A Few Wednesday Thoughts On “Desiring to Be Godly”

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I have felt guilty of late about my inconsistency regarding my prayer time.  I used to pray for one hour at the beginning of each day.  Used to being the key phrase here.

I have been telling myself that I need to get back on track again.

I’ve been telling myself that this blog is my ministry and I am doing what God wants me to do with my spiritual poetry.

I have been thinking that this Lenten Journey I’m doing daily is good for me to correct my course.

This morning, after dropping Sara off at school, I was flipping through the radio stations on the way home and caught a Christian channel that I had not found before (Divine intervention ?) and began listening to a Bible teaching by a man that I think his last name was Graham (short-term memory lapse there on his name for sure).

He was talking about the Disciples and how God used their personalities as accentuation to their preaching rather than deterrent.  For instance, Peter was emotional, just blurting things out; Paul was a lawyer and therefore concise; John was all love; etc.

He spoke about the word “desire” and how is was used in a particular Scripture phrase “who would desire to be Godly” (or something close to that – again s.t.m. loss).  He focused hard on what that word was saying and I was considering it a profound message that I was receiving by “stumbling” onto it at that precise moment.

What I understood him to be saying was this; people who “desire” to be Godly are those who try every day to do what is right.  In a given circumstance, they stop to ask themselves “what would God say about me doing this?”; or “God wouldn’t like me doing that!”.  Do we hold God with reverence in our hearts?  That’s basically what he was asking.  Do we consider what is righteous in our decision-making?  Do we get offended for His sake?  When others talk negatively about Him, what is our reaction?  Or do we just sit back and say nothing for fear of being “persecuted”?

At the same time I think he was saying that although we “desire” to be Godly, He knows that we will fail because we are not God; we are fallible human beings; all the “desire” in the world is not going to make us perfect in our walks.  And that made me think about how “God looks at the heart of a man”.

If He looks at our hearts, if He sees our “desire” to be Godly, if He hears our prayers and judges our thoughts and actions, if He knows that we are doing the very best humanly possible, what more would He ask for?  If we repent of our sins with true remorse in our hearts, I think He considers that, don’t you?

Then Mr. Graham began talking about how we are told numerous times in the Bible the Christians will suffer hardship and persecutions.  He said if we are not suffering through something, if everything is hunky dory all the time, then we are not true in our Christian walk and are what the Bible calls “impostors”, we are the ones that Christ will say to us “I know you not”.  “Those the Lord loves he chastens” I believe was one quote he used as illustration of his point. If we don’t go through hardship, how is God going to stretch and grow us into the people that He wants us to become?

What do you think about my conclusions, my reasoning’s of his teaching today?  I wish I could play it for you to hear yourself 🙂  ’cause my memory problems may have ’caused some misquoting here but I think you get my drift.

Just wanted to throw out some food for thought to you as God did for me this morning.

Have a blessed and prosperous day in the Lord,

Teresa Marie (Terri)