Lifetime Guarantee (34 page)

1. It is of very little importance to consistently
feel
God in your life. There will be those times when you do feel the Lord and as a result realize He is at work. These periods are very enjoyable and reassuring. However, there will probably be far more times when there is very little feeling, if any at all, that God is anywhere close, let alone dwelling inside you. The loving Father has structured the Christian walk in this manner in an effort to wean us from walking by feel as opposed to faith, confidence, and dependence on Him. Even if your feelings should go in the opposite direction from the truth of God’s Word, it is imperative that you remain focused on what God has said rather than what you may or may not feel. Your emotions are not God’s barometer of truth; His Word is.

2. The man in the cabin was not being hypocritical when he began to act as a safe man in the cabin. It was imperative to his physical health that he do so. If he had failed to do this, he very well could have had a heart attack and died. He was merely acting on the truth in this situation. It is no different for a Christian who finds himself locked up in the cabin of life with the enemy of God clawing and scratching at the door. Obedience is the key for the Christian who walks according to what God has said in His Word in spite of his fluctuating feelings.

3. There are many things that God’s Spirit may have shown you as you reflected on Jesus’ prayers in the garden. One of the things that stands out in my mind is that Jesus didn’t receive lighting-in-sky answers or handwriting on the wall as He prayed to God the Father. Quite the contrary! There was silence from the Father. Not silence showing disapproval, but rather silence indicating trust and comfort. Just because there is no obvious answer to the prayers you pray does not mean that God is ignoring you or is disinterested in you. He has your highest well-being in mind.

1. The point this question intends to stress is one of acting on your faith. Perhaps you can more readily see how you effectively walked in faith and obedience or failed to walk by faith and why that failure occurred.

2. There is no way that everything started to go great after Bill began to trust the Lord and walk in the Spirit. Quite the contrary. There were still struggles, difficulties, and trials. Circumstances still closed in from time to time, and Satan continued to offer up his temptations. This reinforces the fact that hardships and trials are merely elements within the laboratory designed to help us learn how to walk in the Spirit. Bill would not have been able to recognize Christ’s sufficiency if he hadn’t had an opportunity to allow the Lord Jesus to work.

3. The essence of your answer for this question should center on
methodology
rather than results. Are you trusting the Lord Jesus to do the work through you as you do your best, or are you doing your best hoping that He will approve of your efforts?

1. These polarized positions in God’s Word leave the devil an opportunity to use even God’s Word in an effort to deceive. These “apparent contradictions” are never to be perceived as an evidence that the Bible contains error, but as giving the believer the opportunity to
trust
the Lord God even when faced with apparent “proof” of His inconsistency. This is trusting the integrity of God and “rightly dividing” His Word.

2. The primary key for understanding and interpreting God’s Word correctly is to focus on Christ on the cross and what His sacrifice means to us and for us.

3. If you realize that you have made a wrong turn, the proper thing to do is turn around and go back the other direction. The Bible would call this repentance. It is a refocusing of your life on grace and Christ’s finished work on the cross instead of law and performance-based acceptance. This shouldn’t be thought of in terms of backtracking or losing ground. Rather, it is progress in the correct direction toward God’s grace. The measure of success in the Christian life is not who finishes the race first, but
how
the race is won.

4. To prevent making a turn toward law, Christ’s work on the cross and God’s grace should always be the central focus of your walk. As long as you are focusing on Jesus’ atonement for you to interpret God’s Word, you will be looking in the proper direction.

1. There are many reasons that God will use the wilderness in a person’s life: to break the Christian from relying on his own strength, to learn trust and obedience, to find rest in Him, and so on. In short, God seeks to break the hold that the flesh has on us during our earthwalk.

2. It isn’t feasible for a Christian to really know Christ as life and source without going through the wilderness. If you never experience a need, there would never be a reason for Christ to be the supply. God will lovingly
lead
you through the wilderness to intensify that need. The Christian can enter into a commitment with the Lord to know Him as life without having been motivated by stress, but the Father must allow the commitment to be tested if it is to be experiential reality for the believer.

