Some people say they’re Christians but don’t acknowledge the divinity of Christ. They think He was simply a good teacher, healer, philosopher, or social reformer. I want to be crystal clear on this matter: You can believe all of these wonderful things about Jesus and even laud Him as a prophet sent by almighty God. But if you do not accept that Jesus Christ is God the Son and that He died for your sins, then you do not actually know Him.
It’s true Jesus was fully human, but the wonderful, supernatural mystery is that He was also fully divine. And believing this is absolutely essential to the understanding of how we are saved.
Now, you may have heard people falsely argue that Jesus never actually claimed to be God. Yet time and again in the Gospels, Jesus places Himself on equal footing with the Father (John 10:30; John 14:6-14). In fact, if Jesus was not truly God’s Son, then as C. S. Lewis observed, He was either a lunatic or the world’s most detestable liar. Don’t spend one more day believing Jesus is anything less than the Son of God. Your eternal salvation depends on it.
When you hear the word erosion, what comes to mind? Most likely, you think about how land or rocks wear away over an extended period of time. In the same manner, erosion in our spiritual lives tends to happen subtly over the course of months or years.
What causes this spiritual stagnation and deterioration? The answer is often conformity to the world’s methods and values, plus compromise with sin. The process of erosion begins in the mind when we let our thoughts, attitudes, and desires be shaped by culture. Before long, we begin to conform to the godless and sinful behavior around us.
Is your spiritual life where you want it to be? Has it been gradually weakened by the pressures of the world? Are you letting social media, other people’s opinions, and the culture shape your reasoning, desires, and ambitions? If so, the way to counteract the erosion is to turn back to the Lord in obedience and let Scripture renew your mind with His truth. As you learn to see life from God’s perspective, your desires and behaviors will conform to His perfect will.
Paul spent years serving Christ, yet he experienced continual suffering. It doesn’t seem fair, does it? Why would God let him go through so much pain? It’s a question many of us ask today about ourselves. We think the Lord should protect us from hardships, but He doesn’t always do so.
Maybe our reasoning is backward. We think faithful Christians don’t deserve to suffer, but from God’s perspective, suffering is part of being a Christian. If we all had lives of ease without pain, we’d never really know God, because we would never need Him. Like it or not, adversity teaches us things that simply reading the Bible never will.
I’m not saying we don’t need to know Scripture; that’s our foundation for faith. But if what we believe is never tested, it remains head knowledge. How will we ever know the Lord can be trusted in the midst of trouble if we’ve never experienced hardships? God gives us opportunities to apply scriptural truths to the difficulties facing us, and in the process, we find Him faithful.
Trials can be a means of building faith or an avenue to discouragement and self-pity—it’s up to you. But if you’ll apply God’s Word to your situation, your trust in Him and your faith will be strengthened through adversity.
We’ve all occasionally fallen for a lie, whether it was something as trivial as false advertising or as serious as a scam that emptied a bank account. Whatever the trickery was, it can be traced back to the Father of Lies—Satan (John 8:44). And his most devastating deceptions are those that lead us into sin. This is why it’s vital to understand the devil’s pattern of deceit, which goes all the way back to the garden of Eden.
Satan’s first move was to entice Eve to doubt God’s Word, and his strategy was to ask, by means of the snake, “Has God really said … ?” (Gen. 3:1). People have been falling for this deception ever since. When they hear one of God’s clear commands, they rationalize that it’s not really what He meant or it doesn’t apply in their case.
Next, the devil directly contradicted God’s Word and impugned His character by denying that Eve would suffer any consequences for sin. Instead, the enemy promised her some amazing benefits if she’d eat the fruit. And this, too, is how he operates today.
When temptation comes, don’t believe Satan’s lies. Sin always has repercussions. Therefore, ask yourself if the temporary gratification of a wrong choice is worth suffering the consequences that are sure to follow.
It can be sobering to think about life as a field of our own planting, and what’s in our field is determined by the type of seed we have chosen to sow. What if we selected the wrong “seed” but don’t realize it until years later, when we’re standing in a field filled with mature “plants” that are causing us pain and difficulty?
In this agricultural analogy of sowing and reaping, there are only two types of seeds—those that originate from our sinful desires and those that originate from the Spirit. The first kind of seed produces sin and corrupts our character, but the second kind produces Christlike qualities associated with eternal life.
Sowing and reaping is a principle we cannot change; it’s a reality of how our world works. The attitudes and actions we sow now will produce more of the same later, so what will we choose to plant? If we let sinful qualities take root, they will in time characterize our whole life (Gal. 5:19-21). The good news is that we can always change seeds. If we want a life that others see as a godly harvest, then we must plant the Spirit’s seeds and lean on Him to cultivate His fruit (Gal. 5:22-23).
