How can I know the will of God? Part 2

One of the most frustrating factors one can experience in any type of relationship is poor communication. Some women have accused us men of being simple-minded people, but many would argue that we are just merely straightforward with what we want. Period. However, since it seems that men and women are a different specie, the latter are not always “straightforward” and “simple-minded” as we are. Hence, frustration and confusion arise when one is misinterpreted. At any rate, we were all raised and engineered differently by the Creator, and have our unique ways of communicating.

Nonetheless, these types of issues slowly dissipate as the two individuals become more acquainted with each other, and as a result they learn how to interpret every single move they make. Their words, tone, eyes, and gestures speak more than a million and one words. Spending time, listening, and studying each other eventually enables them to understand one another.

Perhaps this is the common denominator most of us face in our relationship with God. Day after day we kneel down and beg the Lord to teach us what His will is, and some of us have even dared to believe that sometimes He doesn’t speak back. Frustration arises. Confusion too. We fall to our knees, and even though we hear his voice, we do not understand what He is saying. But maybe, just maybe, if we were to spend more time with him, speak less, listen more, and study Him things would be differently.

Scripture is filled with information regarding what the will of the Lord for your life is. It’s there written in black bold big letters. Let me show you just a tiny bit of it:

1.  “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thes 4, NASB).

a.     Abstain from sexual sin (3)

b.     Learn how to control your body  (4)

c.      Love one another (9)

d.     Mind your own business (11)

e.     Learn how work with your hands (11)

f.      Know your biblical doctrines and beliefs (13-17)

g.     Comfort one another (18)

The Lord hears ands understands your heart, tears, frustrations, words, and your silence because He has spent every single second of your life right there next to you. He listens to you, and has studied you from day one. He knows you and I have trouble communicating, therefore, the Holy Spirit TRANSLATES our prayers to the father with groaning too deep for words because we simply do not know how to pray (Romans 8:26).

For that reason, is our turn now to learn and become acquainted with God’s love-language. How? The same way He has done with us: Spending time, listening, and studying Him through Scriptures.

Blessings!

How can I know the will of God?

"The heart of the wise teaches his mouth, and adds learning to his lips" (Prov. 16:23). 

Most of us who are now in church grew up in a non-Christian environment. In a world where perhaps the motto was get rich or die trying or screw life before life screws you. In that environment we learned and adopted a set of mind that promised us the best of this world, but in the end it’s purpose was to lead us to failure, confusion, darkness, and death. I once was told by a person who I very much loved, “Sleep with all the woman you can because, if you do not, at the end, someone else will; might as well be you!” Some of us decided to follow these kinds of advice, and learned how to get our ways to please the desires of our sinful hearts. But perhaps some of us were a bit more careful with our decisions, and even though we did not participated in these “big” sins, our minds learned certain principles, customs, and ways of thinking from the culture of the people we were raised with. At any rate, the fact is that ALL of us have been intimately affected by the erroneous paradigm some people have of life.

Most of us have done like Salomon: Nevertheless, we have clung unto these things (1 Kings 11:2). The illustration the dictionary gives for the word cleave / cling is the instance where the smoke penetrates the clothing, and the smell stays for days. In the five accounts in the Bible where the word דבק  (dabaq) (cling / cleave) is mentioned, one of them gives the idea that this sort of closeness is the kind of relationship and bond an infant has with the mother’s breasts. It’s a very tight and intimate connection. Unfortunately, that is the type of attachment our minds have with the principles, customs, and ways of thinking that people and culture taught us as we were growing up.

Most of us, therefore, find ourselves from time to time in the middle of conversations that an imitator of Christ would not have. Seriously. Think about it. What do you usually talk about with your friends? With your best friend? With your husband or wife? With that person you are cool with? What kinds of jokes do you say? How do you ussually joke around? Be real with your self. Is it sex, boys, and girls? Money? Gossip? Problems? Work? Jesus? The devil? (seriously, some preachers talk more about the devil than Jesus). At the end of your conversations, can you really bow your head down and lift up a prayer with that person?

            CALLING:

Paul, thus, encourages most of us, by saying, “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, and ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2, ASV). He repeats it again in Ephesians 4:23, “let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes.”

HOW?

By letting “no corrupt word proceed our of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers” (29).

