11.12.8 "What makes God Proud"

"What makes God Proud"

Ezekiel 24:1-26:21
Hebrews 11:1-16
Psalm 110:1-7
Proverbs 27:14

Hebrews 11:16 "And now God is not ashamed to be called their God..." What a verse!! Can you imagine that verse written about you? What would precede a verse like that?

11:4 - "By faith Abel..." 11:5 - "By faith Enoch..." 11:7 - "By faith Noah..."

Hebrews 11 is called the "faith chapter". This chapter speaks of great men and women throughout the old testament who trusted God. I don't mean trusted God in small ways. They built an ark, walked with God, moved to new countries and many more huge things. How could this happen? They KNEW God.

When you get to know someone, it takes a little bit of time. There are times when we get to know a little bit of something about someone and we base the relationship on that. We get in trouble because that can be a shallow understanding of who that person is, and we miss getting to REALLY know them.

The same is true with the Lord. Too often He will teach us something, and we'll think "that's cool" and go on as if we've now got him figured out. That's exactly how our relationship gets cold and stale. Our relationship with the Lord needs to be on the edge of discovery at all times. How do we cultivate that? Living the wild life of faith!

Verse 6 says, "You can never please God without faith, without depending on him."

Faith is such an intimidating thing. In verse 1 it says, "What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead."

It can be difficult to live in the realm of that "confident assurance". Because it isn't easy, we can just think, "I'm not wired as a person of faith... I don't have what it takes to be an Abraham, Moses, etc..." and we then excuse ourselves from this list of great believers.

We need to realize that those great men & women of faith had the same temptations we do. Look at verse 15: "If they had wanted to, they could have gone back to the good things of this world."

Too often it's easy to think that great men and women of faith don't have the temptation to quit. Sometimes we don't give up, but we feel SO guilty that we're tempted to give up, that we paralyze ourselves from doing anything. We see the "good" things of the world and it seems to much more comfortable... so much easier.

What makes the difference? verse 16 says, "But they didn't want to. They were living for heaven." Living for heaven. That takes discipline of thought. It's a different priority system. It's a faith that it's worth standing strong. It's a belief that it's worth it to step out in obedience even when the circumstances seem impossible. It's a mindset that consumes every part of life. It constrains us from compromise and shallow living.

I don't want God to be ashamed to be called my God. I want to be living for heaven every moment of every day. I want to experience the moving of his hand. For that to happen, I must step out in obedience in every area of my life.



Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!

P Greg


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