Orange Moon Cafe Confirmation and Correction

The Special of the Day... From the Orange Moon Cafe...

Confirmation and Correction

      In our walk with God through Christ, born again believers require both confirmation and correction.

     "In every place your faith to God-ward is spread abroad; so that we need not to speak anything. For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" (I Thessalonians 1:8-9).

     "Who can understand his errors?  Cleanse Thou me from secret faults" (Psalm 19:12).

    If we could physically sit down with our Heavenly Father and ask what pleases and displeases Him about our lives, how might He respond?  What  would He confirm?  What would He correct?  Some of His answers might surprise us.  Perhaps many might surprise us.  Certainly some apsects of our walk with the Lord might clearly present themselves as worthy of approval, or subject to censure.  However, our ability to discern our own strengths and weaknesses is difficult for every believer.  We require much help in this vital matter, God's help that does not presently meet us with His tangible sight and sound presence.  "We walk by faith, not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7).

    We must therefore avail ourselves of the gifts He gives for confirmation and correction.  His Spirit, His Word, and our fellow believers provide the primary means of guiding us along the path of righteousness.  Our Father also uses circumstances and conditions, and sometimes unbelievers serve His purposes of confirmation and correction of believers.  Our role in the matter involves the establishment and maintaining of prayerful inquiry regarding this most vital matter.    "How am I walking faithfully with you, Heavenly Father, and how do I need to grow in such devotion?  How am I not walking faithfully with you, Father?  In what matters do I require Your forgiveness and cleansing, and the realized grace to trust and obey You?"   No audible voices or visions will answer these inquiries of the heart.  Our Lord nevertheless illuminates us as we make sincere request with a humble, trusting heart, rejoicing in confirmation, and willing to repent when corrected.  "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with Mine eye" (Psalm 32:8).

   We do well to make our consistent requests for confirmation and correction with the realization of how secret both our faithfulness and our faults may be to our own perceptions.  Indeed, we may please God in ways so subtle and sublimely beautiful in quietness that our left hand does not know what the right hand does.  Or we may displease Him in ways that lie hidden to our own awareness until God's Word, Spirit, and people open our eyes to what should have been obvious, but which often is not.  We cannot presently sit down with our Father for an Eye to eye encounter of confirmation and correction.  We can, however, walk with Him in a Heart to heart consecration wherein we devote ourselves to the ancient prayer of a man who greatly pleased God in many ways, but who also knew the restorative repentance of realizing he had displeased Him.  Yes, we do well to pray with King David...

"Search me, o God, and know my heart.  Try me and know my thoughts.  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

(Psalm 139:23-24)

Weekly Memory Verse

       Put them in fear, o Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men.

(Psalm 9:20)

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