The Ways of God预览

The Ways of God

The church is struggling in much of the western world.

Attendance in most of today’s churches has plateaued or is declining. Thousands of congregations close their doors each year. A growing percentage of Americans no longer attend church or claim to believe in God. The nation’s moral condition seems to be plummeting.

Obviously, the church cannot keep doing things the way it has been. Something must change. The church, as it functions now, is not the salt and light the world desperately needs. God has made it clear that our ways are not His ways.

Tragically, the church has become enamored with secular thinking. It is foolish to assume we can conduct God’s work, the world’s way. Historically, such thinking has always led to catastrophic consequences for the church and the people it serves.

The problem is that when we are so immersed in the world’s ways, we don’t recognize when we have departed from God and His ways. We are working hard and praying for God’s kingdom to come, but we are not seeing the results we should expect from Almighty God. This ought to alarm us. We ought to grieve at the absence of power and advancement in today’s church. We must take a spiritual audit of our ways to discern where we have jettisoned God’s ways for worldly methods. We must study God’s ways, so we know what they are, then we must fervently embrace them.

In this devotional, we will specifically focus on the ways of God. Some clarification will be helpful as we begin:

1. God’s Ways Are Not His Acts

It is important to understand that, while God’s acts reflect His ways, the two terms are not interchangeable. To understand a person’s ways, you must connect the dots between their character and their actions. People’s ways derive from their character. God may accomplish His goals through various deeds, but He will never act contrary to His unchanging character and ways.

2. Troubling Bible Passages

God’s ways sometimes confuse us. They can appear troubling, or even offensive from our modern perspective. We’ll see that we can’t be selective about God’s ways. They are revealed in the Bible. They come as a package, and they don’t change. God’s ways are the same today as they were in the biblical era.

3. Confused Christians

A final problem related to God’s ways concerns those who claim to be following His ways, yet their behavior appears incongruent with clear biblical teaching. Many of the worst abuses in Christendom have been perpetrated by people asserting they were following God’s scriptural teaching.

This devotional plan will help you better understand the ways of God. God wants you to know His ways and to live your life accordingly. Those who grasp and follow God’s ways can change the world, but we must know what they are. The truth is, only by understanding and following God’s ways will you be able to experience genuine Christianity.