Timeless Truths: God isn't Satisfied with a Little Godliness

God is good, which means that He wants nothing less than the best for us. But it also means that He won't be satisfied until we are fully mature men and women of God. That's what we'll look at in this "Timeless Truths" segment.

Host: Rose Colón has joined me in the studio. Rose as we continue our discussions on Living in Victory, we want to talk today about the subject, “God is not satisfied.” And we'll get into a little bit about what we mean by that. But let's start off by talking about this. So often, especially in Western culture, we have this idea that Christianity is solely about accepting Jesus into our hearts. And then unfortunately, we go on thinking we can just live life however we want to live it, in whatever condition we're in. But that certainly isn't what we find true in the Word of God, is it?

Rose: No. When we come to the Lord, we're little babes, but the Lord wants us to grow. You don't leave a little baby in that state. You give a baby what it needs to be able to grow and mature into a young man or young woman. So, there's that continual growing process that should be happening in believers’ lives when they first come to the Lord.

Host: As we see in a natural sense, we also see in the spiritual sense as well.

Rose: Right. And sometimes when we come to the Lord, we come with the mindset of, “I'm a sinner and I know I need to be saved.” But we stay there in that infant stage. We don't grow and mature into what God wants to bring us into.

Host: For those who are listening, who may have started out their Christianity that way, let’s lay out three stages of a believer's life to give our listeners an idea of what the goal may be. First, what might we see in the life of a new believer.

Rose: Usually when a new believer comes to the Lord, they have not been in the Word of God and they don't have a prayer life. So, they have to start from ground zero. They need to at least begin to see their need to be in God's Word to let the Word of God speak to their hearts and teach them His ways. The Word of God instructs us. It teaches us. It shows us where we're wrong. And it's very important when we first come to the Lord to establish that habit of being in the Word of God every day and allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to our hearts, cleanse our hearts and instruct our hearts. Then we need to develop a prayer life.
         Also, when we first come to the Lord, getting plugged into a good church and fellowshipping with other believers is very important. And we need to learn to cut off old things from our past life. Maybe the old friends we used to hang out with or places we used to go. There's a form of outward obedience that we need to start participating in.

Host: Amen. Let's look at a second level of what might be seen in the life of a more mature believer.

Rose: For someone that is more mature in the Lord, you will see them getting out of themselves more. What I mean by that is that they are entering into the needs of others. They may be looking to see how they can volunteer in a nursing home or in a hospital or do a kind act. Something to get them out of their own little lives. You should see fruit like that coming forth in a believer's life once they've matured in the things of God. They will begin realizing that their life is not all about them, it's about others and their needs being met.
         Also, there should be the fruit of the Spirit coming forth in this person's life. Let's say for example, they have an anger problem, and they are just constantly exploding in anger. Maybe their even seeing how it’s destroying relationships around them. Well they should be wanting the Lord to deal with that anger in their hearts and they should be confessing it and repenting of it. So, instead of focusing on outward things like the new believer, now they are letting the Lord come into their heart and deal with those inner attitudes. God does this because He wants to transform us or mold us into the image of Christ and help us produce the fruit of the Spirit.
         In addition, after we have been walking with the Lord for some time, there should be a greater intimacy growing in our love for the Lord and our love for the things of God. We should be learning to love those things that He loves and hate those things that He hates.

Host: Amen. Ok, let's describe the third and final level here. For a truly mature Christian, what will we see in their life?

Rose: I believe the main thing you're going to see in their life is humility. This reality begins settling in to them, “Apart from God, I am nothing. Apart from God, I can do nothing. Apart from God, I don't have anything.”

Host: A genuine poverty of spirit.

Rose: Yes, a genuine poverty of spirit and a life that is totally consecrated to the Lord where they are totally separated from the world, the love of the world, and they don't want anything this world has to offer. They are so caught up with Jesus and His kingdom and they desire for Jesus to have a greater place in their heart where He is living His life through them.

