Kissing Comfort Goodbye.

The Dumbest Thing.

"That's the DUMBEST thing I ever heard," Bill Cosby exclaims, after a clip of Victoria Osteen expressing her worldly views on obedience to God plays. 

"I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we're not doing it for God—I mean, that's one way to look at it—we're doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we're happy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy," she continued. "When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God really. You're doing it for yourself, because that's what makes God happy. Amen?"

There isn't much else that can be said about these words that hasn't already been said by every Christian on this continent. 

This is the world we live in, replace God with "Yourself". 

Her words made me angry. So angry. How dare she cheapen the value of a life on the earth, how dare she cheapen grace and God!

And yet I still feel a pang of sadness. Because as crazy as she sounds, little does she know, she has pinpointed the heart of a lot of people and Christians alike. 

We may understand that what she said is completely wrong, ludicrous and stupid, and yet I think I remember a time where I lived like this. I may not have believed and said that "I will serve God because He cares about my happiness and that's why I obey," but I sure acted like it. I believed that I loved God and I served Him because I wanted to please Him, and that my life was not about myself. But I know I have known those things, and yet acted so differently. 

There are many days where I have said "surrender" but have acted in an attempt to bend God's will to my own happiness. 

Holiness.

Oswald Chambers said it best: "We are not destined to happiness, nor to health, but to holiness," and, "God is not some eternal blessing machine for men to use." 

To be 'holy' means to be set apart for God. Holiness is a characteristic of a Christ-follower, someone truly set apart, putting aside all earthly desires to follow God. 

Surrender is necessary to holiness; we surrender because we desire God, we desire holiness. If I didn't surrender it was because I didn't know why I should. It's because I believed that my desires were more important that God's. As an example, if I pray for healing it should be because I desire God to use this healing in order that I may be refined, and that this person may be refined for holiness, and not just because I want it to happen. 

It's a question of motives again. When we pray, when we worship, when we serve, do our actions line up with God's desires, and for a right-standing relationship with Him, for holiness? Anything less than aligning with God just doesn't cut it. 

"Today we have far too many desires and interests, and our lives are being consumed and wasted by them. Many of them may be right, noble, and good, and may later be fulfilled, but in the meantime God must cause their importance to us to decrease. The only thing that truly matters is whether a person will accept the God who will make him holy. At all costs, a person must have the right relationship with God." -Oswald Chambers, Destined to be Holy

Goodbye Comfort, Goodbye Safety.

How much do you prize your comfort? Your happiness?

In this world we can't stand unhappiness or discomfort. Pain is not our friend, understandably. I've seen many people, including myself, try to escape the pain and discomfort by consuming ourselves in something or someone(s). Anything and everything to avoid the lessons God has for us in the pain. While God can heal us through people or things, there is trouble when things or people become the substitute to God; when we try to find our healing in people or things, and rely so fully on them instead of on God. Problems arise when things or people, instead of exemplifying God, and amplifying Him, consume us. 

The funny thing is that God will keep bringing us to trials and scenarios until we learn to fully rely on Him. He brings us to scenarios that cannot be overcome by simply burying yourself in people or things. 

Is your comfort, or happiness worth more than enduring the trials and hurdles that God uses for your holiness?

People who say that Christianity is not comfortable or safe are absolutely correct. It's the farthest thing from comfortable. You forego your comfort, and happiness for holiness, for a right-standing relationship with God. God is in the business of creating saints, not happy people. 

Even in the lack of comfort and happiness, there is still peace and hope in the Christian life. God is the great comforter, and there is still love, joy, patience, goodness, gentleness etc, and these transcend happiness and comfort. You'll find you often discover these in the midst of suffering or obstacles. 

We have Israel to thank as an illustration for our own lives. Hosea is the perfect example of wayward hearts and wanderers, a people constantly seeking pleasure, happiness and security with another. 

Hosea 14 is a "Plea to return to the LORD," that Israel would not look to anyone else to lean on, or to "save" them, but God. 

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,
    for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.
2 Take with you words
    and return to the Lord;
say to him,
    “Take away all iniquity;
accept what is good,
    and we will pay with bulls
    the vows[a] of our lips.
3 Assyria shall not save us;
    we will not ride on horses;
and we will say no more, ‘Our God,’
    to the work of our hands.
In you the orphan finds mercy.”

(Hosea 14:1-3)

Hello Discipline, Hello Holiness.

"They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness." (Hebrews 12:10) 

Nobody ever learned anything by never going through hard times. You don't find your courage when the sun is shining and everything is going your way. You don't realize your helplessness and sin on your "best" days. Unfortunately for us, it takes hardship and troubles to teach us. We must be refined for Holiness. Gold cannot be purified any other way than to be refined through fire. 

Life lived for happiness, fueled by material things really does de-value the life you have been given. Because in the end, those things turn to rubble and ash when you die. 

Life on earth for a Christian is all about holiness; it is about learning to walk in the Spirit-filled life, pursuing, learning and living out a right-standing relationship with God. 

"16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 16-18).