Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good. All things. That means bad things work together for good. Bad things happen to Christians. I didn’t say, “Bad things happen to good people,” because no one is a good person, really. I’m writing all this to say that you should expect bad things. A major difference between unbelievers and believers is their response to bad things. Believers know that all the bad things still work together for good. That’s their faith in God. He’s wise, loving, and good. He knows what He’s doing and He does see everything from a timeless perspective. What seems bad at the time actually is good. It is. And then we have a lot of passages about this, to help us out. James 1 comes to mind. These are trials of our faith and they work good things into our lives, like patience. They have a perfecting, completing work, like the finish work inside a house. When the house looks messy during the work, the dust and dirt and clutter, it doesn’t seem like it could be for good, but we know then that it is. The work is going on for good, even if in the short term it looks messy. I write this so that we come to grips with these events in our life and respond like a Christian—even something that occurs with people in the church. People shouldn’t treat you poorly, but when they do, God will use that too for your good. Let’s believe it.

On the ground, what does it look and feel like to have victory for God over sin for the believer? I say, for the believer, but only a believer will have victory over sin. And yet, he will have it. He will because he is predestined to do that (Romans 8:29). He will because the Holy Spirit Who indwells him is greater than the sin (1 John 4:4). He will because he is dead indeed unto sin (Romans 6:1-2). So you will see the genuine believer in a state of perpetual obedience—not perfection mind you—but habitual obedience, that is, obedience as a lifestyle. That is important to recognize, because if you rarely to never see that, you ought to question your salvation. OK. On the ground, to start, it will be a struggle. Victory over a sin isn’t breathing pure spiritual air, but it is close combat—dirty, smelly, face-to-face, grueling. It starts with a nature to do good. Believers have a new nature of righteousness that wants to do good. Believers will do good. Romans 7 says so. But, when you would do good, the law of sin is in your body parts, in your flesh, and it will battle against your new nature, so that when you want to do good, you end up doing bad. Since it is a struggle, you’ve got to nourish yourself with the Word and fellowship and prayer in order to win those battles. You can’t put it on automatic pilot. There is no such thing.

Much of doing the right thing in your life, ending with your life with the greatest value, is talking yourself into who you are to be and what you are supposed to do. Yes, talking to yourself. We as human beings can, because of the image of God in us, reason with ourselves. By the grace of God, we can talk ourselves into the right thing and talk ourselves out of the wrong thing. Scripture uses various terminology in order to do this. One of them is “count.” James 1:2 reads: “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” So here are some really bad times and they really are bad times. But instead of counting them as bad times, you think of them as good times. You talk yourself into them being good times. You use Scripture to do it. You are feeling like they’re bad, but you disagree with that and agree and say that they are actually good times. You aren’t lying to yourself. They are good times, because God says they are. This is also living by faith. Here’s another one (Acts 20:24): “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus.” Even if Paul felt a certain way about his life, he chose to think a different way about it, that was in line with truth. We use God’s Word to talk ourselves into right decisions and out of bad ones.

There are various parts or aspects to living by faith and the just live by faith. If you are a saved person, you live by faith. There is the part of living by faith that relates to the day-to-day living, where we decide to do what God said in His Word. Another part of living by faith is the big picture faith of seeing the world like God sees it, choosing to understand the world like God knows about it. Let me explain. We can do the first part of living by faith and pass out a tract to a supermarket check-out person or go out on Wednesday night with the teens. If we do the second part, then we are living with the comprehension that everyone is heading toward one of two eternal destinies—either heaven or hell—and we allow that to sink in to our soul. With that right view of the world, we decide differently about our career. We can’t float along in our week or month or year. There is an insanity to believing this and then acting exactly like we don’t really believe it. If we knew that someone next door was being imprisoned and tortured in his own home, we would not allow that to go on—if we really believed it. Really believing it and allowing it to occur would be the kind of insanity I was talking about. So if we really believe that people really do go someplace worse from which they can never escape, sanity would say that our life would take the direction of stopping it.

Are there universal standards of behavior, or is everything relative? We had and are still having a mortgage crisis in this country. We think that someone was at fault. We think it might be the mortgage brokers, the mortgage lenders, the banks, the congress, the President of the United States, or the people who bought the homes. But why? Why is it anyone’s fault? And why isn’t it all just an accident? We believe that people violated some standard of ethics that triggered the crisis that has the nation in a financial mess. Somebody was greedy. So we think there was a standard for greed. People were robbed. So we think there was a standard for stealing. People were lied to. So we think there was a a standard of honesty. Whatever the standards were, they weren’t followed and we ended in the economic quagmire we’re now in. Are there truths that are transcendent of human beings, above and separate from what is relative or dependent upon the situation or the people involved? In other words, is there a right and wrong? If the standard is God’s standard and it is set in the Bible, and He is counting on us to keep it, then we really are responsible for more than just what will get us into a mess. We’re responsible for all of it, because it is all God’s Word. And if we don’t keep some of it, just because we’d rather not, then how are we better than those who got us into this?

