Christian Living Maturity

Towards the end of James Chapter One, he talks about deceit. In order to become mature, we need to accept a want to grow-up, we must learn how to pass the tests of God, and we must learn how to handle temptation. Lets face it, there is a lot of temptation in this world. It seems that every time we turn around, there is something there to tempt us. Satan has a good arsenal of weapons to use against us in our walk with God. The more we experience God, the easier it is to deal with Satan's weapons. We seem to develop problems from everywhere. God wants us to be mature, so why is it not so easy? We have Satan there to try and change our minds about our walk with God, we also have another enemy, ourselves! Yes, ourselves because we are constantly in danger of Self-Deception. This is a question we should ask ourselves, are we really walking the Christian walk properly? Are we believing to only say we believe, but do not express it in actions? Are we believing we are religious when we are really not? It is a mark of maturity when we confront ourselves and honestly accept our needs. We are in-mature when we guess we are rich in spiritually and have no need to grow. Gods word is the Truth, we should be living our lives by this word of truth. There are 3 responsibilities of Gods word that need full filled if we are to have an honest walk with God and men. First, we must receive the news; second we must practice what we hear; and third we must share the word with others. A big problem we experience is not receiving the Word of God in the right way. Many of us learn the word, but do not understand it. We take on some bible studies with hopes to understand what God tells us. This fails as well. Since we may not understand what we hear, we can not practice what we hear. When we that happens, we become bored with the situation and thus our spiritual life starts to decay. We should prepare our hearts to receive Gods Holy Scripture. His fruit can not be planted if there are weeds in our hearts. In last weeks sermon, our Pastor was saying that we should prepare ourselves for the upcoming service. This would require prayer and preparing our hearts to receive Gods Word. We plan the music each week and there are times we do not pray about the service regarding the music selection. It shows. Music does not fit the message, mistakes are made, and for us being up front, it just does not sound right. When we practice during the week and pray over the music to be played, then it all goes well. We need to share the word. Did you know that religion means the outward practice or the service to God. It has nothing to do with churches or special days. We apply Gods Word and share it with other through speech and service. How we talk reveals what our heart is saying. When our heart is right with God, our speech will also be right with others. We can also discover the needs of others and are able to minister to them. God is wonderful. He sure devised a unique system of life for us. When you really get into this and analyze what other clergy men say about the Bible and how God talks to us, you can discover the flow of events that make our life the way it is.