How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to Your word. I seek You with all my heart; do not let me stray from Your commands. I have hidden Your word in my heart that I might not sin against You. Praise be to You, Lord;
teach me Your decrees (Psalm 119:9-12).
Have you ever tried to please someone that you respected or loved, but couldn’t? If so, then you understand the pain and rejection that is incurred when you offer your best and find that it’s just not good enough. Because of this, people walk around with scars in their hearts, and those scars can adversely affect every area of their lives. When you truly desire to please someone, and they continually reject your efforts to find affirmation, it can cause you to lose self-esteem, self-worth, and has caused many to hate themselves.
Men tend to seek affirmation from those we love and respect. Let’s look in the Word of God to find out where we acquired this need . . . and to see if it’s even biblical. If your view of God is one that is based on rules and limitations that you have to measure up to, then you’ll fall short of “that view” of God. No man can live up to the standard of God’s laws in their own human strength.
God told Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Guess what? Even though Adam was sinless when God created him in His own image and likeness, Adam didn’t keep God’s law. Does this mean that God created Adam to fail? Absolutely not! Adam could have directed Eve’s attention to another tree in the garden called, “The Tree of Life.” Had they partaken of the fruit from the tree of life first, they would have begun to experience the life of God in their souls, but unfortunately, that tree didn’t hold the interest of their carnal desires (our five senses). Let me ask you a question? Since man broke the law in the beginning, do you really believe that God thought man would now be able to keep the new moral code (or law) that He gave to Moses in Exodus? Was God just toying with us to make fallen man feel inadequate so that He could beat us down as if we were slaves? No, that is called condemnation. Condemnation is the result of feeling inadequate or unlovable when it seems like we can’t please God.
God didn’t hand down the Law on Mount Sinai just so we would break that set of rules. So He could certainly point His finger at us in judgment and condemn us. Remember, man was already found guilty and sentenced in the Garden of Eden. The purpose of the Law on Mount Sinai was to show us that sin was in our hearts and that a sinful heart can’t keep a Law that is holy.
Read Genesis 3 and you will see that when God came to Adam after he sinned and asked him if he and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, he denied eating it and blamed his wife. When we seek to keep the “rules of God,” there is also a part of us that lives in denial over what we have done. Denial is a coping mechanism that we developed because of man’s fall into sin; it helps us to deal with condemnation in our own hearts. It also causes us to blame our sin on others instead of facing the truth, because we’ve tried to keep the Law and failed every time. If this describes your life, Jesus has some great news for you today.
Jesus tells us in John 3 that He didn’t come into the world to condemn us; He came so that we might be saved from sin and condemnation through Him. The key words that we need to focus on are “through Jesus.” Just like Adam couldn’t keep the Law, because he didn’t partake of the Tree of Life first, we can’t keep God’s Law until we first place faith in Jesus as our Savior and Lord. ONCE YOU TRULY PLACE FAITH IN JESUS AS YOUR SAVIOR, THEN THE FATHER WILL ACCEPT YOU.
When we receive Jesus in our hearts and know that He is the reason we are accepted by our heavenly Father, it will put an end to our seeking affirmation. Then we can live free of condemnation and simply obey the Father through our faith and not our works—which is earning the right to be a child of God. King David was a man that had committed adultery, and murder, and then tried to hide it from everyone. Yet, this man is recorded in the Bible as having a heart after the heart of God. David didn’t try to keep the Law of God, because David loved the Law. When you love the God “of” the Law, He will empower you to keep the Law of God. —submitted by Asa Dockery, US
ecieun on March 23, 2011 at 12:28 am
this passage really spoke to my situation, as if God if directed me to this passage. Been struggling with voices of condemnation and fear, between the world and God, sometimes it almost seem like life and death, Often I get too legalistic till doubts and denial come, but truly we are saved by grace through faith.
thank you.
tom felten on March 23, 2011 at 7:21 am
ecieun, I hope this verse helps you as you consider what God is truly desiring for your life: “For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). May you experience no regrets as you live in His power and hope today!
ecieun on March 24, 2011 at 2:57 am
thank you very much Tom for the encouragement, hopefully will be able to set my relationship with God right again. May His truth set me free.
Thank you.
ecieun on March 24, 2011 at 10:59 am
O Lord may I not experience spiritual death!