Tag Archives: desires

Why Did God Make His Promises?

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.” (2 Peter 1:4)

Which here refers back to God’s “own glory and excellence,” which Peter referenced in verse three.  Peter emphasizes that God gives us his great promises, which ought to be more precious to us than anything, by, or because of his glory and his greatness or supremacy.  Divine nature likely references back to the divine power that we’re told granted us all things in the previous verse and in context refers to God’s holiness.  Peter goes on to say we obtain to this by having escaped the corruption in the world, suggesting that we were originally made to have holy desires and be holy as the Lord is Holy, but what Adam and Eve did in the garden of Eden corrupted our design. To use the language of computers, we’re born with both our  software and our hardware corrupted and our code is full of errors. God’s greatest promise to us is to debug us both spiritually and physically and return us to the pristine  operating conditions that he originally intended us to have.

God’s promises, Peter tells us, all have this end goal in mind. Nothing God promises in the Word is intended as a blank check to continue to delight in our malfunctioning and relish in our buggy ways. His promises are all intended to advance his ultimate goal of restoring us to proper working order, not through our efforts to fix ourselves, but though his power at work in us.

Lord, one question haunts my mind: do I want to be whole? Do I want to escape from the corruption of my sinful desires? Do I want to be changed? Lord, I want to want to be free of the slavery of sin. Grant me by your grace the desire to open up to you and risk trusting you to transform me into the person you made me to be. Fill me with courage to count as loss anything that gets in the way of your will for my life, to bear the holy spiritual fruits and to be free from corruption. We have not already obtained, but let us forget what is behind and press on to reach the mark of this high calling in Christ and obtain the ends of the promises you have made. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Posted in Bible and Theology, God's promises, Prayer and Devotions, Sin and Holiness

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Face it: By nature, we’re all “those carnal Christians.”

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

It is so easy to read this verse and think about all of “those people” who don’t understand the things of God, or rather who call our own doctrinal beliefs, personal convictions, and religious practices silly or flat out wrong. But I believe the Holy Spirit today is redirecting us from “those people” to “us people.”

We each have a body. We live in sinful, broken, corrupt flesh, in an equally sinful, broken, corrupt culture. By default, all of us reason according to those forces. If we don’t train ourselves to do otherwise, we will even read the bible through the distorting lens of our cultural and personal experiences.

Yes, us people have a “natural person.” We do also have a “spiritual person,” but we’re better acquainted with the easier-to-see natural person. That is, after all, who we are according to our upbringings at the hands of broken people, damage from our fallen environment, and our DNA, which often contains coding errors. Our spirit’s condition was so bad, we all require a spirit transplant from Jesus, and have already received it if we are of his body.

Brothers and Sisters and fellow transplant recipients, humility compels us to realize we all still live in “natural person” bodies on this earth.  Don’t shove him in a closet and pretend he’s not there. If not watched carefully, he influences how “us spiritual persons” understand spiritual things. He leads us to reject spiritual callings as being ungodly folly in our understanding. At the same time, he leads us to flip ungodly ways into holy ways and causes us to misidentify worldly wisdom as spiritual wisdom. Let us have true spiritual discernment today and seek true wisdom from God, with hearts open to receive from him.

Lord, we confess the weakness of our flesh. We have at times confused natural wisdom for spiritual wisdom and let how we are broken define us. Show us, Lord, in the spirit, who we really are in you. Strengthen us in the here and now to be more like the person your eternal eyes already see as we spiritually gestate and await our births into eternity. Open our eyes to the truth of who you made us to be. Please vanquish any corrupt desire that is preventing us from receiving true spiritual wisdom from you. We trust in you. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

Posted in Bible and Theology, Gospel, Grace, Prayer and Devotions, Sin and Holiness

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Live like a Citizen Of Heaven, not Hell.

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,” (Philippians 3:20)

This verse compares our eternal spiritual destination to earthly patriotism, as verses 17-19 urge us to follow the examples of strong, Christ-like believers ready for sainthood and warns us against conducting ourselves in the manner of God’s enemies, with the mindset of the secular culture, serving our own appetites, and being proud of this fact–a spiritually deadly recipe.

So this note of encouragement comes right after a strict warning, that we do not have to be such, that we can turn our hearts and minds upon our goal, eternal fellowship with God and each other in Heaven’s paradise, striving forward to be more like him day by day as we wait here on Earth for our Lord and Savior to return and keep his promise to restore our corrupt bodies back to the pristine conditions of the garden of Eden, like Jesus Christ’s own resurrected body in glory.

The hard question we must ask ourselves, and consciously make a good decision about, is whether we truly want to be like him or like following after the corrupt appetites of our fallen, broken flesh. The flesh is weak, yes, but is the spirit willing? None are so weak as the weak in spirit.