Host: Yes. And it might sound strange to some people to hear this, but a truly mature believer is going to be walking in the presence of God. Some people may have never even considered being able to walk in the presence of God.

Rose: Right. And I've seen it in the lives of other men and women of God that have been walking with the Lord for 40 plus years. They walk with God. They bring the presence of God with them wherever they go. And when they speak, you just hear Jesus coming out of their mouths. You don't even see the person. You just see the Lord because the presence of the Lord is so evident in their lives.

Host: And this isn't something you can fake. You know when you are in the presence of someone who has that kind of relationship with the Lord.

Rose: Yes. They're so in love with the Lord and they have the joy of the Lord and love just permeates out of their being. You can just tell the difference.

Host: Well, ok. So that's kind of a scenario of perhaps where we begin and where the Lord wants to take us. But of course, inevitably Rose, we try unfortunately, a number of ways to get there that aren't going to get us there. There are things we may do that are just not going to be enough to bring us to that level of relationship with the Lord, as hard as we may try at it. And we want to discuss three examples of that today, starting with this idea of being upright. And apparently what we can glean from Scripture is that just being upright, is not enough.

Rose: That is correct. We see the reality of that in Job's life. Job was upright. He was a godly man. Scripture said he was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil.

Host: And yet there was something missing in Job's life.

Rose: Yes. And the only way for Job to see what was missing in his life was for the Lord to allow a series of events to occur in his life to bring him to a place where he saw how desperately he needed God in a greater way.

Host: For those who may not be familiar with the story of job, maybe in a nutshell explain what happened to him.

Rose: The story of Job is so amazing to me because you see all that the Lord allowed to come into his life in one day. He lost his children. He lost his business. He lost his livelihood. He lost his home.

Host: He basically lost everything.

Rose: Everything. Everything that was in his possession. Everything that was dear to him. He lost it all. And what is so amazing to me is that Job said, “Naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21, ESV) And then it says, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.” (Job 1:22, ESV) You read that and you see, wow Job was upright. He was a godly man.
         Yet, as you read the rest of the book of Job, you see that although Job was upright, he was very self-righteous also. He had a lot of spiritual pride and that was the thing that the Lord was after in Job through these calamities. God allowed them to come into his life to show him that He wasn't satisfied with where Job was at. At the end of the book of Job, we see that Job got a greater sight of the Lord. And he said, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. Therefore, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6, NKJV) And when he said that God was pleased.

Host: And again, for those who may not be familiar with the story, God allowed this. In fact, Satan had come to God saying, look at your servant Job. If you weren't blessing Him, he wouldn't be worshiping you. And God allowed Satan to sift Him. And then of course, there was all this dialogue between Job and his friends and all of them spoke while none of them knew what was going on in the spiritual realm. They didn't know that God was allowing this for the purpose of doing something in Job's life.

Rose: Right. It was for the Lord to do a deeper work in Job's heart. And when you see that, you just see how much we all need that. We need a deeper reality of God and a deeper reality of how much we need Him. When we can see that, we can have the right attitude as we go through trials. Where we can say, “Lord, this is from your hand. And I need to learn how to kiss the hand that has allowed this to come into my life.”

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Host: What a wonderful lesson to learn because it really does give us an entirely new attitude on the circumstances that come into our life. None of it is by chance. As you said, for the believer, it has all come through my loving Father's hands.
         Okay now, next we want to look at a second area of maturity needed in our walk and that is in the area of faith. We can have tremendous faith in our lives and yet God may not be satisfied with where we're at.

