I Will Look Into My Innermost, To Do So Will Be My Joy....Otherwise It Would Be My Sorrow

Study: # 597 - Church in the Houses From: June 23 -29, 2009

Topic: “I Will Look Into My Innermost, To Do So Will Be My Joy….Otherwise It Would Be My Sorrow” Isaiah 1:16,17 When we come to the Lord, there is much we need to learn to do things just as they are done in the Kingdom of God. It has been thought that it is the duty and responsibility of the church to raise the children of the siblings, but this responsibility so personal belongs to the parents. A child that is not cared for spiritually, the devil will take advantage of the negligence of the parents and seek for a way to sow evilness in him. We can see that only those who struggle for their children are the ones who can conquer and move forward. Isaiah called the people of Israel to repent to rectify their ways, because their lifestyle had been deformed. If a person walks in the wrong direction, he will then have to form his life again. For this it is necessary to have a conviction of a desire to change and a firm determination not to become deformed again. We should look into our innermost, because to do so will be our joy, otherwise it will become our sorrow for tomorrow. Sometimes there can be repentance but not a reformation and it is because proper measures have not been taken. As time goes by repentance becomes a habit, but not if there was a reformation of life. For us to be received by God we have to go to Jesus to be cleansed of our spiritual slag. The heart is bad and perverse and if we neglect it, it could bring destruction upon us. If we decide to obey, we will be obedient to God and there will be no rebellion. When God works in our lives it is better to live in sanctity and in humbleness before Him. When one lives in rebellion one lives in a lot of anger and gossips. Obedience is not something that will hurt us, but rather it is for our well-being. Some believers become angry when God wants to work in their daily life. They choose to walk away, extirpating their roots from the church where they converted to plant themselves in another place where it is not appropriate to grow. One can see the wickedness and only point it out, but this will not cleanse the heart. As the church, we have to pray and fasten. When the heart is cleansed everything stays clean. If we obey, we will be accepted by God, therefore, our sacrifice will be accepted. Corinthian 1 13:3 We can be making sacrifices, but if we do not seek God in our lives, the sacrifices will not expiate us of the sins that grow in the heart. We accept everything as good and we start to take God’s work calmly, and that level of love begins to decrease because the dust of this world sticks to us. When the world turns into a treasure for the heart, there is where destruction begins. So much freedom causes us to return to the world. The only way to wash and cleanse ourselves is by staying away from iniquity. It is necessary to enter into the roots of the sin; it is not only to stop to practice something. It is to enter deep inside where no one else can enter, but only God and oneself. We can toss powder into people's eyes and appear to be sorry, but when we examine the depth of the heart, many things remain that will come out eventually. May God work in us and cleanse us internally. It is necessary to make the decision of doing what is right because God has reformed us. That reformation of life has been worked in us who have believed. Then, it is necessary to learn to do the

good things. To do well is not something congenital that we are born with, but rather it is something that needs to be learned. The body needs to be dominated in order to learn to do what is right. Let us learn to do the good things without limiting our efforts, because it is an assignment of first priority for our lives. It is that we have to do it always, because if we don’t, we sin and then there will be many days of pain and weeping. We have not given ourselves with all our strength to do well, let us do so. Let us be willing to refuse all that is vain, to do what is right at all times. Titus 2:12 The grace, the well-being, they come from God. God can make the impossible possible. It is the grace that leads us to knowledge. This teaches us and illuminates us in the school of sanctity. There are things that are not accepted which we have to give up. There are things that we have to see clearly and precisely. When we start to accept everything as good, it is because we have stopped to struggle and that is why we become cowards and the devil does as he wishes. The feelings that lie in our souls take us and destroy us. But God is three times holy. Discipline is very useful in our lives for everything. We have to renounce to iniquity and to the desires of this world, because we cannot take these things to Heaven. The worldly desires are those things which we cannot manifest before God, who is three times holy. Only Jesus can work, not only in our external life, but also deep inside of us. We will change in the inside and God will see us capable, He will see us consecrated from the inside, but for this we must be willing. For this school of justice, love and sanctity there are negative things that are unacceptable and we have to learn to renounce to them. For those things that we have not renounced and are not accepted, bad days will come. The Holy Spirit works in our lives and the grace of God teaches us. The first thing we should renounce to is harshness. That means irreligion; it means that there is no fear towards God. We must renounce to a sinful past, we should learn to say “no”. When we cannot say “no” it is because there is a lack of reverence, fear and love towards God. There is no mercy for sinning. God has mercy of the sinner but not for the sin. In this we should be similar to God. A sacred church carries the message of sanctity and everyone who arrives at the church should repent and enter the process of sanctification thru the Holy Spirit. The passions and the worldly concupiscence cannot be proper of a believer, of a righteous. If the grace educates us, then we must renounce to the iniquity and worldly desires and this way we learn to live in this century. By the grace, the Holy Spirit educates us how to live in this time, far from the unworldly things, from the pleasures, wealth, power, fame, or anything else that may be essentially mundane. The grace teaches us how to live righteously, sober and compassionately. A worldly person cannot be a compassionate, sober or righteous person. To be sober means to have good sense, self- dominion. It is not the body who guides our lives but rather the grace teaches us to be people with self-control. A righteous person is righteous with himself and treats others with justice, reasonableness, honesty and does everything that is pleasant to God. The fear to God pushes us away from sin. There is not fear when there is libertinage that drives a believer to fall in sin. The reason for preparing ourselves spiritually is that we are waiting for the day of His coming. There are virtues pleasant to God that should characterize us in this world where everything surrounding us will be dissolved. We can see that there isn’t one good reason that can defend the sin in our lives. When one is righteous, one gives God purity and turns the back on sin. The sober have self-dominion, because they fear God. This way the good and faithful Christian will live and serve his God with sobriety and justice on this earth until the Lord comes to get him. Amen.