3. Finding yourself in the valley of Achor can practically motivate you to look to the Lord as your sufficiency. Once you have begun to do this, you place yourself in the position of being in God’s hands. He is now free to remove you from the valley or to give you the grace to go through it. Either way, you are a winner as you understand God’s grace and focus yourself on Him and Him alone as your life.

1. God allows difficult circumstances in the Christian’s life in order to conform him into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ, who lived a life of total dependency on the Father. If God did not equip the Christian through these actions, He would rob the believer of the opportunity to grow in Christ, experiencing the fullness that knowing Him can bring. It is only through these means that the Christian experientially develops heavenly character traits.

2. Your answer to this question will be unique to you. As you ponder this question, ask the Lord to give you added insight into His unique plan for your life.

3. This question and the next one are asking you to evaluate your personal walk with the Lord. Is He calling you to walk closer, go deeper, trust more? You
must
be maturing. If you aren’t, stagnation has set in. Any time you “coast,” you are going downhill. Let me encourage you in the Lord.

When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years, but when He wants to make a squash, He takes six months.

—D
R
. A. H. S
TRONG

4. See answer 3 above.

    _  Anger

    _  Anxiety

    _  Argumentative

    _  Astrology, Horoscopes, etc. (attracted to)

    _  Bigotry

    _  Bitterness

    _  Boastful

    _  Bossy

    _  Causing Dissension

    _  Conceited

    _  Controlled by Emotions

    _  Controlled by Peer Pressure

    _  Covetousness

    _  Critical Tongue

    _  Deceitfulness

    _  Depression

    _  Dominance

    _  Drug Dependency

    _  Drunkenness

    _  Envy (depressed at the good

    _  fortune of others)

    _  False Modesty

    _  Fear

    _  Feelings of Helplessness or Weakness

    _  Feelings of Rejection

    _  Feelings of Stupidity

    _  Feelings of Worthlessness

    _  Gluttony

    _  Greed

    _  Guilt

    _  Hatred

    _  Hostility

    _  Homosexual Lust

    _  Idolatry

    _  If It Feels Good, Go for It

    _  Impatience

    _  Impulsiveness

    _  Impure Thoughts

    _  Inadequate

    _  Indifference to Others’ Problems

    _  Inferiority Feelings

    _  Inhibited

    _  Insecurity

    _  Intemperance

    _  Jealousy

    _  Laziness

    _  Loner

    _  Low Self-Discipline

    _  Low Self-Worth

    _  Lust for Pleasure

    _  Materialistic

    _  Must Strive to
Repay
Any Kindness Shown You

    _  Negativism

    _  Nervousness

    _  Occult (involved in)

    _  Opinionated

    _  Overly Quiet

    _  Overly Sensitive to Criticism

    _  Overly Submissive

    _  Passivity

    _  Perfectionist

    _  Prejudice

    _  Pride

    _  Profane

    _  Projecting Blame

    _  Prone to Gossip

    _  Rebellion at Authority

    _  Resentment

    _  Restlessness

    _  Sadness

    _  Self-Centered

    _  Self-Confidence

    _  Self-Depreciation

    _  Self-Gratification (obsessions)

    _  Self-Hatred

    _  Self-Indulgence

    _  Self-Justification

    _  Self-Pity

    _  Self-Reliant

    _  Self-Righteousness

    _  Self-Sufficient

    _  Selfish Ambition

    _  Sensuality

    _  Sexual Lust

    _  Slow to Forgive

    _  Stubbornness

    _  Temper

    _  Too Quick to Speak

    _  Unlovely

    _  Vanity

    _  Withdrawal

    _  Workaholic

    _  Worrier

Lifetime Ministries

131 Village Pkw. NE Bldg. 4

Marietta, GA 30067

(888) 395-LIFE

www.lifetime.org