Friday, April 4, 2014

"Authentic Living"


    "The just shall live by faith" (Romans 1:17).

    We are  most consciously alive when we are most consciously trusting the Lord.  This requires challenge and hardship because in our present existence, we tend to drift and even recede spiritually if the waters upon which we sail become too smooth.

    "To live is Christ" declared the Apostle Paul from a Roman prison (Philippians 1:21).  Paul well knew that life must be defined not in terms of circumstance and condition, but ofChrist.  The Lord Jesus known, loved, trusted, obeyed, and communicated by example of life and word of mouth provides the opportunity for a life governed by proximity to God rather than pleasurable situation.  The former promises a peace that "passeth understanding, while the latter offers a merely "hope for the best" wistfulness that ebbs and flows based upon circumstance (Philippians 4:7).

    Such a path of faith is not easy.  Trusting and submitting to God in the face of contrary emotions and conflicting appearances requires much exercise of heart and mind, as led by the Holy Spirit.  This very process implies the authentic living afforded by opportunities to believe God and His Word.   Again, "to live is Christ," and we "live by faith."  Nothing else qualifies as life in terms defined by Scripture, Anything, therefore, that leads us to consciously depend on our Heavenly Father offers to us vivid experience of the promise made by the Lord Jesus...

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."
(John 10:10)

Weekly Memory Verse
    The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold as a lion.
(Proverbs 28:1)
    

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