By leaving out “obscene stories, foolish talk, and coarse jokes” out of your vocabulary (5:4)

By “singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts” (5:19).

WHY?

So you don’t “grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (4:30).

So that you may know what the will of God is (Romans 12:2), because it is through your mind that he speaks.

INSTEAD

“Carefully determine what pleases the Lord” (5:10).

And “throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, your former way of thinking, which is corrupted by lust and deception” (4:22).

“Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do” (5:17). It’s not that he is not speaking, it’s that you are NOT listening and understanding what he is saying. Renew your mind!

RESULT:

You genuinely will surrender to God to the point where you will no longer be able to distinguish where you begin and where He ends. This kind of worship and submission will be a pleasing aroma to God enabling you to hear his voice and understand what His will is.

So in the name of Jesus, I encourage you, to start making changes today. Do not cling unto your former way of thinking, but cleave unto Him who knows what’s best for you. Search passionately what pleases the Lord, listen to Him, and be courageous enough to take up the challenge to do his will.

May you be an imitator of Christ today.

Blessings!

Love Bears All Things?

Love bears all things?

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13).

Most of us grew up and were never taught to say, “Please, forgive me.” Perhaps we were taught to say, “I’m sorry”, but we said it so often that at times it lost it’s meaning. We eventually learned that to ask for forgiveness was a submissive act, and as we grew up, our ego and ignorance kept us from asking for forgiveness. Because, come on, we are always right in what we do and say, right?

Some say that the people we hurt the most are those who we love the most. We have either hurt them by saying something degrading, looking down at them, making them feel unworthy of our love, abandoning them, or being unfaithful. Personally, I had never met so many women who are single mothers like I have here in Puerto Rico. It’s unbelievable. And my question to one of them was, “Why?” She responded with a broken-hearted expression, “Because most of us have been cheated on.”

Let me tell you about the story of Toyi.

She is one energetic 70+-year-old lady. A group of us, college students, were finishing our lunch after church, when all of the sudden I see her wiping off our table like Karate Kid was waxing that car in the movie. I invited to stop (so I can finish my lunch in peace), and asked her to give us some advice on dating. She smiled, stopped, and said, “Let me tell you my story.”

“My mother, my church, my pastor, my friends, and family told me, ‘do not marry him, Toyi! He is no good for you. He is not a Christian, doesn’t have the same beliefs as you do, and he is going to make your life impossible.’’’ –She said. “But I loved him, guys. I liked him so much. I didn’t make it easy for him though. He had to wait 9 months until he kissed me; he stole it. I was irresistible. You should see some of the pictures when I was young, Sergio. I was hot. I don’t have much anymore, but I had it going on!”

“So I married the guy. I was crazy about having a child, and for some reason I just couldn’t. Every time I got pregnant I had a miscarriage. 3 years went by, and one day he approached me and said, ‘love, I’ve cheated on. She is pregnant.’” I socked him in the face, guys. I just couldn’t resist. He didn’t say or do anything because he deserved it. I was heartbroken.”

           

“Long story short, guys, when the baby was eight months old, the mother of that child came to my door to tell my husband and I that she could not take care of the baby anymore. So I decided to take the fruit of the unfaithfulness of my husband, and raised him as my own. Today, he is a grown-married-Christian man, and the father of two beautiful children. I never had a child of my own, but I love him as if he really was.”

So I had to ask, “Toyi, what drove you to forgive your husband, forgive that woman, and take that child as your own?” –She looked at me and said, “Sergio, two reasons. First, I understood that it was the consequence of my disobedience by marrying the guy God did not wanted me to marry. Secondly, I loved that man with all my heart. It was a struggle, but I begged the Lord to help me forgive Him as He had forgiven me all my sin. God help me He did. I came to the point that I saw the child as the product of our marriage. That boy became our son. It was through God’s love that I was able to forgive my husband, forgive that woman, and love their son. Today, I am still married to that man, still love him with all my heart, and we are going onto our 60^th anniversary. We are one happy couple.”

Why do I write this? Because the Lord wants you to forgive that person who has hurt you so much. He wants you to forgive as you have been forgiven by Him. He knows what it feels like to be betrayed, to be abandoned, to be mistreated, and to be cheated-on. He knows, and even so, He has chosen to forgiven you and look at you as if you have never sinned!

Hey, love bears all things!

Do you really love God?

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these” (Mark 12:28-31).