Good morning, all!

Father, we know that You are our Savior and without You there is no hope. We look unto the hills from where our help comes, we cry out to You that we might receive Your salvation. Reveal to us Your truth and wisdom that we might know the power of Your love and salvation, Amen.

Philippians 2

12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
My good friends, you have always followed what I’ve told you when I was with you but now you must follow in my absence, and you will work out your OWN salvation with reverence.

13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of [his] good pleasure.
Because God is the one who works in YOU to give you the desire and the power to fulfil His will for your life.

14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings:
So, whatever it is you face in life both good and bad, handle it without complaining or fighting with one another.

15 That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;
By doing this the Lord finds is blameless and harmless being a son of God, without rebuke among some that are confused and twisted, and you will be a light among them.

Bottom line

This is such a powerful truth this morning, notice God said to work out our salvation NOT work FOR it. We all have salvation but there is a working out of it, which is to say salvation comes by learning through trial and error. Call me crazy but most of my growth has come through failure not success, through our failure there’s a breaking down of what is NOT so what IS can be made manifest…faith…Christ.

[Heb 12:1 NIV] Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance, the race marked out for us. According to scripture sin is always going to trip us up in this life, so what’s the answer? What is salvation? The answer is when you fall off the bike, get back up on the bike…PERSRVERANCE…no matter what we face or what we experience we get back up and run…live life by faith. Faith isn’t the absence of sin or failure, it’s the absence of giving up, we are to call upon the Lord and press on and run the race that has already been laid out for us. Do you know what the mark is? The goal?

[Phl 3:14 NIV] I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. The goal in life is to win the prize, why else would we run? Through the running and failing, we continue run…live by faith…and the more you run the more you become just like Christ…the prize. Now I hope up can see this as well so you can be set free, God works IN us through the ups and downs. God knows we’re going to complain about one another, fight with one another. So, what’s the answer? Keep running until you stop blaming each other and fighting with each other. Notice God said ALL things, the word thing in the Greek is pas which means mankind. You know God’s NOT concerned about how we treat things but His is concerned about how we treat one another, ALL is ALL. There is a God in heaven, and He is working on all of us, both to WILL and DO, we need to trust that God knows what He’s doing especially when we’re falling down. I think this teaches us to call on God, to call on Him more often, to call on Him faster and to call on Him first, because we know the answer isn’t to give up but rather GET up, feel me? I mean if we’re called to love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul, what does that look like?

[Mat 6:33 KJV] 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. When we love God, we look for Him first NOT whenever, our first priority in life and I would argue the only priority that matters…LOVE. Did you notice what God calls us when we quit blaming people or looking to hurt people? Sons of God, we become a LIGHT in this world…we remove darkness NOT add to it. How do we add darkness to the world?

[1Jo 2:9 NLT] If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates his brother or sister, that person is still living in darkness. We can all claim to be living in the light of our Father, but if you hate people you are deceived and you know not, you are still living in darkness. The best way to work out our salvation is to quit complaining about people and start loving them instead, quit blaming them and find the good in them. Success in NOT final, failure is NOT fatal, but it takes faith to press on and win the prize…Christ.

Point to Ponder

Did you fall this week? [Pro 24:16 NIV] For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked lie down when calamity strikes.

Don’t be like the wicked and give up, leave room for God…Get up and run!