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Most Christians don’t know how to maintain what God has done for them. He touches their lives and they get turned on to Him, but six months later it’s as if they’ve lost the passion to know and serve Him. This isn’t the way God intended it to be.
Text:Roman1:21
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.(Romans 1:21) shows us how people walk away from a revelation of God’s existence, His hatred for sin, and how we’re accountable to Him. It reveals four things we do to harden and desensitize ourselves to what God has done in our lives. First, we don’t glorify God. We don’t put value and worth on Him. We don’t esteem-prize-the revelation He gives us. The word glory speaks of the value we place on what God has said and done. Most people don’t value the things of God properly. When we begin valuing the opinions and experiences of others more than what God says in His Word and how He’s touched our life, we begin to be insensitive. The blessing, benefit, and joy of what God has done for us starts wearing off when we quit placing the proper value on it.
Not only do you need to put a positive value on what God has said and done in your life, but you also need to devalue anything else that comes against you. It’s a two-edged sword! You can’t just say, “Father, I value what You’ve done. I glorify You and magnify what You’ve done in my life.” You also have to make a conscious effort to disesteem and devalue everything else in a comparative sense. Jesus faced the cross, but focused on “the joy that was set before Him” (Heb. 12:2). Mentally, He captured His thoughts. It wasn’t natural. As He headed to the cross, Jesus didn’t just have a rush of natural feelings, like excitement and happiness. It took effort, but He looked beyond the cross and saw the joy there. He saw the fact that this would please His Father, appease His wrath, and that He would resurrect from the dead and one day be seated at the Father’s right hand. He also saw you and me. The Lord’s heart beat with such love for the world that it enabled Him to look past the heartache.
This is such an important key to victory. If you ever do anything that amounts to anything, if you ever touch someone else’s life, if you ever succeed in any endeavor, there will be problems between you and that success. The person who succeeds is the one who can look past those problems, hurts, pains, and actually glorify, magnify, and esteem the solution. They can see beyond the cost and value the answer above it. That’s what separates losers and victors.
Every millionaire I’ve ever read about has gone bust more than once, but they had something on the inside that just kept them moving forward anyway. They knew that there was a way to succeed. So they kept this goal-this prize-in front of them. Because of it, they were able to take things that destroyed other people. I’ve also seen just the opposite. Even though everything seems to work for some people, they just have a defeated mentality and expect something to fail. Then they fall apart like a two-dollar suitcase when the first little problem comes their way. The issue isn’t the challenging situation on the outside, but the failure on the inside.
The Lord set the joy in front of Him and despised-disesteemed-the shame.
Text:Hebrews12:2
fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Your thoughts either magnify or shrink everything. It’s not what happens to you that’s important, but how you perceive and process it .When you magnify negative things: they become Insurmountable. But you can also take huge things and disesteem them. If Jesus could take the Cross and: shame associated with it and disesteem it, then You can despise anything. You can reduce anything that comes
against you to nothing.
Text: PSALM 34:1
will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Most Christians know this scripture, but don’t really believe it works. They say, “Well, you can praise God up to a point, but beyond that you can’t expect me to praise the Lord in this situation.” In other words, the Word doesn’t really mean “all times.” It means all times except “these times”.If you put the proper value and worth on God and Spiritual things, nothing in this life can compare. You can disesteem and devalue anything in this life so that nothing can bother you or steal your joy. “But what if you’re going through a divorce? What if your spouse cheated on you? It's terrible! How can you rejoice through that? Psychology would say that you’re in denial.” You could focus on the Lord and say, “Thank You, Jesus, that Your Word says that in heaven we won't marry or be given in marriage. (Matt. 22:30.) This is temporary. I'm so glad I get to live forever with You and not this other person.” Now that’s something to rejoice about! “Thank You, Jesus, that You’ll never divorce me. You’ll never leave me nor forsake me.” (Heb:13:5.) You can rejoice even if you’re going through a divorce.
Who cares if you’re going to die? You’re going to die someday anyway. Life is a terminal experience. We’re all in different stages of dying, even younger folks. You don’t have as many years left as you used to. “Oh, that’s terrible!” Paul didn’t think so. He wrestled between his strong desire to go be with the Lord and staying here to minister.
If you value things properly, you can get to a place where dying isn’t a problem. When the doctor tells you you’re going to die, you could just reach up and kiss him saying, “That’s
awesome! I believe in healing, so I believe God will heal me. But if I’m not healed, it’ll be awesome just to sit in the presence of the Lord. What a deal!” If you can’t do that, it’s because you have misplaced values.
You still glorify this physical life-carnal things-more than eternal things. Jesus faced the cross and counted it as nothing compared to the joy He focused on. He was stripped naked, spit on, ’ beard plucked out, thorns in His brow, back shredded, and ridiculed, but He disesteemed all that. It didn’t matter. He was thinking on the joy to come. Most of what we worry about is so insignificant. Some people say, “When I get to heaven, I’m going to ask God about this and that.” No, you won’t. Once you get there and know all things as you are known, you’ll see everything in its right perspective. In view of God’s awesomeness and splendor, you’ll say, “I’m sure glad I didn’t ask that stupid question and air out my little gripe.” When you find yourself standing before Almighty God, you won’t be holding Him to account saying, “Why didn’t You do this and why didn’t You do that?” Once you get God’s perspective, it’ll change your life. The reason things are so big to us is that God is so small to us. If you would exalt, magnify, and value the Lord properly, He would become so big to you that all this other stuff wouldn’t even matter. It wouldn’t even be important. Once you get that attitude, you’ll find that everything else in the natural will work better for you. You’ll receive your healing easier. Your finances will work better. Your marriage will improve because you aren’t codependent upon that person anymore. If they do something wrong, it won’t affect your walk. You’ll just keep right on walking with God, which is the best thing you can do for your mate anyhow.
Jesus set this joy before Himself, and that allowed Him to endure the cross. If you aren’t enduring, it’s probably because you don’t have any joy set before you that you’re focusing on instead. You’re like a fly on a painting. Flies have compound eyes and see a thousand images of everything. Right now, you see 2,000 blobs of this ugly red color. But if you backed up and viewed the picture in perspective, you’d see how that little blob of paint fits perfectly and helps make it a masterpiece. You can get so close to your problem that you can’t see anything else and you think the whole world is falling apart because of it. You need to get focused on something Other than what’s going on right now. Look beyond it. Lift your eyes up and look somewhere other than just down at your
feet and what’s going on. Jesus overlooked His problem. That’s what enabled Him to endure it. He disesteemed the shame and focused on the joy-and you can too.