Living upside down

Living Upside Down
1 Peter 1:9-12
Sunday, October 11, 2009

We sometimes end up living the Christian life upside down.
God calls us to live a unique life in Him- He calls us to stand out and not blend in.
Just like when u get a new pair of prescription glasses, you tend to keep putting on the old ones because you are used to them and they feel more comfortable. Or you will go back and forth from your new glasses to your old glasses. When we come to Christ, He gives us a new prescription to live by but we tend to go back to our old way of living (old glasses). We allow our old way of seeing things to be a grid of how to live our new life. When we hear new info from Christ we try to work it into our old framework of living. Then we say Gods way of living doesn’t work but really it doesn’t work with our old way of living.

We have to allow Gods word to influence us instead of the world. We get too excited about immature Christians sharing and teaching the Word of God. We listen too much to the famous people who change their lives and try to give us spiritual insight. For example a famous comedian and television actor (whose name was not given) gave his life to God and wrote a book about it and in his book taught that we should wait 90 days to have sex when dating (not taught in the Bible) and he taught that women should not date men from the church and it is okay to date men from clubs and that are not Christians because his mom was a Christian and his dad was not but his dad was a good man and they were married 30 years and his dad was a good man, so it is ok to date a non Christian man (also not in the Bible). That is why we need to know and study the Word of God because there are immature Christians out there spreading their way of thinking and passing it on as the Word of God. We lean too much on their words because they can sing, tell jokes, act or are just simply famous with a lot of influence.
We are not to listen to someone that is preaching the Word but doesn’t go to church or read the Bible. We have no way of knowing where their theology is coming from because they are not studying it in their everyday life. That is how we let the world influence our way of thinking. We are to allow the church to be our pillar of truth. We are called to stand up for truth and allow our faith to be rooted in the word of God.
We must be careful and make sure we are listening to the Word and not the world.

Revelation:
If God has only revealed something in his word to you then there is something wrong. Scripture is not a private interpretation. We shouldn’t say, “what does this mean for me?” It s not about what the word means to us but what it means period. When we say, “God told me last night”- that is not a revelation that is a speculation. Its not a private interpretation but instead God showing something to the world that was not known by humanity.
Don’t hang your faith by something that is not true. It must be proven in the word of God. People have tried to disprove the Bible for years but no one can, why do u think the Bible is the best seller of all time?

We are starting to minimize the salvation of Christ.
Will we rely on the Word of God for our faith?
How much time and money do we invest in the Word? We must study and memorize the word to distinguish the truth.
We need to live right side up- based on Gods framework and not on mans philosophies.