The lesson you're about to hear is designed
to help you in your spiritual pilgrimage.
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Our teacher is Russell Kelfer of the Into
His Likeness radio broadcast.
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you.
We return to our study of Satan's lies
and God's truth and the resulting conflict that
leads to double-mindedness in the life of
Christians.
Last Sunday we concluded our look at Satan's
lies about authority, a study that took us
into the realms of parental authority, discipline, rebellion,
even patriotism, and finally ended last week with
a look at Satan's challenge to God's final
authority.
Do you remember what that was?
He challenged God's truth that the Word is
perfect, that the Word is permanent, that the
Word is precious, that the Word is personal,
that the Word is practical, and that the
Word is powerful and therefore the Words should
be pre-eminent in the lives of every
Christian.
Well, we are nearing the end of our
side trip concerning Satan's lies.
We come this morning to what is a
potentially controversial area for some.
After some of the subjects covered in this
series, I suppose you might wonder what else
might be considered controversial.
The subject is Satan's Lies and God's Truth
About Responsibility, and the title of this morning's
lesson is, The Devil Made Me Do It.
We are going to talk about who is
to blame for our problems.
How much can we blame on society?
How much can we blame on our parents?
How much can we blame on God?
And how much can we blame on Satan?
Satan has captured the mind of man with
the lies he has created in this area.
Here are his four basic lies concerning responsibility.
Lie number one, we can blame society for
our failures.
Lie number two, we can blame our parents
for our weaknesses.
Lie number three, we can blame God for
our circumstances and our defects.
And, lie number four, we can blame Satan
for our besetting sins.
When we get through, somebody is responsible for
everything.
Satan has robbed the Christian of the capacity
to make life's one most basic statement, Lord,
it's my fault.
This morning we are going to begin with
the first lie that society can be blamed
for our failures.
The lie is that man has a scapegoat
for immorality.
Remember from Satan's perspective, nothing is absolute.
So all you have to do is trace
the blame for your problems back to another
whose behavior justifies yours.
Or if you can't pin down one person,
we use the term society as our scapegoat.
Let me give you an example of what
teachers are hypothetically posing to their students to
teach them situation ethics.
This was taken from a teacher's workbook on
a seminar called Value Clarification Seminar, and its
purpose was to teach teachers to teach values
to their children.
Here's the hypothetical story.
It says, who's to blame?
Here's a story in which you will meet
several characters.
You will be asked to rank order them,
whatever that means.
That's a new phrase, but that's what you're
supposed to do.
With the person most distasteful to you in
the number one spot, and the person least
distasteful to you in the number fourth spot.
Now remember, nobody is right or wrong, but
somebody is more distasteful to you than the
others.
Here are the characters.
Here's the cast.
Number one, there's a high school student who
is selling marijuana to junior high school kids
because he is desperately in need of money.
He wants to get the transmission fixed on
his car, and he needs the car to
get a job as a busboy at the
country club.
Character number one.
However, the car he bought, it turns out,
had its transmission filled with sawdust.
Bad scene.
Which kept it running just long enough to
go beyond the ten day guarantee given by
the used car salesman.
When confronted, here's character number two, the used
car salesman said, look, that's just the way
we took the car in.
We didn't check it.
We didn't do anything to it, good or
bad.
Go see the guy that sold it to
us.
So, on the buck goes.
Character number one justified his behavior because he
needed the transmission, he needed the car fixed
so he could make, keep his job.
Number two said, it was just ignorance on
my part, you can't blame me.
Enter character number three, the man who sold
the car to the used car dealer sold
it in a hurry because he bought a
new house in the suburbs and he had
to raise the money for closing costs quickly
or his family wouldn't have a roof over
its head.
The car he sold was really their second
car and he was going to fix it,
but he got into a bind and so
he put the sawdust in and sold it
to the used car lot for wholesale price.
The used car dealer cleaned it up, sold
it to the high school student for retail
price and he made $85.
Now the impression is that that, of course,
is a sin.
The new house buyer said he wouldn't have
done what he did if he hadn't been
desperate and he blamed the banker because the
banker didn't tell him in advance how much
the closing costs would be.
The banker said if he hadn't been so
cheap he'd have hired a lawyer that knew
about closing costs, not my fault.
He wanted to save a few bucks and
do it yourself.
We handle too many deals, we can't keep
up with everything.
Business is business and we're in the business
of lending money.
This is the situation the teachers were told,
now your job is to rank order these
people.
