Did You Know?

Did You Know...

...that the answer to life's struggle is not in 'knowing myself', but in knowing the One who died to bring us total freedom to live life the way we were created to live it?

...that we cannot possibly forgive ourselves, but we can accept by faith the forgiveness we need from the One against whom have sinned?

...that when we are strong, He is weak in us? It is commonly said that struggle makes you stronger, but really, when we are weak, then He is strong in us!

If you have been listening to the commonly used phrases even among us Christians, you may understand what I'm getting at in the statements up there. But for clarification, I'll list the phrases that have a slant of truth to them but are not entirely Scriptural:

"You have to know yourself before you can (love, help others, be strong, have wisdom, etc)."

"You have to forgive yourself as well as others who have wronged you."

"Struggle makes you stronger." or "Trials make you stronger." or "Hard things make you stronger."

Did you know:

that all of these phrases have roots in Buddhism, Hinduism, and New Age teachings?

As for me, I will serve the Lord.

We shrug and say, oh well, truth is truth. Well...not really. Listen to the words spoken around you, and listen to yourself. Is what you are hearing or saying lining up with what GOD says?

A few years ago, my husband and I went through an experience that sobered us and shocked us. To hear teachings coming into the church that were laced with modern psychology and drew attention to humanism and not to God took our breath away and we went searching for God's thoughts in this. What we found was amazing and to me, alarming as I noticed how much of these things had also influenced me. I wondered how I had come to have so many hints of falsehood in my belief system, and then it hit me: I had read many, many modern "Christian" teaching books. They are full of these teachings, mixed with Scripture and some truth of God.

I purged my bookshelf, asked the Lord to cleanse my thinking, and it is amazing to me just how often I will hear these very things spoken in a group and how I cringe...and I pray that God will open our eyes to where we embraced mixed religion.

My plea to us all is to be very selective in our reading, and to be searching the Scriptures, and by the power of the Holy Spirit making sure that what we read and who we're getting our teaching from is really God's truth.

I'm thankful for that painful experience which still touches parts of my life with sadness and heart breaking reality even today. God used it powerfully in my life, and I am so very blessed to know that He would not let me go down the road of false teaching without showing me the right Way and giving me a choice which way to take. I'm thankful for a husband whose heart is also careful and desires to know and live that Way as well, and who gives me wise direction for how we are going to go. Truly, if we are His, He guides our every footstep, corrects a faltering or slipping footstep, and teaches us the Truth we can embrace without question.

Blessings to all.
Marcia