Galatians 4:28-30
Isn't it clear friends, that you like Issac, are children of promise? In the day of Hagar and Sarah, the child who came from faithless connivance (Ishmael) harassed the child who came—empowered by the Spirit—from the faithful promise (Isaac). Isn't it clear that the harassment you are now experiencing from the Jerusalem heretics follows that old pattern? There is a Scripture that tells us what to do: “Expel the slave mother with her son, for the slave son will not inherit with the free son.” MSG
One sheer manifestation of the influence of the Antichrist spirit in a person's life is selfish-ambition. This is the motivation that leads a person to do things independently from God with works of the flesh that drive them to accomplish their own ambitions, but only for them to benefit, even at the expense of the suffering of others. An ambition is not the same as following God's vision for our lives because a vision from God is bigger than our own capabilities and takes God and His supernatural power to help us fulfill it. But there are times a person may have received a vision from the Lord and still they have not learned to live solely under the direction of the Holy Spirit on a daily basis because He will direct them to lay down their lives so they can learn to walk by faith, and this is faith in God which works through love.
Love has to become the main motivation for us to accomplish anything in our lives because we are called to love God above all else and our neighbors as we love ourselves. There's a lot to say about this subject alone, but let's focus right now on the consequences of walking and working out of our own strength rather than by the grace of God in our lives. For us to forsake living by our own strength and view of things we must seek the counsel and follow the direction of the Holy Spirit daily. This is a process we must pay attention to, for God has selected a path to walk out His purpose for us individually as well as corporately (our family, business, ministry, community, region, city, or nation).
Love has to become the main motivation for us to accomplish anything in our lives because we are called to love God above all else and our neighbors as we love ourselves. There's a lot to say about this subject alone, but let's focus right now on the consequences of walking and working out of our own strength rather than by the grace of God in our lives. For us to forsake living by our own strength and view of things we must seek the counsel and follow the direction of the Holy Spirit daily. This is a process we must pay attention to, for God has selected a path to walk out His purpose for us individually as well as corporately (our family, business, ministry, community, region, city, or nation).
Galatians 4:24 says in the Message Bible that a slave life gives birth to slave children. This means that we cannot live our lives apart from a relationship with God which involves loving and following Him with reverent and dependent obedience, and times of fellowship with Him by His Spirit so we know how to proceed in the situations we encounter daily from a life of prayer, worship, and reading of the Word, and our partnership and cooperation with Him. This will cause us to be used of Him to bring life to the world around us because we have learned to always be thinking of others as better than ourselves (Philippians 2:3).
The more we spend intimate times with our Lord and receive our new mindset from Him, the more we learn to see others with the same eyes of love that He does. He sees them as the finished work that He has called them to be even though right now they are a work in progress just as we are no matter how mature we may be in the things of the Spirit. This is what a life of faith that works through love looks like. Therefore, learning to see others the way God sees them should lead us to want to help and serve them as God assigns us to, so they too can encounter God like we have. Also, as we make our gifts and all other things God directs us to make available to them, we are helping them be partakers of the gift God has also given to us since we have this in common with them: we are children of the Most-High God and are also called and purposed according to His promises.
The more we spend intimate times with our Lord and receive our new mindset from Him, the more we learn to see others with the same eyes of love that He does. He sees them as the finished work that He has called them to be even though right now they are a work in progress just as we are no matter how mature we may be in the things of the Spirit. This is what a life of faith that works through love looks like. Therefore, learning to see others the way God sees them should lead us to want to help and serve them as God assigns us to, so they too can encounter God like we have. Also, as we make our gifts and all other things God directs us to make available to them, we are helping them be partakers of the gift God has also given to us since we have this in common with them: we are children of the Most-High God and are also called and purposed according to His promises.
