Following in the Right Way

“God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” -2 Corinthians 5:21

Righteousness: “to be straight”; denotes a right behavior, confirming to an ethical or moral standard.

God will ALWAYS do the right thing; He is completely unable to make a mistake. He is the only one who can place limits on Himself; no power on earth, us included, could ever hope to truly limit God (why would we want to). However, He did limit himself when he gave us the gift of free will. He did so because he wants us to willingly choose to have a personal relationship with Him; He would never force us to do so (even though He could remove that limit at any time, yet He chooses not to) because He willingly chooses to be patient with us. His righteousness is also unmovable; He is fair, just and consistent; that is why He is the perfect judge, and should therefore be the ONLY one to judge us. He will always fight for us, consistently remind us and keep us accountable while also disciplining us as He sees fit. He knows no wrong, so we can be sure that whatever His judgment may be, that it is fair and there’s no reason to second guess Him.

We, as people, are imperfect; our attempts at judging others will always end in failure. We cannot be 100% righteous like Him, but we can be led in righteousness by Him by choosing to allow His presence to reside in us. Eventually, you will become clothed in righteousness, wanting nothing more than to live in His right way all the days of your life. Will it be easy to walk alongside Him as He teaches us about his way? No, it’s not meant to be easy; if life were easy in any aspect, we would never learn anything. That’s why God allows things to happen, things that challenge our faith and our willpower; He does so in order for us to learn from it, not for us to just suffer for no reason. Even Jesus suffered; in fact, when He lived on earth, He practically begged God for a different way to save mankind, yet, when His Father told Him each time “There is no other way,” that didn’t cause Jesus to give up. If any of us had heard this, myself included, would we have still gone through with it, knowing what kind of pain awaited us? I wish I could answer yes, but I’m honestly not sure what my answer would’ve been, so I’m glad that it wasn’t me who had to choose that.

“As for God, His way is perfect: the Lord’s Word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in Him.” –Psalm 18:30

If we accept His words as truth, apply the wisdom He gives us and keep it stored in our heart, if we ask for Him to give us insight so that we can understand, and if we do all of that as if we are searching for a rich treasure that is hidden, we will come to see and know how to fear the Lord in a way of respect. He will protect our ways and our path, IF we are only choosing those ways because we’ve asked and He has approved of them; additionally, we must also accept His knowledge and truth as perfect, that no flaws could reside in it and be willing to let Him guide us in His right ways. The gift of discernment will help you to see what is right and wrong, which way will grow you and which way will keep you on a plateau in life, not making any further progression. By listening to and following His guidance, He will help us to avoid the words of wickedness, the ways of the perverse and the dark paths that delight in wrong. By listening to and obeying Him, we will also avoid becoming temptation (for women, mostly) or avoiding temptation (for men, mostly) when it comes to lustful and adulterous ways. If you are faithful to His instruction, you will remain in the land He has promised, along with the resources He has promised you. If you continuously choose to live in the wrong, you will not inherit the land or the resources He promised you.

“He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for His name’s sake.” –Psalm 23:3

I don’t know about you, but I want to live according to His purpose and renew treasures in heaven. I think most of us think that we have to earn them, that we have to be deserving of whatever gifts he could possibly give us (we clearly underestimate Him); this is not true. He gives us gifts because He WANTS to give it to us; if it helps, you could view God’s love language as gift giving. Also, gifts are usually seen as free. I won’t get into spiritual gifts today because that’s going to be a series of blogs, but I do want to say that it’s the same for spiritual gifts too. If you don’t know much about them, they are listed in Ephesians 4, 1 Corinthians 12 and a few scattered in the first 12 chapters of Romans; I would suggest getting familiar with them, learning more about them, etc. I, for one, love learning new things about God and about His word, and I look forward to telling you-all everything that I am learning over the course of the mission, along with (of course) what God is doing and how He is moving here as well.

“For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul. Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.” –Proverbs 2:10-11