I love that phrase, whatever it means.
Put the one you consider least blameless in
the number four spot, the one you blame
the most in the number one spot, and
when you've done this we'll break up into
quartets.
That sounds harmonious, to discuss your rankings.
Then the teachers were given the correct answer
or the most logical answer.
Now let's see, who do you think was
the baddie in the deal?
First of all, how many of you think
it was the student that sold marijuana to
the junior high kids?
Raise your hand.
He was the least desirable, nobody's right and
wrong.
How many of you think it was the
car dealer that sold the car with transmission
stuffed full of sawdust?
Oh, all right, one.
We've got a lot of used car lovers
here.
Number two, how many of you think it
was the owner of the car who had
to panic and sell his car because he
wanted to buy a house?
Some of you aren't voting at all.
How many of you think the banker was
to blame?
Okay.
Guess who was the guilty party?
The teachers were told it was the banker.
That's who.
He represents cold, unfeeling society, and his insensitivity
justifies the student's immorality and the used car
dealer's immorality.
No one was really right or wrong, you
understand.
The question is, who was the most distasteful?
The same teachers were told, be sure and
remember, when you're teaching your children, nothing is
really wrong.
It's relative.
Society, authority, these are the culprits.
You go to a high school basketball or
football game, and Johnny's team lost.
Now, Johnny's your son, remember.
Who's to blame?
I don't know how many of these games
you've gone to, but 99 percent of the
time, the referee is to blame.
One right call on his part, and you
know these Christian parents sit around at the
game, and they scream, and they yell, and
they get in the car with their kids
and say, you don't want that game if
it wasn't for that referee.
He gave you a bad deal.
He gets to blame.
Society says, alcoholism, who's to blame?
It's the pressures of society.
Homosexuality, who's to blame?
It's the changing mores in our society.
The rapes, the robberies, all of these things,
society is to blame because they're beyond our
control.
They're not crimes.
They're not sins.
They're just, society is to be blamed for
the atmosphere that's created.
It's a lie.
You and I were designed to be personally
accountable to God for our behavior, and our
children are to be taught the same thing.
But my friends, this is not what they're
being taught in school.
This is not what they're being taught on
television.
A couple who has a marriage problem, the
woman goes for secular counseling, and most of
the time the counselor says, you're okay, he's
a bum.
You got a bad deal.
Submit to him.
He's to blame, or else society is to
blame.
After all, the chances of a workable marriage
are only 45% anyhow.
Society is the culprit.
What is society?
Society is Satan's counterfeit on earth of God's
kingdom.
It is a physical kingdom where he is
Lord, where physical desires control physical destinies, and
physical circumstances are the deciding factors between success
and failure.
And somebody is always to blame.
You remember Adam and Eve in the garden?
The Jehovah comes and he looks for them,
and he finally finds them, and there they
are.
And you recall the first thing that came
out of Adam's mouth was, Lord, it's not
my fault, my wife.
She's responsible.
And she tugs at his sleeve and says,
Lord, it's not my fault.
There was a snake crawling around over here,
and he made me do it.
The devil made me do it.
You see the problem?
And the very structure of society is designed
to alienate man from God, to destroy man's
concept of God, to blur man's image of
God.
This Christian, meanwhile, is born spiritually into a
new kingdom while living physically in the old.
And whatever society does to assail him, God
says, I will actually use that to strengthen
you.
Out of society's worst will come my best,
God says, so society can no longer be
the scapegoat for the Christian.
Do your children know that?
Do you know that?
Man has been given by God responsibilities.
He is accountable to God for how he
performs those responsibilities regardless of circumstances that society
might thrust his way.
And these are just a few of them.
There are many, many, but do our children
understand, number one, they have a responsibility to
love the Lord their God with all their
heart, with all their soul, with all their
mind, with all their strength, no matter what
circumstances may come their way, no matter how
they may feel about it at the time.
Do they realize they have a responsibility, 1
Thessalonians 4.11 and 2 Thessalonians 3.10
tell us, to work hard by the sweat
of their brow with their hands?
Do they understand that?
That's a responsibility, that's a privilege.
Do they understand and do we understand scripturally
we're to pay our bills no matter what,
Romans 13.8. Owe no man anything except
the debt of love, Proverbs 3.27.28.
Don't say some other time if you can
pay now.
Do they understand they're to honor their parents
no matter what, Exodus 20.12, Mark 7
.10. Do they understand they're to serve their
country no matter what, even if it's a
war they don't think should be fought, even
if there's a president in office they don't
think should be there.
