When things go bad for us, who is the first person we blame? When our world falls apart where do we turn for help? Honestly, if I answered these questions a few months ago I would have to say I blamed God for the bad things in my life and I turned to friends for help. Now some of the friends I turned to were God fearing women and so they had some wise advice; but my point here is that I should have gone to God first. I have many Bibles in my house filled with the answers to life’s questions. I had access to the best Counselor 24/7. And I didn’t’ utilize Him.
Our faith cannot be based on how things are going in our life. We cannot only praise God when things are going our way. Psalms 34:1 says “I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
We cannot place the blame on Him when things start to fall apart. We need to look to ourselves first. We are humans and our human nature is to gratify ourselves. We do things to make ourselves happy. Sometimes we don’t always make the best choices. Now, sometimes it is others that cause us pain. Still it is that person that hurt us, not God. We live in an imperfect world with imperfect people. We cannot expect to go through life and not get hurt.
If we want a consistent faith we need to lead a life consistently in Jesus. We cannot follow only the rules we like. Yes, following Jesus has rules. Have you taken a look at Exodus lately? There are ten very important rules in Exodus 20. We have a code to live by. Have you heard this before; love others as yourself? That didn’t’ come from some self-help author. It is straight out of the Bible, too. Mark 12:30-31, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. And the second like it, is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
If we only take the time to read it we can save ourselves a lot of pain. Being a true believer is so much more than saying the sinner’s prayer. You have to live your life day after day for Jesus and follow His perfect model. Consistency counts!