Ishmael was born to Abraham as a result of the works of his flesh because he and his wife Sarah panicked and thought that years were going by and they would have to use their own strengths and abilities to see their promise from God fulfilled. For this, they went on ahead of God to bring the manifestation of the “promise” outside of the His ways and the process He chose for them. They decided to skip the process. However, a process takes time for God to accomplish everything He deems necessary on the inside of us. This way, those things He deposits in us can be brought out at the right time and season He has appointed for us. This, the result of their trying to skip the process was then that when the child of the real promise came empowered by the Spirit of God for its completion and manifestation, the child born of the works of the flesh then started harassing the child of the Spirit.
This child of the flesh came from a slavery mentality led by the Antichrist spirit that is all about selfish ambitions and obtaining things even in the name of God, apart from His leading and authority over our lives. This causes the contaminated person (s) to become obstruction (s) of the way for others and stumbling blocks to someone else's inheritance. When we live as children of God that are free indeed, we are eager to hear what the Lord wants us to do and we choose to die to our selfish-ambitions daily, and instead we choose to do His will and obey His authority over us whether we understand why He is asking us to do something or not. This helps us to courageously take risks and be ready to go out on a limb when prompted to do so because we know that if He asked us to jump He'll catch us and we will not get hurt because an obedient life is a life protected from the wiles of the enemy.
This child of the flesh came from a slavery mentality led by the Antichrist spirit that is all about selfish ambitions and obtaining things even in the name of God, apart from His leading and authority over our lives. This causes the contaminated person (s) to become obstruction (s) of the way for others and stumbling blocks to someone else's inheritance. When we live as children of God that are free indeed, we are eager to hear what the Lord wants us to do and we choose to die to our selfish-ambitions daily, and instead we choose to do His will and obey His authority over us whether we understand why He is asking us to do something or not. This helps us to courageously take risks and be ready to go out on a limb when prompted to do so because we know that if He asked us to jump He'll catch us and we will not get hurt because an obedient life is a life protected from the wiles of the enemy.
The other part of selfish ambition is that there is a rule-keeping system that keeps a person bound to the slavery of the law. This means that they obey the letter of the Word, but have not known to walk in obedience to the Spirit of the Word. These are specific personal directions from the word of God for our lives that God commands us to do and stick with until their manifestation or until He changes directions no matter how much opposition we may encounter. As we follow these commands by the leading of the Spirit of God, we will learn to recognize that we were made free to obey God's authority over us and how He has chosen to direct our lives. In other words, when we understand that God has planned our lives ahead of time and has given us His grace to accomplish this plan only, then we can learn to walk following His purpose for us and not live outside of this frame.
Following our own religious plans and purposes apart from the authority and direction of God by His Spirit will cause us to fall out of the grace Christ died to give us when He died on the Cross because our focus is not to walk by faith, but to fulfill our own desires to see things done according to our plans. This is how we destroy the freedom Christ gave us because this freedom does not mean that we live doing whatever we please but instead, we live concerning ourselves with what pleases God. Another side of that is that we lose authority in the spirit realm when we do not obey God's authority for our lives. This makes us rebellious and stubborn and to inherit serious consequences that we cannot stand against because we no longer have the necessary spiritual authority to fight.
In addition, Christ gave us this freedom to serve one another in love (Gal.5:13) for that is how the freedom grows and expands because others are touched by the love of God in us. The result from this touch of God`s love through us is that others are filled with hope and a desire to extend the same love to others and that way we spread the batch of good yeast like probiotics in the body that promote a healthy movement. Acts of freedom beget children of freedom because they are motivated by their love of others as they love themselves. Following the direction of the Holy Spirit daily is what helps us live this way. Our flesh is not capable of doing this because “there is a root of self-interest in us that is at odds with the free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness” (Gal. 5:17). These two ways are contrary to one another and each one produces behaviors and mindsets which can become strongholds if allowed to grow in us. The stronghold we allow to grow is totally opposite to the other. We cannot choose to follow one day one and the other the next day for God is calling us to be set apart for Him.
