"Living for God"

"Uphold me according unto thy word, that I may live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope." (Psalms 119:116)

  If you don't think this is a thing, think again, because being ashamed of the hope that is within us, might not be openly expressed, but it is real enough to stop us from sharing that hope with others! Not all those that confess to be servants of the Lord are serving the Lord, not in the ways that matter in the Kingdom of Heaven. To put it in a way that might make better sense: if the hope within us is enough to make our faith sure, then it should be enough to make us share our faith. Actually, I have found it actually builds our faith and strengthens our hope to share Jesus with others, especially with those that the Holy Spirit tells us to share with. There are a couple different ways to look at this; one from the perspective of being creditable, the other from the perspective of being dependable. Paul speaks of the creditable part in 1 Corinthians 9:26-27, saying, "I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into submission: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." The short explanation of what was just said, is that power and certainty of what it means to be changed, seriously looses its certainty of power when we do not let God change us! There is not a single one of us that does not know what God wants to change in us, yet we skirt around the main issues by taking the focus off what is important and putting it on something else; anything else, but what God wants us to deal with! In that regard, "that I may live," is the kind of living that makes us constantly aware of God's presence and working upon our lives. Our living for God is based upon pleasing Him and not pleasing ourselves. Paul also speaks of the dependable part in 2 Corinthians 4:5-7, saying, "For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus our Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." The amazing thing about what this says, it how much we get to depend upon Christ for our creditability...

"What does this mean? Even though the Gentiles were not trying to follow God's standards, they were made right with God. And it was by faith that this took place. But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path. God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said, "I am placing a stone in Jerusalem that makes people stumble, a rock that makes them fall. But anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced."" (Romans 9:30-33) NLT