One day it is 70 degrees and beautiful. The next day it is cold with forecasts of snow. Welcome to February in eastern, coastal North Carolina. With a light dusting of snow comes word of delayed openings and school closures. I realize that those of you who are transplants from up north, where you “KNOW SNOW”, find these delays and closures difficult to understand. From a southern perspective, maybe it’s that we experience so little snow, that we like to do it up right when it finally does occur! Take a little time off, enjoy it, etc. Or maybe it’s just that we have no clue how to drive in this stuff and for our own safety and the safety of others should simply stay put at home. The weather certainly appears to be confused. It is seemingly becoming more and more difficult to tell the seasons apart. The weather is not the only realm that is experiencing confusion these days. Many human beings are confused from a moral, ethical, spiritual, and emotional perspective. The Scriptures teach us that this confusion will become more and more profound as we progress toward the day of Christ’s second coming.
Spiritual Confusion:
The source of all spiritual confusion is doctrinal confusion. What we believe impacts our spiritual life. When we feed our spiritual life with TRUTH, then we will grow up to be healthy Christians. When we feed our spiritual life with falsehoods, we will shrivel up and die spiritually. In order to develop into healthy Christians we must anchor our faith upon a sure and certain foundation of faith in the triune God and dependence upon His Holy Word. If “WE ARE WHAT WE EAT” in relation to food, then it certainly follows that “WE SPIRITUALLY BECOME WHAT WE FEED OUR FAITH WITH”.
Moral/Ethical l Confusion:
Moral/Ethical confusion flows out of doctrinal confusion. Right belief leads to right attitudes which in turn leads to right actions. If we want to live righteous and holy lives before God, how important it is that we stay immersed in God’s Word! God’s Word instructs us in right beliefs and guides us toward right actions. The root (right belief) leads to the fruit (right actions). God, through the Holy Spirit, confronts us in the Word of God and leads us to repentance. Repentance is good, because it causes us to be open to the truth. God is the source of all truth. His Word is truth. In a world of competing ideologies, there is indeed an absolute bedrock of truth that should guide human behavior. The Bible is that wonderful foundational source book for all right doctrine and ethics because it is “GOD’S HOLY WORD” to men and women.
Emotional Confusion:
Wrong belief, leads to wrong attitudes, leads to wrong actions, leads to wrong emotions. This is a distinct progression that takes place. Do you struggle with wrong emotions? If so, you must go after the problem at its root, RIGHT BELIEFS. For the emotionally confused person, it is so very important that they begin immersing themselves in the TRUTH of God’s Word on a daily basis. You may say that I’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. It takes time, sometimes a long time, for God to untangle a knotted ball of emotions, which is in fact the accumulated outcome of many years of wrong belief. Good things, however, are worth the wait. They are worth the struggle. Be patient with God and yourself. GOD PLUS TIME is a wonderful formula to plug our lives into in order to move toward emotional healing and wholeness. As hard as it may be to believe at times, God can heal us and put us back together better than we were before.
Praise God that He is not a God of chaos or confusion. He is a God of order. Let’s trust this wonderful God of order so that he can re-establish order and peace to all areas of our lives if we will simply surrender control to him.
Be Blessed, Be Healed and Be Whole in Christ the Anointed One,
Mark Rogers