Treasured Truth

What happens when our priorities are not God’s priorities?  Among other things, we break fellowship with God and we focus on satisfying our own selfish desires.  But God always gives us the opportunity to repent when we realize that our ways are not His ways.

In the book of Haggai, the prophet relays a message from the Lord of Hosts to the people of Israel.  He says, “Consider your ways!” because their ways were not the Lord’s ways.  Today, we can glean from this passage that the key to getting what we need in our lives is to focus on what God wants for our lives.  God’s priorities must become our priorities.

There are several things that Pastor Ford wants to encourage us not to forget.  He says don’t forget about the goodness of God, the glory of God, or the grace of God.  Because if we do forget these things, then our forgetfulness leads us directly to our sinful tendencies.

According to Pastor Ford, the importance that someone places on worship is also an indicator of how they deal with sin in their life.  Christians who had the right response to worship will be the same ones whose sinfulness dealt with itself.

We should never blame God when we fall into temptation.  As a matter of fact, according to Pastor Ford, we shouldn’t blame the Devil or even blame the world.  Because our greatest enemy is not our external enemy, the world, and it’s not our infernal enemy, the Devil.  The greatest enemy is our internal enemy, the flesh.

In our study today, we’ll discover that the Apostle Paul encourages us to react to people who have needs who can’t bear them by themselves.  But he doesn’t want us to relinquish them of responsibility that they can handle.  We need to strive to achieve a balance when we seek to help people.

Often people will say that they just have to make a way for themselves to accomplish or overcome something.  But Pastor Ford wants to remind us that Jesus has a plan for each of us, and He’s going to make sure we fail as we try to make our own way.  We’re going to fail every time, because He’s got a prescribed course that He wants us to follow.

What is the solution to the natural inclinations that are a part of our sin nature?  What can we do to fight our proclivities toward sin? How in the world do we fight what we like?  These are just a few of the questions that Pastor Ford will help us answer today.

In John 8:12, Jesus is called the Light of the World.  And because of that, we can deal with our sin appropriately with one broad stroke.  We can come out of the darkness of our sin, simply by coming into fellowship with the Light.

Pastor Ford will explain that our struggle is greater with God than it is with the Devil.  Why?  Because it’s a lot easier to give into temptation than to resist it.  But our biggest problem is not with the Devil and it’s not with God.  Our biggest problem is with ourselves. Hear more about the “inner-me enemy” ontoday’s Treasured Truth.