Lord, we confess we have areas where we have chosen to follow after the weakness of the flesh. We recognize our greatest weakness is of the spirit and the will, we are choosing by faith to accept the principles of a world we cannot yet see with our human eyes. Please strengthen us in our spirit today to resist the failings of the flesh, including our fallen emotions, and walk as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven as you are preparing us day by day to live with you there. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Posted in Bible and Theology, Prayer and Devotions, Sin and Holiness

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What is your cross?

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“ And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24)

In a classic putting of the cart before the horse, the rabbi’s words are delivered to us as the verse of the day the day after his disciple Peter expounded on it. In context, this speech is recorded right after  Peter confesses Jesus is not simply another John the Baptist, Elijah, or some other prophet, but the Christ, and Jesus has told him what being the Christ means–suffering even to the point of crucifixion and death, but also being raised to life again on the third day.  Now he reminds them to be this rabbi’s disciple, we must  be like him in everything and follow all of his footsteps. More to the point, we must be willing to suffer as he suffered. We must be willing to deny ourselves, but deny ourselves what? Suffer what? Whatever he asks of us, whatever he brings us to.

This does not mean we must suffer in silence. Even Jesus wept before God in Gethsemane and wrestled with the natural human instincts to save ourselves and avoid pain and suffering and death. Even Jesus, in his darkest hour on the cross, cried out, “God, God, why have you forsaken me?” He in these moments gives us a model we can follow when we’re struggling to deny ourselves, when we’re feeling abandoned or plain old sorry for ourselves.

But he also reminds us of the prize: we too shall rise again. Sunday is coming. New life will spring forth out of the death we experience, literal and symbolic.

Lord, thank you for your example. Thank you for your presence with us. I pray we would always seek you and know you are with us. Open our eyes today and our understanding of what crosses you have called us to bear today and in this life. Grant us the grace to sincerely say, as you did, “Lord if there be any way, let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.” In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Recommended: All That Was Lost (lyrics only) by Michael Card

Posted in Bible and Theology, Lament, Prayer and Devotions, Suffering

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Who is Your life? Christ!

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” (Colossians 3:12)

Then tells us we need to ask: why are we, God’s chosen holy and beloved ones to put on compassion, kindness, meekness and patience? What are we missing by not asking why?

The answer to that question for this verse, and to the same question regarding an earlier list of  sinful inclinations of our fallen flesh that we’re to put to death, is found in verses 1-4 and 11:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

We are to put on those virtues because:

  • We have been raised with Christ and should be focused on His kingdom (be heavenly minded) rather than the things of this world.
  • We have died (to sin and need to replace it with something else.)
  • Christ is our life, not our work, not our hobbies, not our spouse, or even your children if you have any. If they are,  we’re making them an idol that we need to die to and learn to hate them compared to our love for Christ, or Jesus said we’re not worthy of Him.
  • All Christians equal regardless of ethnicity, race, economic status, or class. The context of this one is don’t lie to each other because we’ve put off the old ways and put on the new described in verse 12.

Praise God then that our new ways are being renewed by knowledge, the most key of which is, as verse tells us, we are to put on virtue because verse ten tells us doing so restores us in the image of our creator. In other words, Christ has a compassionate heart and is kind, humble, meek and patient.

So stop avoiding him to hide from the false image of a distant, angry father, young lady (to preach to myself.)

Father, forgive our lack of understanding and for any idols we’ve placed before you. Strengthen us to crucify the flesh and walk in your ways. We place our trust in you today. We look up to you today. We thank you for choosing us and calling us your beloved. We thank you for your compassion and love. We lift up to you all anger and earthly lusts keeping us from being like you today, and we name specific concerns as you bring them to mind now: ____  We release it all into your just hands and we open our hearts to recieve a renewal of our spirits into imageo deo, the image of God we were originally  created in .In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Posted in Bible and Theology, God's Character, Idols, Sin and Holiness

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Can you say you desire only God?

Posted on March 1, 2011 by Andrea Graham| Comments Off

“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:25-26)

Most of us can confidently say we only have one God in Heaven. I wonder if anyone besides Asaph can honestly say we desire nothing on the earth besides God. Of course, this is a lament, so he’s just dumped out before God all of his baggage, in his case a rather frustrated envy of the wicked who prosper while the innocent are stricken. So we might get there in the same way. However, if there is anything we desire more than God, that is idolatry that will separate us from Him, so we need to examine ourselves and invite God to search our hearts and show us.

Whatever it is, get rid of it or the desire for it, or surrender control of it to God. Be willing to lose it or forgo it and still love and serve Him. Though our heart and flesh fail us, we too can trust in God to strengthen our hearts and  embrace him as our great reward.

Lord, we thank you for your word. Show us if anything is more precious to us than you are, and reveal to us what we can do to rectify this, and give us the strength and will to follow through. You are our inheritance, we pray knowing you intimately would be our greatest treasure. May our hunger and thirst for you void all other appetites. Make us worthy of your calling and fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by your power, so that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in us and us in him, according to your grace, oh God. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Posted in Bible and Theology, Idols, Lament, Prayer and Devotions

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