There are “erratic compulsions of a law-dominated life” (selfish-ambition) that Galatians 5:19-21 highlights in the Message version, “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.”
On the other hand, following and submitting to the ruling of the Holy Spirit in our lives on a daily basis leads us to a different outcome according to Galatians 5:22-26 also in the Message version, “But what happens when we live God's way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.
Since this is the kind of life we have chosen, the life of the Spirit, let us make sure that we do not just hold it in our heads or a sentiment in our hearts, but work out its implications in every detail of our lives. That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.”
Selfish-Ambition is dangerous and it can certainly backfire. It has been the cause of the fall of many powerful Bible leaders including King Saul (1 Samuel 15), King Ahab and Queen Jezebel (1 Kings 22:1-26), and King David. Notice that these were all people who held positions of leadership and authority. Therefore, God is shining His light of warning for us as we pursue such positions and even more when we reach those positions. King David gives us the example of one recorded time he acted out of selfish-ambition. This act caused him the building of the temple of God. In 1 Samuel 11, at a time when he was supposed to go to war, he decided to stay behind in the palace and from his roof he saw Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and wife of Uriah the Hittite.
The king sent for the beautiful woman when her husband was on the battlefield and slept with her and impregnating her. After he found out Bathsheba was pregnant, he devised a plot to have Uriah, a faithful man to his kingship and his kingdom killed on the battle field because Uriah would not violate his duties to the King and the kingdom of Israel by sleeping with his wife at a time when he was to be at war with the rest of the army. But in 1 Samuel 12:1-14, the Lord showed his displeasure of David's selfish actions and sent Nathan, the seer to him. The seer told him a riddle that infuriated David but revealed him as the master mind behind the death of Uriah in order to cover up his sin. God spoke through the seer and reminded David of all the things He had done for him and how much more He was willing to do for him, but David had “treated His word with brazen contempt, doing this great evil” MSG. For this reason, he was sentenced by God.
In verses 11-14 the Lord declared, “And now because you treated God with such contempt and took Uriah the Hittite's wife as your wife, killing and murder will continually plague your family. This is God speaking, remember! I'll make trouble for you out of your own family. I'll take your wives from right out in front of you. I'll give them to some neighbor, and he'll go to bed with them openly. You did your deed in secret; I'm doing mine with the whole country watching!”Then David confessed to Nathan, “I've sinned against God.” Nathan pronounced, “yes, but that's not the last word. God forgives your sin. You won't die for it. But because of your blasphemous behavior, the son born to you will die” MSG.
David and Bathsheba later had Solomon and he was the one who built God a temple because he was considered to have peaceful hands. 1 Chronicles 22:7-10 says, "David said to Solomon, 'I wanted in the worst way to build a sanctuary to honor my God. But God prevented me saying, ‘You've killed too many people, fought too many wars. You are not the one to honor me by building a sanctuary—you've been responsible for too much killing, too much bloodshed. But you are going to have a son and he will be a quiet and peaceful man, and I will calm his enemies down on all sides. His very name will speak peace—that is, Solomon, which means peace—and I will give peace and rest under his rule. He will be the one to build a sanctuary in my honor. He'll be my royal adopted son and I'll be His father, and I'll make sure that the authority of his kingdom over Israel lasts forever.” MSG
In this passage, at a glance we could think that God was talking about the blood David shed in the many wars he fought to defend his kingdom and rulership as the reason that kept him from building the temple, but God was referring here to the blood of Uriah the Hittite that David was charged with shedding along with other blood sheds done by his family members that were not God`s will, until Solomon came to rule. The blood David shed during times of war, those were ordained and authorized by God and His Kingdom in order to advance and expand his kingship in the land. But the killings of Uriah and others, including some members of his family were done out of selfish ambitions. This led to more killings among them to fulfill God's decree, and those too were done out of selfish-ambition.
To God alone be all the glory.■
© 2014.
Images by Google Images
© 2014.
Images by Google Images
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