When I talk to folks and I want them to understand that things didn’t come about by accident, I refer to the human eye. One accident doesn’t turn into even one thing of complexity, order, and beauty—ever. But that’s OK with those who want to believe in an accident. It never happens in one single thing, but they want to believe that every thing, every, came about by accident. No. Just think of the human eye. So there we go. Not even one eye could have come about through a series of accidents. Accidents do not turn out that way. And everyone knows it. And that is science, true science, on the most basic, the most fundamental, level. We know from all of our observations that design comes from a Designer. And all around us is complexity and order and beauty, yes, design. Everywhere. And God, the Designer, should get the glory for it. But men would rather serve themselves in rebellion against God. This is the nature of sin and deceit and the fall of man. God Almighty should receive the credit for the eye alone, and He doesn’t even get that as billions of men look out of those eyes that God made. And even as you focus in and use your mind to read this little essay, your eyes take the light, the shapes, to send them directly into your brain to register meaning. Then you think about thinking, something the animals don’t do, because they aren’t made in the image of God.

Are you open minded? Most people want to say that they are open minded. Can you imagine someone saying, “I’m closed-minded.” Most people won’t say that. They might say, “I’m not going to change.” A lot of times that means the same thing. What does it mean to be open minded? Open-mindedness is a willingness to believe. It isn’t just listening or giving a hearing. There are those who will listen to what God said, but they have already made up their mind. That is closed mindedness. I do find that most people are closed-minded, and that fits also what I see in the Bible. Broad is the road that leads to destruction, Jesus said (Matthew 7:13-14). Broad is the road and full of closed-minded people. They suppress the truth (Romans 1:18). Hopefully reader, you’re not closed-minded, especially when it comes to what God is telling you. If you will not listen to change, you are closed-minded, in essence ignoring God. God has been good to you and you are not being good to Him. Some will say that they don’t believe in God. I’d like to give them some proof—but no. They can’t even tolerate a short presentation. I’m still waiting for someone to give me something persuasive that shows everything got here by accident. People should be able to do that, but they won’t, well, because they can’t. Accident is not a viable explanation. It’s just being closed-minded.

Through the years, perhaps you have become accustomed to certain practices working better than other ones. One tool will function better than another one for a specific purpose. The laws that apply have been created by God. God made the world, and He made it to operate in a way to His design. Not only should we do it the way He wants because it glorifies and honors Him, gives Him credit as the one Who created it and sustains it, but it also will give us better results. It truly is our Father’s world. You might be able to get it done your way, but it won’t be better than the way that is in fitting with God’s design. Over a period of time, through cause and effect, I’ve perfected the best and fastest way to clean my windshield at a gas station. All the items involved are some of the matter that God created on the first day of creation, and then relate to heat, energy, and gravity, all things also that God made out of nothing. We’ve only got a flat surface because of something that God created. At our best, we’ve merely imitated something already in the world in order to take raw materials created by God in order to make a windshield. Then there is a squeegee, paper towel material, and some kind of windex type of fluid. These are all used in a certain fashion so that my wife and I can see well when we drive our van. For sure, what we know He said, we should do.

Should the plan of salvation be about heaven or eternal life? Did Jesus make it about those things? Is it really about something different? The problem in a presentation of salvation to the lost is not in offering eternal life. Paul wrote in Romans 6:23 that the “gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Jesus did not repudiate the question of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19 when he asked what he must do to obtain eternal life. Eternal life and heaven are about eternity and God wants us to think about, focus on, and consider eternity rather than the here and now, the temporal, and that which will pass away. Most people aren’t focusing on or even considering eternity. They are obsessed rather with their time on earth. They are more concerned at being rich in this world than in the next. They are laying up treasures on earth rather than heaven. A presentation of the gospel that targets eternal life for the hearer is a biblical presentation. The problem comes in the terms for eternal life. We don’t receive eternal life by works. We won’t receive eternal life if we won’t give up this life by faith. We won’t receive eternal life without repentance. We won’t get heaven if we are so caught up with this earth that we dismiss Jesus Christ. Eternal life comes by faith, faith in Jesus Christ and His finished work. You’ve got to believe in Him.

How do you know if that voice you hear is you, the Holy Spirit, or Satan? It could be any one of the three and it could be that you are being deceived into thinking that it is the Holy Spirit when it is either you or worse Satan (or one of his demons). And there is a lot of validation by “God told me” or the “Holy Spirit led me” today. And sometimes, that “telling” or “leading” turns out like the person wanted it, so he thought it must be God that was at work. To start, God isn’t telling anyone anything on the level of Scripture today. The Bible is finished, once and for all delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:2-4). And what was completed was sufficient (2 Timothy 3:16-17; Psalm 19:7-11). The Holy Spirit will lead us. True. But how does He lead us? By means of God’s Word. Ephesians 6:17 says that the Sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. You know it’s the Holy Spirit (and not Satan or you) if it is the Word of God. I’m not saying it has to be exact wording of the King James Version. I’m saying that it will be a voice that lines up with the exact teaching of Scripture. And if you are not sure, then go to someone in the church that knows the Bible or even the whole church to make sure. Jesus said that He sanctifies through the truth and that the truth is the Word of God. Our guidance will be Scriptural guidance. And if it isn’t in the Bible, don’t hold it up as that authoritative. It isn’t.