Rose: Yes. For example, we look at David's life and see that he was a man of great faith. You just see it displayed when he faced Goliath. God had given him victory in the past over a lion and a bear, so when he faced Goliath, he knew that this giant was coming down. He knew who his God was. Yet you look at what the Lord allowed in his life with King Saul pursuing him and David was basically on the run for 13 years living in caves and receiving death threats. Also, David’s own son turned against him. God allowed trials to come into David’s life because He was wanting to do a deeper work in David's heart. He wasn't satisfied with where David was at. The Lord wanted David to have more of Himself dwelling inside of him and He wanted David to have a greater knowledge of Him.
         As wonderful as the Psalms that David wrote are, we see that the Lord still had so much more work to do in David throughout his life. And sometimes God is trying to give us more of Himself by using the dark times that we go through to give us more of Himself. When we are in the wilderness and everyone is against us and we are asking ourselves, “Who can I turn to?” It's in those times when we turn to the Lord that He's able to come to us and reveal Himself to us in a greater way than He could have had we not gone through a particular trial. Sometimes we want the trial to be over quick, but David was in the wilderness 13 years. But it was hard for him to. He even said, “How long, O Lord.”

Host: Amen. Well, let's look at one final thing. That is this path that we pursue for great revelation. No doubt, God has given many men and women wonderful revelations. And yet even for those, He wanted them to go deeper in their walk with Him.

Rose: Yeah. We look at the apostle Paul who started many churches and he was even caught up in the third heaven receiving revelation from the Lord. And yet the Lord allowed a thorn in his flesh to remain that he had pleaded with the Lord three times to remove. And God said, “My grace is sufficient for thee in your weakness.” And you look at Paul's life and you see, wow, if the Lord allowed him to go through that to keep him humble so that he wouldn't rise up in spiritual pride, then of course he's going to allow some thorn maybe to stay in our lives as well to keep us humble. And He will do that so that we don't rise up in pride and so that we see how much we really need the Him. That’s just His grace.

Host: Yes. And not only the thorn in his flesh, but the beatings. All of the difficulties he suffered.

Rose: Yes. It’s amazing what Paul went through, all of which God allowed.

Host: Yeah. And the natural reasoning mind would say “Now, wait a minute, God. Obviously, you don't know what you're doing here. Couldn't Paul be more effective? Couldn't he reach more people? Couldn't he build a bigger church? Lord, if you just blessed him, if you just took all these things away?” And yet, as you said previously about David, God was more interested in what was in Paul’s heart.

Rose: And people could look at Paul's life and say, well, something went wrong that he went through all this. But you see how now because Paul went through these things, what he wrote about his trials are treasures that God has used for generations for people who are going through pain and suffering to be encouraged by. And you see what God was able to put into Paul while he was going through these trials or siftings that what came out of Paul was just tremendous treasure from heaven.

Host: Well, I think that there's a string that runs through all three of these stories that you shared with us. Something that God wanted to bring about and accomplish in the lives of those that we gave examples of.

Rose: I think what it is, is not to be satisfied with where we are in our walk with God. When I think of my own Christian journey, the Lord is continually prodding me not to be satisfied with where I'm at in Him, or even with the fruit in my life. He wants more. He requires more. And it's right that He does require more from us because we're to be representatives of Christ here on earth. We're to be living epistles. And if you measure your life to Jesus, hopefully, if you're honest with yourself, you see that you don't measure up to Him. And seeing that lack should cause us to cry out to God. We can't lose sight of our great need. When we think we're doing good, that's dangerous. In my opinion.

Host: Right. When we're trusting in our goodness, when we're trusting in our faith, when we're trusting in revelation, that is dangerous. We could come up with a list of a dozen seemingly valid things in the life of the Christian that we can trust in, but only when we really see our need are we trusting in the right thing. And that's Him.

Rose: Yes. He's rich. He's unsearchable. He is what the Bible says about Him. There are mysteries of God and when you look at the Lord, you see that you have a long way to go.

Host: And I suppose you could look at that in a negative way. But really if we see our Father's heart, it only makes sense that it’s for our good that we never stop growing. He is a loving Father. He wants us to have as much as we can possibly have of Him. He wants to give us everything. So that's at the heart of it, isn't it? Whatever God's doing is because He wants to give us more of Himself.