moment, Paul began a journey of discovering God’s ways and God’s will for his life. It was a journey for Paul out of the Kingdom of self where he ruled and into the Kingdom of God, where God rules.
God has this same journey in mind for you and me. He wants to deliver us out of our empty unfulfilled existence we had in the world and bring us into His house to be instructed in His ways that will lead us into paths of satisfaction and fulfillment. Many of us may be pleased with what we now are in our spiritual growth, but none of us are what we could be if we continue to learn God’s ways.
Conclusion:
When you received Christ into your heart, something wonderful began to happen to you. God started a project in you. He enrolled you in His school for Christian Development where He began to write His laws into your heart and instruct you in His ways.
Why is God doing this? Because He is going to make you an open letter to the world for them to read. God wants to send love letters to the world and you and I are those letters.
I Corinthians 3:3, :We became your letters known and read by all men.”
God brings us into His house so He can write on us and stamp us with the Holy Spirit’s seal and send us to the unsaved. It is God’s intention that by the time He is finished teaching His people His ways, every believer will become an open expression of God and all will be telling the same story.
When we write a letter to someone we love, we write an expression of us to them from our hearts. That is exactly what God wants us to be to the world that “He so loved.” We are to be an expression from His heart. Question – What are people reading when they read you and me?
God said in Amos 3:3, “Can two walk together except they be in agreement?” He also said these words in Malachi 3:6, “I am the Lord, I change not.” If we are to walk with God somebody has got to make changes. I’ve got news for you. It is not going to be God. He has already laid down the rules and God does not change them. Guess whose ways have got to go? You’ve guessed right – ours! W why not surrender them now to God and begin the journey of your life—into discovering God’s will for your life by learning His ways.
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