Have you ever been frustrated that you go one step forward and two steps back in your effort to "walk the walk" of the Believer?
Have you seen people fall away and ask yourself, "why"?
I have.
A frustrating part of the Christian life is that when we are "born again" we desire to have our actions and behaviors reflect what we think is the way a Christian should behave. However, we continue to cut people off when we drive, gossip, curse at our children, devote ourselves to things that are of no value…
In all honesty, we see little to no change.
What we have seen is that we tend to "clean up our act", to model our behavior after what we see other Christians doing.
We used to cuss, so we try to stop. We smoked, so now, even though we are still smoking, we feel guilty. The problem is that the change is only temporary. And, we have no power to make behavioral changes in our own efforts.
The common error of the church is to pursue outward changes in the behavior which is supposed to illustrate a change in our life. This causes one to change on the outside but there is little to no inward change, in our thought processes.
This results in frustration.
These often 'fall away' because they see no change. They often hear the mantra quoted, "Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come". 2 Cor 5:17 . When a Believer sees that the "old" has not passed away, he abandons his beliefs and retreats.
We want others to think we are Christians and want them to see our change often using our good behavior as a 'witnessing' tool i.e. "God can make you a better person, too". But, we need to allow God to change us first in our thoughts then our thoughts will change our outward behavior.
The cure to this dilemma is to keep His Word.
This appears to be one of those nebulous ideas that you hear in the church, spoken in the language of Christianese.
In John 14:23 Jesus said, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him.
The NIV erroneously translates the word 'keep' as obey. In the Greek, it actually means to watch over, keep a guard on. The implication is to keep before ones eyes or in practical terms, to meditate on.
God wants to change our thinking by meditating on the Word thus, our change in thinking will, by its nature, change our behaviors. The bottom line is, God's Word changes our thinking which in turn changes our behaviors for as a man thinks within himself, so is he… Prov. 23:7.
How does one 'meditate' on the Word?
