Accountability To Man or God?

Are we accountable to man or God?  I submit that we are to build each other up which includes getting wise counsel, but I don’t think we need to be ”accountable” to one another. We are accountable to God.

The pastor at a church I used to attend made a pretty strong declaration a long time ago saying it is dangerous to put someone in the position of being your ‘accountability partner’ for sin areas, time in the word, verse memory, etc. because the focus can unintentionally be put on being accountable to that person more-so than to God. 

It took a few years of struggling with what my pastor said, but now I agree. I don’t think it is ‘wrong’ to have an accountability partner, however I think it could be dangerous depending on the maturity of the believer.

That said building one another up and discipling one another is a command and a crucial part of fellowship. I am not saying we shouldn’t meet regularly to go over our verses and get into the word and I am not saying we don’t help new believers get grounded in the word. Older women are to help younger women, and as iron sharpens iron so does one man sharpen another, but where does the command to be accountable to one another come in?

I am Looking forward to getting back into posting again soon-haven’t had time in the past three months to post, but will soon. Thinking about direction for this blog.

Taleonic Justice

Pictured above: Jacob, Laban and Laban’s two daughters, Rachel and Leah

Genesis 25-29:

Wow.. What a thread of deception from Abraham to Jacob and despite the deception, God blessed them and His plan for the nation of Israel was not thwarted.

Of course, God’s sovereignty here is amazing as well as his faithfulness let alone how he used all the idiotic things they did and turned them around for good. All of it worked together for His purposes and plans for Israel and of course in the end for the salvation of all who will believe on Jesus.

Without going into the myriad of things I picked up in this passage, there is one thread that I have always been aware of but really just stood out in today’s time in the word.

“Taleonic Justice”. In other words, they all got a taste of their own medicine. So even though God turned the ‘evil’ into good and in his sovereignty it fit into the overall plan, He is still their ‘father’ and disciplined them for it and I think there were many consequences they faced, but one was getting a taste of their own medicine.. 

There is an interesting thread here, for instance, Abraham deceived Abimilech saying his wife Sarah is his sister, then Isaac deceives Abimilech, whom I am thinking was the same King because he reigned for a long time, saying Rebekah is his sister; Then Jacob deceives Isaac when he steals Esau’s blessing, then Jacob is deceived by Laban in almost the exact same way:

Jacob’s deception toward Isaac was done ‘in the dark’ when Isaac couldn’t see what was going on.  He pretended to to be Esau by wearing a hairy garment on his hands and neck and wearing his clothes for the ’scent effect’. Isaac was fooled and gave Jacob the blessing instead of Esau.

Then when Jacob journeyed to go and live with Laban, he saw Rachel who was Laban’s youngest daughter and fell in love. He worked out a deal with Laban where he would work 7 years in order to marry Rachel. He didn’t want the oldest Leah because she wasn’t as attractive. So Jacob works the 7 years and Laban gave him Leah whom he thought was Rachel. He didn’t get to see her until after they consummated their marriage the next morning. When he saw her it was Leah! He was deceived.

Jacob worked another 7 years to get Rachel. It was the same kind of deception as Jacob did to Isaac, in the dark he thought his wife was someone else.

God is a holy God and a just God. He doesn’t go back on His word. He kept the ‘blessing arrangement’ with Isaac and didn’t take away Jacob’s blessing even though Isaac was deceived, but he did make sure that Jacob would receive discipline for it. Sin has consequences. God didn’t take those away, but in His sovereignty He worked the deception out for His good and to accomplish His purposes. 

We will soon learn that Jacob will be deceived by his other sons into thinking Joseph died when in fact his brothers sold him off to be a slave to the Egyptians. The deception continued…

I have seen in my own life how this Taleonic justice principle works.

When I have sinful attitudes toward others such as having a critical or judgmental heart, it always comes back and I actually go through what they went through. It is sinful being critical toward others.  I can think of some great examples, but on in particular sticks out because it is the most recent.. The issue of whether to private, home school or public school.

I remember being critical of those who would sacrifice their children at the altar of liberalism and secularist thinking by sending them to public school. I thought they just weren’t willing to sacrifice their time and resources. Of course, several years later when God closed the doors.. More like SLAMMED the doors on us with homeschooling and private school, we then had no option but to public school. Boy was that humbling and also a huge step of faith for me! I was the one who was adamantly against public school and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why God shut the doors and directed us this way, but without going into it all. I see His hand at work in a mighty way now and know that this was the right decision.

Thinking Right: Changing Our “Stinkin’ Thinkin’”

 

Today’s encouragement lies in Philippians 4:8-9:

⁸Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

What more can I say other than in today’s time I had in scripture I have been reminded about how easy it is to get lost in a bad thought life. Even though I have been walking with Christ for a long time and have understood and applied his word in my life, there are seasons in life where I can easily be swept up with the ‘concerns of the day’.

It is easy to allow what is going on in our life and in the world to provoke anxious or depressing thoughts. Instead God wants us to replace those thoughts with His word. Even if we have had a lifetime of memory verses and meditating in God’s word, we are still challenged day by day and the challenges get tougher the older we get.