Do they understand there's a responsibility a man
has to lead his family no matter what,
1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.
Do they understand a man is to love
his wife no matter what, Ephesians 5 and
Colossians 3.
Do they understand that to submit to the
authority that's placed over them no matter what,
whether they like it or not.
I don't know how many of you are
in positions of hiring, but those that are
will readily agree that in today's society it's
a real experience to interview people for jobs.
Their first questions are, what are the benefits
for me?
The Christian's responsibility ought to be, God's men
ought to say, what is the will of
God and how can I best serve?
The second lie is that our parents are
to blame for our weaknesses.
The world, society if you will, is teaching
our children that most of their weaknesses are
the result of broken homes and immature or
immoral parents.
In a poll listed in a recent magazine,
75% of all the students interviewed said
they would like to trade in their parents
for something better.
One teen looked me straight in the eye
and exclaimed, my friends and I have talked
it over.
We didn't ask to be born.
So whatever our parents get, they deserve.
And whatever we want, they ought to provide.
Responsibility?
None.
Do your children know that God picked you
out from all the people in the world
to be their parents?
They ought to.
And they ought to understand these basic principles
regarding parents.
Principle number one, God selects each parent for
each child and God has never made a
mistake.
Psalm 139, you were there while I was
being formed in utter seclusion.
You scheduled each day of my life before
I was born.
Isaiah 44, thus saith the Lord that made
thee and formed thee from the womb.
Principle number two, that God's primary goal for
parenthood is character development in the child.
We forget that.
We think all we're supposed to do is
keep them out of jail.
Teach them.
You've seen, this is what Deuteronomy 11 says,
teach them.
You've seen God.
You've seen God's miracles.
You know what it is to be strong.
You know what it is to have courage.
You know what it is to be content.
You know what it is to be grateful.
You know what it is to be faithful.
So take your children and teach them these
things day and night and day and night.
Principle number three, do they know that God
uses negatives as well as positives to develop
character?
Genesis 50, 20, you remember, says, God, you
meant evil unto me, but God meant it
unto good to bring to pass this day
to save much people alive.
Joseph, you recall, was the object of that
passage.
He was the object of parental favoritism.
He was led, which led to pure rejection,
which led to unjust persecution, which led to
further rejection until God's mind was finally formed
in Joseph.
Fourthly, God commands all His children to honor
their parents, Ephesians 6, 2.
Your emotional and spiritual well-being may hang
in the balance.
Number five, as we honor them, God becomes
responsible to use even their weaknesses for His
glory.
Principle number six, therefore, to blame our parents
for our weaknesses is, first of all, to
deny our responsibility to obey and to deny
God's sovereignty over man.
Basically, what it's saying is, who art thou
to contend with God?
Can the clay say to the potter, why
did you make me like this?
What it means is, I had no control
over who my parents are, so I'm not
responsible for my behavior.
That's a lie.
You say, but my parents have ruined my
life by their mistakes.
That's not possible.
Their mistakes created conditions you needed to become
God's man or woman in the years to
come.
Here's how Romans 8.28 works in the
family.
There isn't time to copy all these notes.
If you want them, I'll try to give
them to you next week.
In the left-hand column, you see the
negative qualities of parents.
In the center column, you see the problem
that this created.
In the last column, you see the potential
result in the kingdom.
My parents were guilty of favoritism, you say.
So were Joseph's.
This created a spirit of rejection.
But the spirit of rejection was a vacuum
into which the Spirit came, and God will
ultimately turn rejection into humility.
You say, my parents were guilty of deceit.
This creates a spirit of distrust.
But God in His Spirit can take distrust
by the Spirit and turn it into a
spirit of discernment.
You say, my parents were guilty of temporal
inadequacy.
It means they didn't have enough money.
And this created physical poverty.
The result, though, from God's perspective, can be
a value system.
If you don't believe it, you talk to
people who have been in this kind of
situation, and God takes hold of their lives.
What an understanding they have of the real
values in life.
You say, my parents were guilty of temper.
This creates a spirit of fear, which can
be used of God to create reverence.
You say, I came from a broken home,
and this created a spirit of insecurity.
But God can use that insecurity to create
a spirit of compassion.
As we mentioned, part of the blame we
place on our parents is that of rejection.
And it is at this point I want
to be most careful.
The subject is self-image, and the culprit
is rejection.
