Are You Righteous? in His Word 10-13-14
I guess I should ask you if
you are practicing righteousness.
Little children let no one
deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is
righteous. 1 John 3: 7
What does it mean to
practice it? Think about when you learned to play a sport or instrument; you
would do it over and over until you got it right. You did not always get things
spot on to start with but sometimes you had to practice it over and over and
over and over etc.
Do you get the idea? To practice righteousness we need to continually
walk in forgiveness, and love, and repentance, and humbleness, and love, and
mirror what God’s word tells us to do. Know that we will make mistakes, we are not God after all.
The Word tells us not to
sin, but that we are sinners; if we practice sin then we will be living as
sinners. If we practice not sinning then we will be truthfully practicing
righteousness. If we practice loving everyone, including those whom we do not
think it possible to love; I am not saying you have to involve yourself
personally in a dangerous situation to show love for someone who you would
rather not love. I am saying that when we forgive those who have harmed us in
life, or tried to destroy our innocence we can treat them in our hearts better.
Do you understand what I am saying?
When we have situations happen
in our lives that make us want to hate someone, even if it is someone who
deserves that hate we should forgive them or it will cause us to sin.
If we chose to sin over
choosing to be obedient to the purpose of God then we are not practicing righteousness.
Sometimes it will be hard to practice.
When training for a sport or
whatever you must put aside the time to spend preparing and practicing that
sport or whatever in order to do a good job at it and remember what to do when
time comes to use, or do what you have practiced. In order to live a righteous
life we must practice, work on, perfect, learn how to live the life Christ would
have us live.
How can we practice
righteousness?
We must love God; for to be righteous
we must first love Him who is the embodiment of righteousness, Jesus Christ.
We must love one another. Beloved
let us love one another for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of
God and knows God, he who loves not knows not God, for God is love. 1 John
4:7-8
Whoever believes that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him, who begot also, loves
him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of Go,
when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God that we
keep His commandments. (And) His commandments are not burdensome.
1 John 5:1-3
In this the children of God
and the children of the devil are manifest; whoever does not practice
righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. For this
is the message you heard from the beginning that we should love one another,
not as Cain who was the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did eh
murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous. DO not
marvel, my brethren if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from
death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love his brother
abides in death. 1 John 3 10-14
Sometimes it is not easy to
love someone who hates us, but it is easier to love those who love us back.
Even those who we attend church with sometimes make it hard for us to love
them; they can be rude, partial to certain people over us, unfair in sharing
friendships, etc. To love and be loved is said to be the greatest thing on
earth, but to love our brothers and sisters is often difficult to achieve. The
good news is that when we are weak He is strong! All we have to do is ask our Lord
God to help us to love one another!
Now this is the confidence
that we have in Him; that if we ask anything according to His will He hears us.
And we know that he hears us, whatever we ask we know hat we have the petitions
that we have asked of Him. 1 John 5: 12-15
I can trust that God will
help me love even the ‘unlovable’ person. Some people seem to try hard to push
you away and not allow you to love them. They put up walls to protect
themselves not only to keep you out, because they feel vulnerable to being hurt
by love.
If we do not practice love
we are not practicing righteousness, so we must pray for God to make a way for
us to love those who are our brothers and sisters in the Lord in order to be
practicing living the way God intended for us to live.
Let’s make this our
challenge for what is left of this week, month or year try to practice loving
those around you; love the brethren, (or sisters) in your family of God. Seek
to see what they need and answer the need or show them where they can find the
answer.
What would Jesus really do?
He would love them and feed them both spiritually and physically.
Ask, seek, find, and
practice living in righteousness!
Dear Heavenly Father Thank
you for loving us and showing us how to become righteous. Help us to practice
what You tell us to do in the Bible and love one another, forgive one another
and encouraging one another through Your direction. In Jesus name, amen.
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