How to be Steadfast in the Lord - Part 1 Dr. Pradeep Stephen
Praise the Lord and welcome to Part 1 of the message How to be steadfast in the Lord? May God bless you as you listen.
I Corinthians 15:58 [King James Version] Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
This is the continuance of walking with Christ, coming into fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ through His blood and through His Spirit, and then continuing strong with Him, strong enough so that we end the race with victory. God has a glorious plan for all of us and it requires us to be careful. By and by when we become complacent, the world and all of the opinions around this begin to encroach upon our spiritual life and we can get to a state of a self-satisfaction or smugness, and that is the beginning of backsliding. We want to know how to be victorious in the race and to be champions for Jesus Christ. I trust that that is your desire; it certainly is our desire and so let's get into The Word of God and find out how we can be not moved as we go through the journey with Jesus Christ.
So if the Apostle exhorts us by the Holy Spirit "Be steadfast, be steadfast, keep on, keeping on with Christ, don't give up, persevere, be unmovable," then the first thing to look at is how does one get moved? You see it's only helpful for us to know how to be steadfast when we understand how we can protect ourselves from falling or backsliding or being moved. In order to avoid being moved from the hope of the gospel from the Christian Life, we need to understand that complacency is a dangerous thing for our souls.
Many, many people are having a wonderful time enjoying the blessings of God, and that is what God wants. God wants us to enjoy His blessings. He gives us blessings to richly enjoy. So if we have money, we have clothing, food, shelter and extra activities, that you are privileged to indulge in, God says, "there is nothing wrong with any of those so long as you remain steadfast in me." But this is precisely where many people enjoy the blessings of God in all the countries, you have families that enjoy the blessings of God and yet they don't pay attention to what it requires to remain steadfast with Him.
So by and by, as I mentioned at the outset, complacency comes in. That is the attitude that says," I have the Word of God, I have church, I have fellowship, I have teaching that I listen to perhaps through the media, I have my own family celebrations and I include God in there. What is wrong with me? There is nothing wrong with me." Paul says he had not achieved, but he is reaching forward to that prize. Certainly, he had to leave what was old behind in order to get that which God had for him. So the first thing is to understand that complacency should never come into our lives. Complacency is the poison that begins the downfall of those who have been given freely the gift of life. It's all by grace, but the grace of God must not be held in vain.
So, the complacency is that smugness that makes us to have the spiritual state of satisfaction that “Lord, I don't need to pay too much attention to my walk with You because everything is guaranteed, right?” The Lord only guarantees everlasting inheritance to those who are steadfast with Him and persevere to the end. That is the truth. When this complacency comes in and I feel satisfied, self-satisfied, I look out into the field as it were of my own status in society, of my own achievements, and I feel a sense of perhaps thankfulness but also a sense of satisfaction that I have achieved something.
But it is the Christian that is ever alert to the voice of the Holy Spirit that can navigate through prosperity or seeming prosperity and still keep his soul in the right trajectory in the spiritual domain to walk straight toward the Lord Jesus, to bear the cross denying oneself and then bearing all things. Complacency leads to compromise. The downward spiral begins. Compromise is saying that I have made an agreement with something that I know is not favorable to me. In the spiritual sense it is something that I know is dead wrong, dead set against God's Word and Will, but I begin to make a bargain, you know why? Because I have become self-satisfied that I know what I am doing and I know that I won't fall no matter what I do. It's the false sense of security. So the compromise sets in and it is essentially a concession: I concede to the enemy and all the worldly voices which come and bring pressure on me to deviate from the Word of God.
It may mean this, if we have children, particularly teenage children, it may mean conceding or making a concession compromising with the moral and ethical standards God has set forth in His Word. So here comes a teenage daughter and son, they want to mingle with the world and they want to have a relationship with other members of the opposite sex and they are contemplating perhaps marriage in the future. They begin to date; they begin to live together, cohabitation.