And I firmly agree with all the needed
teaching today about the results of personal rejection
and the negative self-image that results from
this.
But please be careful.
As always, the danger is not from wrong
teaching as much as overreaction to right concepts,
taking concepts out of context, until all your
problems come from being rejected, and now you
have a new scapegoat.
As we will see in a moment, to
some degree it is Satan that is capitalizing
on this rejection syndrome among Christians, because rejection
by man ultimately leads one to seek acceptance
from God.
It's a tool in the potter's hand.
And remember, a self-image, by scriptural definitions,
is not really all that super.
Self is supposed to die, remember?
An image is supposed to obey, remember?
And do you want to be so pleased
with yourself until you call on it to
call the shots?
I don't think so.
You don't need a good self-image as
much as you need to rejoice in God's
image.
Paul would have failed most of the modern
exams on self-acceptance.
Listen to what he said, Oh, wretched man
that I am!
I am the least of all the saints.
I am the chief of all the sinners.
And at one point he has surveyed all
of his earthly credentials and summarized them.
They are dung, waste, refuse.
Talk about your self-image just long enough
to see God's design.
But not to blame your parents.
God gave you those parents to give you,
ultimately, His image.
And without those weaknesses, some of you would
be lost today.
Lie number three.
God is to blame for our defects and
our circumstances.
In the heat of the battle, we, unmindful
of what we're doing, often question the fairness
of God, the integrity of God, and the
love of God.
When times are tough, God is the culprit.
He's sovereign, isn't He?
Shouldn't He have prevented this calamity?
If I were God, I don't ever finish
that sentence.
Because it hangs on a disastrous, blasphemous hypothesis.
I think Job is our best example of
how not to respond when the heat is
on.
Job was a man after God's own heart,
and we're glad of that.
But boy, when the heat was on, he
blamed God for everything.
I'm going to give you some of these
very quickly.
In chapter 3, verse 7, verse 9, he
says, Let the stars of the night disappear,
curse it for its failure to shut my
mother's womb, for letting me be born into
all this trouble.
Why didn't I die at birth?
Why did the midwife let me live?
Why did she nurse me at her breast?
If only I died at birth, I would
be quiet, asleep, and at rest, along with
prime ministers and kings, with all their pomp
and wealthy princes, oh, to have been stillborn,
to have never breathed or seen the light
of day.
Isn't that a great attitude?
Don't laugh.
Examine your own.
In chapter 7, verse 11, oh, let me
express my anguish.
Let me just get it all out.
That's popular.
Let me be free to speak out of
the bitterness of my soul.
Oh, God, am I some monster that you
never let me alone?
I would rather die of strangulation than go
on like this.
I hate my life.
What is mere man that you should spend
your time persecuting him?
Must you be his inquisitor every morning?
Won't you let me alone, even long enough
to spit?
Great guy.
Number four, he blamed God for laughing at
his problems.
Have you ever said that?
Verse 22, innocent or evil, it's all the
same to God.
He destroys both kinds.
He will laugh when calamity crushes the innocent.
And then we blame God for not providing
a way out.
But in verse 32 and 33, he says,
I can't defend myself.
You're no man as I am, God.
If you were, then we could discuss it
fairly.
But there's no umpire between us, no mediator
to bring us together.
You see the lies?
And then in verse, chapter 10, he blames
God for not explaining why.
He says, God, won't you tell me why
all these things are happening?
I'm not going to be satisfied if you
don't tell me why.
I'm weary of living, he says.
Let me complain freely.
I will speak in sorrow and bitterness.
He loves to do that.
I will say to God, don't just condemn
me, tell me why.
Sounds familiar.
And then he blamed God for favoring the
wicked in verses 3 through 8.
And then he blamed God in chapter 13
for being unwilling to forgive.
In chapter 29, he longed for the good
old days.
And then in chapter 31, he proclaimed his
own righteousness once again.
Interesting to note that God's method to get
Job's attention was trouble.
God's method to teach him, once he finally
quit babbling and began to listen, was to
ask him questions he couldn't answer.
It's a good teaching method.
You might try it sometime with your children.
We not only blame God for our circumstances,
we blame God for our defects, those unchangeable
characteristics that set us apart from our peers.
Here the problem is, we don't understand the
ways of God.
What God is after is a unique ministry
from you.
To achieve that, he needs a unique message.
To achieve that, he allows people, incidents, and
circumstances to enter your life early that create
insecurity, dependence, rejection, and weakness.
