Integrity- People of God

We praise God for our Living Hope, Jesus. We are God’s elect and we are to live in reverent fear or great respect to God and this produces a holy lifestyle in us. God foreknew us and chose us before the creation of the world to believe in God through Jesus Christ who is our Living Hope. Our hearts are transformed into a new spiritual hearts and we have a sincere love for all people through Jesus and the living and enduring word of God.

We are told to get rid of fraud, evil speaking and envy this is our job and our responsibility. We are to bridle our tongue and to set a watch over our words and to train our emotions to love and not to hate. This is a hard task for anyone. Some people have a lot of words and they are not always nice words and they even more emotions that they wants todisplay and share with the world. God word says that we set a guard over our mouth and tame the tongue. The tongue is deadly as poison, evil and untamed. 

James 3: 8-118 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. 11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?

The way we tame the tongue is by knowing God’s word.  We should desire and hunger after His word for our spiritual growth, just as we need food for our natural bodies. As we learn God’s word we learn how to tame this unruly, evil speaking tongue by asking God to set a watch over our mouth and a bridle on our tongue. 

The question was asked, can both fresh water and salt water flow together from the same spring?  No, they cannot, one will eventually overpower the other.  A cup of salt water is changed by adding enough fresh water so that it would override and overcome the saltiness of the water. The same is with the fresh water and so it is with our minds.  The things we continue to feed our minds are the things we allow to have dominance over us and will eventually have rule, control and reign in our lives, whether good or evil. 

God is the only one who can tame the tongue. He can put a bridle on our tongue to keep our mouths from speaking evil and lies. But it is our choice to make it so. It is when we line our will and our mind up with the truth of God’s word that we will ask Him to change us and make us like Christ. It is God who will perform this great work in us, when we ask.  When we feed on the word of God we begin to learn His truths and begin to desire to be that truth in the earth.  We then pray to God and intercede for ourselves and others that we may look more like Christ.  As we grow in the word of God we receive His goodness and can see that the Lord is good.  

Psalm 141: 3-4a Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips.  Do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil so that I take part in wicked deeds along with those who are evildoers…

Jesus is our Great High Priest. He was rejected by men, irreligious men of His day who thought they were better than most people. They rejected Jesus, the humble Son of God, though Jesus was chosen by God to be our High Priest forever. True believers are chosen to be like Christ and we are living stones in the earth and we are part of the spiritual house of God and are called to be holy priests. In The Old Testament the people brought their offerings to the priest and the priest would present their offerings and pray to God and intercede on their behalf. Priests are those who perform spiritual acts before God on the behalf of others and they intercede on the behalf of all mankind to God. 

Hebrews 4:14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and He became our High Priest and He is forever making intercession to God for us in heaven. As Jesus was rejected by unbelievers, so will we be rejected and not everyone will like us.   As God’s holy priest on the earth we are to offer these rejections, rebuffs and negative slurs as spiritual offerings to God by interceding for those who insult us.

The prayers of the righteous avails much, so when we offer these hurts,and scorns to God they are acceptable spiritual sacrifices. In this act of intersession we are calling God into the situation that He may settle the matter. We are asking God to come into the lives of those who have wronged or mistreated us. God is both just and the justifier of all mankind. Though people may deliberately hurt us they have no knowledge or idea of who we really are in Christ or the effects of their actions. They have no knowledge of how their actions are constructing and determining their destiny for eternity.

Jesus is our High Priest, our cornerstone and the foundation that we are to build our lives upon. Those who believe in the completed work of Christ believe He is precious and Jesus’s love for the lost and compassion for making disciples becomes precious to us. 

We stand as holy priests and look more like Christ before God when we pray for those that abused and reviled us. We are all the more like Christ when we say, Father forgive them, for they do not know what they aredoing.

1 Peter 2:4-5 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. NIV