If I become complacent with my spiritual walk with God based on the pressure that I get from my teenager and perhaps other worldly people around me, I may very well begin to make a compromise and say, "well at least, my child is not doing what this person is doing - something worse. It doesn't mean that this is harmless, this is actually wrong before God, but I'm allowing this relationship because at least they are wise enough not to run off, run away from me." That is the deadly nature of compromise. That our spiritual eyesight becomes dim and we begin to bargain with the devil, bargain with society, with the worldly spirits and we start going further down. That's the danger.
We start saying essentially what the Lord God forbids, what I have learnEd from Christ is not really practical any longer. It's not practical. The most practical thing in the universe is to obey the Lord's commandments, because therein lies every good thing and all success and prosperity, now and for evermore. But the voice of compromise says God's standards are too strict, it is antiquated, I can't live by His standards today and get by in the world.
That is the voice of the devil who has only been able to speak that to you if you have felt that complacency in your life that,"I am untouchable, I can't be touched by the devil because I'm secure in Christ, I don't need to watch my life, I'm covered by the blood, it's all secure from now on." The Scripture says contrary. It says, "be unmovable, be steadfast." The exhortations are "watch yourself, watch your life and your doctrine, make sure that no one takes your crown" so it's contrary to scripture. But that's what happens.
Complacency leads to compromise. Once that compromise comes in with all the pressures coming into our heads and our minds, into our hearts, the natural result is total confusion. Confusion that comes and makes us lose our spiritual compass, our moral compass, our ethical compass: everything. This is how it starts.
We all know that addictions never grip a person overnight. They come by doses and overtime. As a person concedes to the wrong and unwanted things in this world, by and by those things grab a hold of the heart and then the heart becomes confused; and it loses all direction and anything that is right, and it is just a matter of time before the devil can destroy that person altogether.
We all are rescued from the state of confusion. We were held captive by the devil against our wills but the Son of God came, by His grace He rescued us. We thank God for that, but like the woman at the Samaritan well who was immoral, when she was forgiven so freely and so readily by the Lord Jesus Christ, He expected her to go on; and she immediately, as we heard in the prophecy, left everything, that water, that well that she boasted off, she left everything to go and tell the good news. So must we; Godwants us to go forward and be steadfast. So we need to guard against complacency, guard against compromise which will lead to confusion and that confusion will only lead to condemnation.
The condemnation can be looked at in two angles - one is our own heart condemning us. We know that although we are confused, we are in the wrong place. We know deep within ourselves that, "I have been complacent, I have therefore compromised now I am confused and certainly I'll be condemned." The scripture says this in I John 3:20, for if our heart condemn us God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things.
I'll read it again, I John 3:20 and also 3:21 [King James Version] For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.
You see, he knows us better than we know ourselves. Before we feel condemned for something that we have done wrong and our conscience condemns us, our heart condemns us, God already knows that, and God will mete out the appropriate judgment if we don't repent.
I John 3:21 says that Beloved, good news is if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.
It goes on there, we won't read it, but it goes on to say that, that confidence gives us assurance that what we ask God for, He will grant. We have a hearing with the Lord. How wonderful!! The truth is balanced to show very clearly that the wicked - those who know Christ and who have rejected Him by compromising will be punished; but the Lord says in Ezekiel [English Standard Version][, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Why will you die O Israel?" Death is trying to make inroads into our families every day.
All of our choices will determine our destiny, the choices that we make in moral standards, ethical standards, things that God has told us specifically to do, we have neglected because of complacency, “I don't need that now. I don't need that warning" - that will end the person in hell. But when I say, "Lord, I humbly come to You every day, praising You and honoring You, but examining my heart before You, when I have the Word of God" is a Christian.
If the Holy Spirit is showing me the truth and I don't become complacent, I don't compromise, I don't go into confusion, I'm not condemned, then I'm walking in the right way. It's very important to follow the Spirit of God. If the Spirit of God is showing you that certain things will take you away from the right course, it will cause you to lose your steadfastness, you must be very keen on obeying Him rather than man, to be a God pleaser and not a man pleaser.
And we do pray that the message has blessed you. You may write to us at contact@elbethelinternationalministries.org or via regular mail
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