I am not sure if I ever mentioned before about how in my youth I tried to lived with the Lord. As a teenager, I would sneak out at night, go into the woods behind our house, wrap myself up with a blanket, sit and look at the stars, and talk to God. Sometimes I would cry, other times I would just reminisce; either way, I was trying to discover what living with the Lord meant! I watched Dr. Stanley, attended church, read my KJV bible, carried my bible everywhere I went; and I even slept with it! Yet, I was missing something! As a matter of fact, even today, every room in our home has a bible in a prominent place so we can get to it! I kept on searching and seeking but I couldn’t really locate what I was missing! One night, about 2 in the morning, without any distractions or misinterpretation, the Holy Spirit woke me up, spoke to me and said, “You cannot do this upon your own power!” The light bulb went off! I was searching and seeking God in my own terms, even as a teenager! Not long after that I was baptized, which is another wonderful story to tell another time. The purpose of me telling you my story is when we are living for the Lord, you have to ask yourself; What am I seeking in living with the Lord? Are we looking in the wrong places for God? Is the wisdom we yearn to gain coming from our selfish whim or is it something deeper? Whatever the purpose, reason or results you are expecting, Living with the Lord is not just a decision, it’s a life style where we learn as we walk through life with security and confidence that the Holy God of all creation is indeed with us without question!
In starting our journey friends, we are going to look further into living with the Lord—not just as a duty or even a desire, but a lifestyle based upon a relationship with God! James 1 starting at verse 17. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. 18 In the exercise of His will He gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” At this point in the epistle, we are seeing a clear description that what comes from Satan and what comes from God are not the same thing! Almighty God, created all things to be good—including us. In the same breath, God whom created us, his first fruits, so desires a relationship with us that as Gospel of John chapter 4 tells us “Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.” In every aspect of the words of God, a lifestyle is a direct example, an image if you will, of what that individual represents. Not just a duty or desire! And honestly, this has to be learned!
A true story I found about a missionary couple that returned from their mission trip that finally came home for a much needed rest. Looking forward in getting their new large townhome apartment, they purchased all kinds of goodies to make it homier and to be something they would relish until their next trip. As time went by, they learned quickly they neighbors was rather coarse with loud music to the late hours of night and with a constant flow of obscenities and even doing very obscene things in their front lawn in broad daylight. Being Christian missionaries, they truly wanted to try and find a real reason to love these people, yet they could not find one! They asked the Lord to help them be more loving, but the more they tried the more setbacks they got from those very rude and nasty neighbors. It even got to the point where the crisis was getting so bad where the neighbors’ children were spraying orange paint onto the couple’s patio furniture, deck and walls, ruining them. Needless to say, this made them even more furious. In their hearts they cried out, “We cannot love them, we hate them!” So, one evening, they done their nightly prayers and asking God, “Lord, how do I put on Love?” Then an image came to the wife’s mind. A coat! The only way she could imagine love was putting on a coat. So, she did just that! She swelled their life and thoughts as if God was covering them with love and so she experienced a deeper life of Christ which ultimately led them to love their neighbors by baking cookies, offered to baby-sit for free, invited the mother over for coffee—and the most beautiful thing happened! They began to know and understand them which they learned to love them!
No matter what we desire, no matter what duty we are performing, it all comes down to our living with the Lord as a lifestyle! A Choice! Is your Chrisitan Walk with God dry as dust, cold as ice, pale as a corpse or even dead as King Tut? If so friends, you can reorient yourselves by looking to God just as the missionary couple did. Serving God obediently by not giving up! Staying faithful and remembering always the great things that God has indeed done for you. It’s a choice! A lifestyle, which we will not be burdened by a duty or desire except to be joyous in serving Christ in all things!
A missionary minister was asked if he liked what he is doing? He said, “Do I like this work? No. My wife and I do not like the dirt. We have reasonably refined sensibilities. We do not like crawling into vile huts through goat refuse … But is a man to do nothing for Christ he does not like? God pity him, if not. Liking or disliking has nothing to do with it. We have orders to 'Go,' and we go. Love constrains us.” Does that not sound like a trumpet sound from the mountain tops, declaring God to all people or what? Epistle of James chapter 1 tells us, “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has continued in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does.”
While the list is extensive, I would like to leave you with five things you can do to live your life with God. First, give you heart to God completely! Book of 2 Chronicles tells us “For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” If we do things half-hearted when we know we can give more to God, then we are quenching God from our lives! No question that with God, He will do everything we can’t! If we cannot give our full heart, God will supply us the strength to do it! Second, we must truly remember who we are in body, soul and spirit! In the Psalm it tells us “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” God does not set us up for failure! All intricate details in our lives should be recognized and remembered! God created us and we should celebrate it. Third, we are designed to work, whether standing or sitting. Epistle of Ephesians tells us, “For we are God’s handiwork, created to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Very little room for misinterpretation there! Even in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve was instructed before sin entered the world to take care of the garden and tend to it! Fourth, as we grow, we walk in God. We learn to continue our lives that is our lifestyle to live, breath and exercise in God. Everything we do we do for God. I often think about the tomb stones that have a birth and death, but it’s the dash in between that has the most meaning. Fifth, and this is more difficult for some where we experience living with God with bloodstained garments. The epistle of Galatians tells us “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” We are to live a life friends where we are to carry the cross just as Christ did! Living the Christian life, walking with God means we live a crucified life! The pain, suffering, scars we bare from doing God’s Holy work is a mark of who we are as Christians.
My friends, living with God has its challenges, yet God has promised the road will not be easy, yet very rewarding especially with life eternal! We do not just desire or perform duties for God, we are to live a lifestyle which resembled Christ in everything we do! When we wake up and even go to bed. Living with God friends is very precious and as we learn from Paul’s second letter to the people of Corinth, "That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." Amen