There are times when we give in to temptation, but it’s not God’s fault, for he always provides us with an avenue of escape. We choose to given into the temptation rather than fight against it.
If we’focus our hearts on Him and intentionally desire His Word and listen for His Spirit to speak, He will give us clear guidance.
“Oh yes, the heart is deceptive. And that calls for humility above all else, because my heart isn’t deceptive because it fools other people. It’s deceptive because it fools me.”
Jesus reminded the Jews of His day of the need for spiritual light in a spiritually dark world, calling Himself “the light of the world.” The darker the night, the more our need for light.
God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until we find Him. We’re made to be satisfied by knowing God and accepting His Son, Jesus Christ. Some people try to fill the emptiness in their hearts with other things, but Jesus wants to be the very substance of who you are and what you are.
The title I AM speaks of God’s self-existence and eternal being. There has never been a time when God was not. He’s the same through all the ages. There will never be a time when God ceases to be God. He is Jehovah, Yahweh, I AM. With our mouths we can say those words, but they are beyond our full comprehension—as it should be for an infinite God.
“Quit judging other people about what they choose to eat and drink. The kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking; it’s about internal issues.” Frankly, it’s a lot easier to abstain from eating and drinking certain things than it is to abstain from gossip, lust, greed, covetousness, and pride.
Most men hope to go to heaven when they die; but few, it may be feared, take the trouble to consider whether they would enjoy heaven if they got there. Heaven is essentially a holy place; its inhabitants are all holy; its occupations are all holy. What could an unsanctified man do in heaven, if by any chance he got there? Let that question be fairly looked in the face and fairly answered. No man can possibly be happy in a place where he is not in his element and where all around him is not congenial to his tastes, habits and character.
If anything is certain about the future, it is certain that there will be a judgment; and if anything is certain about judgment, it is certain that men’s “works” and “doings” will be considered and examined in it
If there is any point on which God’s holiest saints agree, it is this: that they see more and know more and feel more and do more and repent more and believe more as they get on in spiritual life, and in proportion to the closeness of their walk with God. In short, they “grow in grace,”
Believers are eminently and peculiarly responsible and under a special obligation to live holy lives. They are not as others, dead and blind and unrenewed; they are alive unto God and have light and knowledge and a new principle within them. Whose fault is it, if they are not holy, but their own? On whom can they throw the blame, if they are not sanctified, but themselves? God, who has given them grace and a new heart and a new nature, has deprived them of all excuse if they do not live for His praise.
