I want to exhort you on how to save your mind and heart from aches and disappointments without being silly. Many of us are frustrated and will be frustrated because we approach the word of the Lord wrongly.
[James 1:21-25 KJV] “Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
The Bible speaks of itself as a dark glass which also doubles as a mirror. That is to say that when you look into the word: it will firstly shape your world view and then it will reveal yourself to you. So the word of God reveals the world on the other side but tintly, but it, however, reveals yourself to you.
You can save your heart the aches and pain and sickness when you focus on discovering, receiving, and obeying the word of God for you.
For instance, it is easier to flee from sexual advances and fornication, rather than to try to persuade the person involved to stop chasing you. The Bible does not often teach what you must expect from people; it teaches what you must do.
Again, the Bible instructs husbands to love their wives but it never tells wives to expect love from their husbands.
The Bible instructs wives to be submitted to their own husbands; the Bible did not tell men to expect submission from their wives.
Many of us are frustrated because we are trying to get others to obey what God has instructed them, instead of us obeying what God has said to us. I believe that each of us must read, listen, watch, and relate with the word of God to find His instructions, promises, and rebukes to us, and not what He has said to others. So, I must search the word of God to find what I must do, and not what others must do.
Psalm 1 teaches us what we must do, we can’t stop sinners and the ungodly from gathering, but we can decide and choose not to sit with them or walk in their way. You see, it is easier to instruct yourself rather than to control others.
I believe each of us must choose and decide to obey God, rather than to expect others to obey God or even treat us well. When you change how you look through and at the word of God, a lot will change. Everyone in the church should be thinking about how they can obey the word of God, every one of us should be looking into the word of God to see himself in the glass, and not others.
I love you, stay blessed!
Pastor Simpe Bediako