These weaknesses are then the tools that God
uses to carve out his message, his strength
through your life, the concept of a life
message.
There are at least seven or eight things
that go into a life message.
They begin in your childhood.
They begin at birth.
The first is your parents.
You may have had one or two in
your home.
They may have been harsh or they may
have been loving.
They may have been Christians or they may
have not been Christians.
They may have been partial.
They may have been just.
You may have come from a foster home
or an orphanage.
But all of this is part of your
life message.
It's for a purpose.
Secondly, you have some unchangeable defects.
Some of you say, speak for yourself.
I will.
But some of you do also.
Appearance, ability, and intelligence for some.
You may be too short or too tall.
You may be graceful or you may be
clumsy.
You may be slim or you may be
heavy.
You may be attractive or you may be
homely.
You may be blonde or you may be
brunette.
Whatever it is, you probably wish it was
something else.
Then there's your ability or lack of it.
You may be athletic.
You may not.
You may have skilled hands.
You may not.
You may be a musician.
You may not.
You may be an artist.
You may not.
You may be a writer.
You may not.
Or you may be a member of the
JDDNW club, like some of us are.
Just don't do nothing well.
Then the problem may be intelligence.
You may be a Rhodes Scholar or you
may be no scholar.
You may be the head of your class
or the heel of your class.
But either way, there are some unchangeable defects
that you can't control.
And God knows that, and He loves it.
Thirdly, there are times of rejection in your
childhood.
You may have been rejected by your parents,
by your peers, by the opposite sex, by
your teachers.
Maybe you were rejected by the people you
rejected.
I don't know.
But most of us fell into some form
of rejection, and it made a deep wound,
a deep scar in our lives.
And then there's your name.
Some of you like it.
Most of you don't.
There was an article in a paper this
week where a teenager wrote in to this
teenage expert and said, I don't like my
first name.
I would like to change it.
And the expert wrote back and said, I
don't blame you.
I think it's a good idea.
But you have to wait until you're an
adult.
But you see, God chose that name.
He gave it to you.
The Scripture says He calls you by that
name.
And then there were personal traumas.
There were key influences and people in your
life, certain childhood experiences.
Maybe your health.
You may be healthy as an ox.
You may be sick as a dog.
But whatever the situation, all of these things
go into making your life message.
But prior to your conversion, they made up
a battle for self-image.
You were trying to compare yourself with everybody.
And because of these unchangeable defects, these rejection
points in your life, this led to conflict.
You had to convince yourself.
Ambition.
You had to prove yourself.
Competition.
You had to exalt yourself.
But oh, how beautiful, because then Jesus came.
And death became life.
The curse becomes a blessing.
Weakness can be turned to strength.
Defeat can become victory.
Rejection can become acceptance.
And your name can now become a character
potential as God works a miracle through your
life.
And as the Word begins to take root
in your heart, you now have a unique
message that no one else has.
No one else has that combination of those
things that could produce, just like your thumbprint,
a divinely unique individual.
No two messages are the same.
And as you surrender to God's image, you
win the battle for self-image.
And now you develop a ministry, 2 Corinthians
1, 3, and 4, based on the uniqueness
of your message.
That's the concept of a life message.
So the Christian doesn't blame God for his
defects.
He thanks God for them and cooperates as
God builds through them his very special life
message.
And you have one.
The fourth lie is Satan is to blame
for our besetting sins.
No use to spend a lot of time
here, but we must understand the principle.
All over Christendom today, we hear the refrain,
I couldn't help myself.
Satan overpowered me.
In other words, the devil made me do
it.
Personally, I like that line, except for a
few verses like this, that you may be
able to stand against the wiles of the
devil.
Draw nigh unto God, and he will draw
nigh unto you.
Resist the devil, and he will flee from
you.
How about this one?
Greater is he that is in you than
he that is in the world.
You see the problem?
The truth is found in James 1, verses
12-17.
Blessed the man that endures temptation.
Let no man say when he is tempted,
I am tempted of God.
For God cannot be tempted of evil, neither
tempteth he any man.
But every man is tempted when he is
drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
Then when lust hath conceived, it brings forth
sin.
Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death.
The living Bible says temptation is the pull
of man's own evil thoughts and desires.
Those evil thoughts lead to evil actions.
In other words, what it says is, it
is not God soliciting you to do evil.
He is incapable of that.
But neither is it Satan forcing you to
do evil.
He is not strong enough.