Whatever we have learned, received or heard from Him, we are to PUT INTO PRACTICE. We are to replace these thoughts with truth which is God’s word.

To “think upon such things’ and ‘put into practice’ what we have learned is a command, not an option.

My Testimony

How can I have a blog where I write about what God is showing me and not tell you about how he changed my life?

I have a 2 minute, 5 minute and recently I completed an hour testimony, so I will try to spare you the ‘wordiness’ and get down to the nitty gritty of it:

Put it this way, I was a low-life- worm of a sinner. I still am a low-life, worm of a sinner but because of Jesus’ death buriel and resurrection my sins have been forgiven and I am reconciled to God- meaning our ‘relationship has been restored’. I am justified before God because of what HE has done.

All I had to do was believe and hand over the reigns of my life to Him, i.e. trust Him. Now I am justified before God- “Just as if I had never sinned”.

Why am I still a worm? It is true that if there is anything good in me it is Jesus. The difference between now and then is that I now have conflict between the flesh and the spirit. I didn’t have that before. Before I just did what my feelings-flesh told me to do. I had no clear direction or righteous path to follow. Now I do.

After I trusted Christ God took the blinders off my eyes and I was able to understand scripture for the first time. Before, I would crack open a bible my sister in law gave me and I couldn’t understand a word of it. It was a huge mystery, but God made me, the blind girl, see. He restored my relationship to Him and now I can walk and talk daily with God. I know God now.

Jesus promised he would send the counselor, ‘the Holy Spirit’ to counsel us. I have the Holy Spirit living inside me and He gives me insight into God’s word, convicts me of sin and gives me the strength to follow through in obeying what God tells me to do in scripture. I didn’t have that before.

There IS a clear difference in my life from August of 1988, the month before I trusted Him, and September 17th, 1988-the day I believed and handed my life over to Him.

The “Why’s” in Life

 

This year I have committed to reading through the whole bible chronologically and this morning I read Job 29-34.

Has your faith ever been tested? Have you had a trial that seemed unending and had other trials heaped upon you at the same time?

Isaac, my second son, was born with autism and it was easy to accept it as God wiring him that way and that it was meant to be. It was easy because my husband and I were meeting with an older, much wiser couple who were mentoring us at the time who told us that God made Isaac that way and he has a plan for His life and it includes having autism. It really helped us start off on the right foot with our thinking because that was the truth and it would be so easy to tell ourselves lies. So, by the mercy and the grace of God we didn’t fall apart.

God reminded me of  Psalm 103:19: “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens and his sovereignty rules over all”. God also gave my husband and I the strength to go through 3 very long years of helping him with therapy knowing that God didn’t want us to live in the future. God taught me that He wanted Isaac to reach his potential and only God knows what that would look like. Isaac was in His hands, not mine.

I never usually asked God ’why’ when trials came UNTIL our business went under. It doesn’t make sense that I never asked ‘why’ regarding Isaac, but I did when our business went under. After all, I was the queen of being a good steward with our finances.

 Yet our trials have been nothing compared to Job’s  and I feel like the lowest of lows for even mentioning them. I am not sure if I had to go through what Job did that I would come out on the other side as strong as Job did, but by the grace of God I might, who knows.

I am still chewing on the cud in these passages in Job. There is so much there. My first impression here is that while we know Job was blameless and upright and never denied God or turned away from God the whole time, he was trying to figure out what he had done wrong.

Job feared God, and his whole life was about doing the right thing and pleasing God and then wham this hit him out of the blue.

Again there are several different angles I could take here, but the one that struck me the most was that while Job revered God, he was struggling to figure out ‘why’ this was happening to him because he didn’t do anything to deserve it. He had no clue what went on behind the scenes when Satan went before God. He had no clue this was a test that was unprovoked by anything he did.

He soon will learn that God works in ways we don’t understand. God makes sure Job understands that while He is holy you can’t put Him in a box. He will allow trials in people’s lives for His purposes and it may not be because they have done anything wrong, but to bring Him glory. God really challenges Job’s thinking when you get to chapter 38. Wow!

The book of Job is a powerful reminder of the fact that God indeed sits on the throne and is in charge of it all. He wants us to daily walk by faith trusting Him instead of asking ‘why’. You can walk by faith if you have been reconciled to Him. 

Jesus who is God and the son of God, died on the cross as a payment for our sins so that we wouldn’t have to pay that penalty and therefore could be reconciled to Him.

God is holy and can’t stand in the presence of sin so if you died today in your sins you wouldn’t be able to stand in the presence of God. So, HE came and paid the penalty FOR US. What a loving God He is!  You just need to believe and accept his forgiveness for your sins and just trust Him and follow Him. 

Hand over the reigns of your life to Him! He is God and wants you to have a relationship with Him where you can walk by faith daily with Him.  He will set you free. He will straighten your paths and give you a clear direction in your life.

Things That Can Happen in The Bathroom

And now, for something completely different. Watch the video above!

Hi Friends!

Welcome to my blog! It took a while to get this thing up.

See you tomorrow with my first post!