Created For God's Purpose
If you are reading this, I may assume that you have been on your knees before God and have already given your life to Him. The Bible says, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized...." You have already taken the important first step by believing. If you have not yet been baptized, please email me at the bottom of this page and let me know that you need to be baptized. I will contact you in order to arrange for that great moment in your life when you declare publicly that you are finished with that old world and have entered into the heavenlies.
You are at a very critical stage in your Christian life. There are a few
things you must remain diligent in. If you are, God will bless you with greater joy and
peace then you've ever experienced before. When you first give your life to Jesus, your
emotion is high and it seems as if nothing could be higher during these times. You feel
that you are so close to God. Beware though, you can't trust your emotions. Emotions and
feelings are not trustworthy in qualifying your faith (proving it's real). REAL faith only
grows when God places you in situations where it is tested. The testing of our faith is
by, temptation, affliction, persecution, sickness, loneliness, difficult people, people
with bad attitudes, people that treat you unfairly, anything and everything that requires
patience, resolve and discipline. It's in going through these things that your faith
grows. When we see others go through these things, we will see how real their faith is.
(Matthew 7:21-29)
One of the hardest things for me to do, and so far has proved to be the greatest blessing,
is waking up early and spending time with the Lord every day. This is the most important
time of day for those that want to be changed into the likeness of Jesus. We have to begin
each day with God. I wake up and pour my coffee while everyone is still asleep, go back
into my room, kneel down beside my bed with my prayer list and my Bible. Sometimes it
takes me 10 minutes to get my focus on God and to discipline my mind to concentrate on my
praying. Once there, I thank God for who He is and what He has done in my life. I
tell Him that I willingly submit myself to His hand in my life, knowing that everything He
allows to happen today is ordered by Him for my benefit (Rom.8:28, Heb. 12:10,1 Pet.4:1).
It's easy during your time of prayer to believe this, it's a whole different thing to
believe when later in your day, you find yourself going through it. By beginning your day
with God, you are given strength and the ability to see when those moments of testing come
during the day. Having the ability to recognize a test as it hits you, will hopefully
prevent you from falling and blowing your witness. Your test could cause you to give in to
anger, lust, envy, jealousy, pride or any other sin. After going through your prayer
list, open the Word and begin reading. I recommend starting in John and continuing on
through Act, Romans and the rest of the New Testament. Your quiet time in the beginning
may only last 20 or 30 minutes. However, as the days, weeks and months go by, you will
find your prayer list start to grow. As your quiet time gets longer, you will
automatically adjust the time in which you wake up in order to accommodate. My quiet times
last on average about an hour. We all need at least 6 hours of sleep. Some people must
have 8. Of course if you are sick or under a doctors care, you may need more. If you
struggle getting up each morning, ask yourself this question: "Do I love my bed or
God?"
This is not a perfect science. You will still fail. God intends for us to fail. Otherwise
we will become proud of ourselves. God wants us to realize that we cannot stand without
Him. He is our strength. When you do sin, just remember God's grace. He will always
forgive you when you fail. A daily quiet time will mean establishing a routine. This may
take some time. Be patient, waking up early takes some getting used to. You can't know the
blessing until you've experienced it.
Some other things that are very important for you to practice in your daily
life are:
1) Focus on keeping yourself separated FOR God's purpose each day and separated FROM
the things, cares and ways of the world. This is called consecration.
2) Wherever you go and whatever you do, be sure to let people know where you stand. By
publicly confessing Jesus, you will avoid many temptations. People will know that they
cannot include you in their dark deeds and even if they try, it will be easier for you to
say no once you've already let them know Who you serve now.
3) Share your faith with every opportunity God gives you. You don't have to know a lot
about the Bible to witness. All you have to do is tell them what Jesus has done in your
life and what He means to you. God has given each of us a testimony. We need to use it
from the very first day that we believe.
4) Last and for sure not the least important: Beware of worldly, lukewarm, compromising
people that call themselves Christians. There are a lot of people that are very active in
the church, even involved in ministries within the church. They talk the talk and seem to
walk the walk, but really they are very mixed with the world. Jesus said that we
need to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Leaven
(yeast), spreads throughout the dough without any effort. So it is with
hypocrisy. You must not let the hypocrisy of others corrupt what God desires to
do in you. By your diligence
in striving to please God, you can be a source of conviction (through God's
Spirit in you) to these ones without many words. The devil will not be
threatened by us if we permit ourselves to become involved in his kingdom, this world. We
are of no use to God if we try to remain a friend of the world (1 John 2:15,16). Your
faith will be weak and you will in fact be treading on dangerous ground. Read
Luke 12:1; John 15:5-11
and Romans 11:17-22.
Please print this if you can and read it every day for a while until you remember these things. I want to see you grow in your faith. I don't want to see you fall away as I have with so many that have had a bad start. Please let me know you have made this decision so I can rejoice with you. I want most of all to pray for you. You, most likely came to this point by someone praying for you.
Your Brother In-Christ, David