What it says is, it is you wanting
to do evil.
Now why can't we accept the responsibility for
that?
Because the key is, as we begin to
accept the responsibility, God begins to be accountable.
So God is concerned that we return to
the scriptural concept of accountability.
Society isn't to blame for our problems, because
rather society, Satan's counterfeit to the kingdom, ought
to be a mirror that reflects what God
doesn't want from us.
Our parents aren't to blame for our weaknesses.
Rather, God chose our parents.
Both their strengths and their weaknesses, their successes
and their failures are for his glory.
And God isn't to blame for our defects,
because every good and acceptable gift comes from
God.
So the defects he allows us to have
are gifts to draw us to the only
thing in the world that is perfect, himself.
And Satan isn't to blame for our sins,
because just as God can't tempt us, Satan
can't make us sin.
He's not strong enough.
If we resist in the Spirit, God becomes
responsible, and Satan must flee.
So God is responsible, proportionate to our willingness
to accept our accountability.
That's the truth about man's responsibility.
And we need to teach it to the
generation who is right on our heels.
Here are some ways to do it.
How to develop a spirit of responsibility in
your children.
You say, my children are grown, mine are
too, but we could take somebody else's children
and start.
Number one, teach them the principle of accountability.
By divine plan, they are responsible for certain
things, despite circumstances.
To love the Lord, to honor their parents,
to serve their country, to obey authority, to
work hard, to pay their bills, whether they
want to or not.
Secondly, teach them the truth about sowing and
reaping.
Show them cause and effect in life when
they do something, and the result of what
they do, let them pay for the results.
Thirdly, give them room to fail safely.
Build a hedge about them, the way God
builds a hedge about us.
There are limits to which Satan cannot go
to get to us, but within the scope
of that hedge, God lets us fall and
skin our knees again and again.
That's the only way we learn our lessons.
Build a hedge, but let them fail.
Fourthly, give them rewards for succeeding.
Satan hates that.
You see, the basic underlying principle is that
Satan wants to deny the truth of God,
which says that God will one day reward
the saints.
And because Satan hates that, he tries to
teach that any system of rewards is bribery.
It's a lie.
Fifthly, teach them character qualities from the time
they are old enough to breathe.
Teach them the value of honesty, the value
of faithfulness, the value of truthfulness.
Teach them the word of God on the
basis of the character of God.
Sixth, teach them to earn money.
The right to earn is a gift.
The need to earn is a must.
Seventh, reward faithfulness with more responsibility.
What did he say?
Well, done thou good and faithful servant.
Thou hast been faithful over a few things.
I'm going to make you foreman.
Loose translation.
You understand the principle?
I think most of us do.
That's the truth about man's responsibility.
And God's way is so different from Satan's
way.
God says the buck stops here.
If I want a good marriage, I have
to obey his principles.
If I'm wronged, I answer without retaliation.
As society departs from truth, I must stand
more firmly than ever before.
God says the power is his, but the
choices are ours.
And he holds me accountable for how I
choose to respond, and he holds you accountable
for how you choose to respond.
Not society, not your parents, not God himself,
not even the devil.
That's God's truth about responsibility.
May we accept it wholeheartedly.
May we teach it unashamedly.
And if we do, the future generations that
follow us will thank us enthusiastically.
Let's pray.
Father, we're often unmindful of our own accountability.
We do, Father, live in a world where
the government is responsible for some things and
society for others and our parents for others,
but we're really not taught often to take
the responsibility for our own actions.
You've told us, Father, Whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap.
That if we sow to the flesh, we
shall of the flesh reap corruption.
But if we sow to the Spirit, we
shall of the Spirit reap life.
Father, there may be some of us here
this morning who have been wrestling with this
concept of a self-image and continually using
the fact that we have been rejected as
children or rejected as adults as a reason
not to face our God-given responsibilities.
And, Father, this morning we just pray that
you'd touch our hearts.
Help us to see somehow, Father, that even
the rejections of life, even the traumas of
life were but the hands of the potter
working with the clay to create in us
potential to be a unique message with a
unique ministry.
Father, some of us need to transmit to
those younger than we the importance in the
generation we live in of being accountable and
responsible, trusting God for the power, but realizing
that we must exercise our own will.
And so, Lord, we just pray that this
lesson might somehow awaken us to our responsibilities
and that we might crown you again King
of Kings and Lord of Lords in our
life.
For we ask it in the sweet name
of Jesus.