Consider Your Ways (Part Two)

About 7 years ago I wrote a blog by the same title. I began the blog with the important distinction that to consider your ways does not mean to pick yourself apart, nor does it mean to look for and find sin in your life. That seems to come quite naturally. In fact, if considering your ways meant to look for your sins and faults what would be the profit? It would serve rather to pull you away from God than encourage you to draw close to Him. God has already solved the sin problem for all believers for all time as you might expect from a loving and compassionate God. Considering your ways is more about identifying your own lack of results. It’s not a condemnation, but more of a recognition. It is having the honesty to say, “Well this isn’t working.” It is the answer to your own personal “why.” There are a multitude of ways we can get off track, but perhaps nothing greater than holding on to old wrong beliefs. If you find yourself struggling, and we all do at times, the likely culprit is wrong beliefs. Wrong beliefs based on wrong thinking lead to a lack of positive results. Considering your ways is about changing wrong beliefs you have been cleaving to and replacing them with the truth. It’s sobering to think that our lack of results is based on something we might be believing that isn’t true. It requires a willingness to see things as they really are and not what we wish they would be. Ultimately it leads to humility in finally acknowledging we don’t know something we think we already know. The proof is in the pudding! You don’t need to be a biblical scholar to know your life is sucking right now. Your unhappiness, your lack of fulfillment, your general malaise and apathy, your lack of enthusiasm for life is all based on something. What it is based on is error living in your mind in the form of wrong beliefs. Indeed, consider your ways.

If you have been praying a long time for some outcome or result and not getting an answer, the issue is never with God. God is not judging you and as a result holding back His goodness from you. God is not mysterious or hard to figure out. He does not obscure things to make them hard to see. There is another spiritual power that does just that. That other power seeks to fill your mind with things or conditions that are not true, nor found in the Bible. He says you are not worthy when God said He made you worthy. The other power seeks to keep your mind stayed on yourself and your human frailties. He seeks to isolate you. He convinces you to do things that seem spiritual, yet contradict the truth. He tells you that you have to get right with God before something good will happen. “How can you call yourself a Christian when you do this and that?” So in response to the accusations we work harder to please God who wasn’t behind the accusation to begin with. We start in earnest to improve our behavior else clean up our lives when we weren’t dirty to begin with. Works before God were never based on faith and never will be. Or said another way, when you are doing works to be accepted by God you are believing something that isn’t true. God has already made us lovely and acceptable in Christ Jesus. He did for us that which we could never do for ourselves. When you consider your ways, are you doing things you don’t want to do in order to get something you need from God? You will not get your needs met by doing “works” as those works don’t lead to belief. You get the things God has promised you by believing Him and not from any other way. He solved the sin problem for you so you could finally believe Him absent all of your “what’s wrong with me” mentality. Consider your ways (beliefs) when it comes to how you are going to get your needs met.

There are times in our lives when things go wrong for us. Bad things happen. Circumstances work against us. We may feel like we are in a bit of a slump. Yet who is to say whether that is actually you or the opposition you face day by day. The great Apostle Paul was shipwrecked three times. He faced incredible adversity, yet refused to “consider” that he was the problem. I imagine if you and I were on our second shipwreck we would be drawing some fairly gnarly conclusions. This is how our mutual opponent functions. He carefully plans negative scenarios designed to help us form the wrong conclusions. Then he strengthens those conclusions with more evil considerations as we struggle to escape. We think we are fighting negative circumstances but we are in reality in a fight between our ears, i.e. what we believe to be true. Choose incorrectly and your life sucks. Keep choosing incorrectly and your life will continue to suck. The fight isn’t about what we are doing wrong leading to the negative results or lack of results. The fight is about what we think; what we conclude. Maybe you aren’t doing anything wrong at all. Maybe you are under attack for your beliefs and the potential that holds. Yet, similar to the “works” game, we fail to see what is truly going on. All throughout history believers have been maligned and attacked for no good reason at all. Look at Jesus Christ and what he endured for you and me. Thinking your own sin and shortcomings are the cause for your trials removes the adversary from the equation, which is just how he likes it to be. If there was no evil there would be no affliction or pain. Remember that when the pressure is on. Consider your ways. Are you thinking things that are not true?

The Word of God helps us replace wrong beliefs with right beliefs. You can’t go by how you feel as feelings are often easily manipulated. You can’t go by what people say or in some instances what your preacher said. You have to go by what the Word says! If God said He made you righteous in Christ Jesus and gave you that righteousness as a gift, then in His sight (the only sight that matters) you are righteous. You cannot add to it nor can you subtract from it. Trying to add to what He already did is a recipe for wrong results. Every time you try to add to what God already did, you are admitting the Word has some errors in it which is an evil consideration. The more you try, the more off base you get. Your problem isn’t how evil you are. The problem is you allowed the enemy to get you to consider something that isn’t true. The more you consider and participate in error, the less results you get. Yet the cause for your lack of results isn’t God, but rather your wrong beliefs. You have to change your wrong beliefs to right beliefs. The adversary is very subtle and cunning. He accuses you of being who he is. He is a liar, the father of lies. He is telling you things that are not only false, but directly contradict the Word of God. You escape from his clutches and from your own lack of results by getting back to what is true. If it causes you mental pain and consternation it doesn’t come from God. God is not in the business of screwing you up. Even when we get it totally wrong, His mercy covers us. You are not going to find anyone more kind and loving to you than God is. He knows you and He is well aware of your struggle. Your challenges have not escaped Him and He hears your every prayer. He is more than willing to answer those prayers, but He needs you to get rid of the wrong belief. He needs for you to consider your ways, your path, the road you are on, your journey and if changes are in order, make the changes. Not by doing more works or “getting better” but by believing things that are true instead of believing things that are not true. Consider your ways and believe what is true.

Look, we have all had our share of challenges and difficulties in this life. None of us are exempt. We have all suffered with unmet needs. We have all been sorely pricked and prodded at times. We have all gone through a bunch of pain and trauma. All of us. Yet if you can grasp one thing from this blog, grasp this. It aint always about you. It is not about where you fall short and where you go astray. (We have all gone astray and the Lord laid on him (Jesus) the iniquity of us all.) Instead it’s about recognizing what we all are up against. If there were no evil there would be no suffering. If there were no evil all that we put our hands to would blossom and flourish. If there were no evil all of our needs would be met immediately without conditions or delay. But, there is evil today and we defeat that evil only by cleaving to and adhering to that which is true. You may be right in the middle of your bumps on the road, but God can make your way smooth again. God will show you if you want to know. He will never oppose you, only help you. He will never criticize nor condemn you. He does not judge you. Instead He wants you to know so that you can prevail. Consider your ways of thinking and line them up with what is true. The good life awaits you.

Just some good thoughts…