No Shortcuts

Man… you watching TV super late and this late-night infomercial thing comes on…

talmbout some… you can get rich if you sign up right now, by this book … in fact buy 10 of these books and you gonna be a millionaire if you do what we say in this book to the T.

Now hopefully none of you would buy that book, but it’s the attitude behind it that I wanna speak about because we actually do this ALL THE TIME.

We might do it for finances, we might do it for real estate or businesses that we really wanna get into. But it becomes bad when this “get rich quick scheme” carries over into the relationship with Christ.

The Problem

We want to do things quickly. We hear about the Lord opening every door, and him blessing all the works of our hands, (Deu. 28). We hear about God blessing us with good success (Josuha 1:8-9), (and I want yall to notice that i’m quoting scripture, clearly showing that prosperity is a PART of the gospel).

But we don’t have the life in proper context.

Right after God told Joshua a path to success, a verse following after that talked about being STRONG and of a good courage. Why? Why did he need courage to start living his best life, and not go back and forth witchu… jokers ;). There is a serious work that comes with faith, for “Faith without works is dead.” (James 2:14-26)

The hard work part, and the no shortcut part is that you must live from the inside out!

You cannot worship with empty lips.

You cannot love with selfish thought.

You cannot progress without planning.

You cannot walk where you do not see.

Life MUST be lived from the INSIDE OUT, and if you do not have the willingness to allow the Holy Spirit to change you, your heart will continue to generate the same thoughts and thought patterns that stifles spiritual and natural progress.

The Solution: John 3:3 he who has this hope within himself, purieth HIMSELF… even as he (Christ) is pure.

Prov 4:23 says “guard your heart with all diligence for out of it are all the issues of life”. It is IMPERATIVE that you replace the carnal mind with the spiritual mind by meditating upon the Word of God.

When the Word of God is meditated on, it is the crucial part of the “chewing” of the daily bread that truly produces the benefit of understanding. (1 Timothy 4:15)

We’ve got to dig deeper.

We cannot simply memorize scripture and not be challenged by it’s rebuke or correction of our character. The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword (Heb 4), it’s going to cut! But the cutting is good, it cuts away dead things that don’t belong like hatred and malice, (Gal 5), and it is all so God can get more good stuff out of you! (John 15)

But honestly, this will not come by you tasting sermons all day.

YOU have to pray. YOU have to fast. YOU have to protect your soul from spiritual wickedness in high places that are trying to sift you as wheat… but more important than that… YOU must want to look like Christ.

That only comes from the lifetime process called sanctification, which has absolutely positively…

No Shortcuts.

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