Our Work Is To Let God Work.

Php 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. 

Php 2:13  FOR IT IS GOD WHICH WORKETH IN YOU BOTH TO WILL AND TO DO OF HIS GOOD PLEASURE. 

Work out our own salvation-God works in us.

Working out our own salvation is realizing and allowing God to work in us. If God is working in us, we are NOT working ourselves beyond the work of allowing God access to our lives. We have the ability to open or shut the door to God and this door is a constant in our lives. Deciding who is in control of us is a reality that people do not want to think about too much. As soon as a person makes the declaration that they are in charge of their own life they slam shut the door to God, keeping Him out. What they do NOT realize is a door shut to God automatically means a door open to Satan. To believe there is such a neutral existence as self being in complete control is ludicrous but it is something more and more people choose to believe. Our lives are constantly influenced on a spiritual, unseen level. Some of the most spiritually hardened, self-promoting, stubborn minded atheists have given up their atheistic stand when confronted with the sheer fact of the absurdity of believing a big bang brought a human being into existence in all its extreme complexity. Some of the most complex machinery that exists could never have thrown itself together, yet for some baffling reason people believe we were somehow put together over millions of years - originating from primordial ooze. The absurdity is undeniable and yet dare I say, millions of people belief this ooze origin over created origin.

If you've ever done something in your life you regret- that regret alone reveals the lack of control you really have over your own life. We're not stupid people, for the most part. We realize as we are involved in the regretted act what we are doing. Aside from pure emotional temporary insanity, we are fully conscious of our wrong doing as it is occurring. As we shove aside regret and embrace our actions, the regret doesn't disappear into nothingness, it gets buried- layer by layer until we choose to call the wrong - right. We make excuses and force ourselves to believe those excuses, we take a stand for our actions and hold tight to them.  How many people have done this only to ultimately come face to face with their guilt? There would be no guilt whatsoever if the things you've done were not regretted, and if regretted- known to be a chosen wrong course of action, and if a known chosen action then the decision to hurt our own selves by taking on self-destructive regrettable behavior is NOT given to comprehension. Yet we do it ALL the time! Big things, little things, a million regrets- living a lie of having no regrets…this is what we do without reason. 

The reason is… our lives are being influenced constantly on a spiritual level.

Is our door open to God or to Satan?

Are we choosing to let God work in us, or Satan?

To work out our own salvation is to choose God- constantly. It is recognizing having to make that choice all the time. It is looking to God for answers, not to ourselves. To choose God is to ask HIM for the strength to LIVE for HIM, it is asking CHRIST to live in us, it is asking HIM to WORK IN US. Choosing God is the giving up of a SELF-CENTER- SELFISH existence.  Choosing God is giving up the part of us that lives solely concerned with ourselves - whether it is pride in ourselves, hate in ourselves, love in ourselves, yes…. Love in ourselves.  We've taken the whole love yourself to a perverted level where it means choosing to focus on our own feelings and desiring a life focused on ourselves feeling good in one way or another. 

We marvel that some people can choose others over themselves, and God alone knows where that comes from- a God fearing way or a self-centered way.

We need to choose GOD over SELF. When our feelings are hurt we need to ask ourselves if GOD'S feelings were hurt. When others hurt us- it truly is because they are going through their own damaged experience that causes them to be hurtful and hateful. Or maybe it's a damaged brain that prevents them from even realizing they are being hurtful and hateful and causing us emotional pain. If God's feelings are hurt by their actions His reaction would be much as Jesus' were when He ministered upon earth in the flesh. Sadness for the pain inflictor not Himself- He was strong in the Father's love. We take our hurt and make it personal, Jesus and the Father take their hurt and make it sorrowful and even angry sorrow for those causing it because they refuse a life of love preferring their hateful, painful temporary existence over life eternal.

When we are hurt emotionally, when that feeling of emotional turmoil rolls through us and rises up to cloud all our thoughts so they consume us with the hurt, by the grace of God we need to pray for the one hurting us. We need to seek God and pray for that person deeply, not superficially. We need to take the awful feeling we are experiencing and use it to strengthen our relationship with God, not alienate us from Him. 

God before all, even self.

If we are loving God with all our heart and soul as we are commanded to, we are NOT nurturing self-love.  Let's find our worth IN GOD and no other. If we find our worth in ourselves we will fail ourselves, it is inevitable. If we find our worth in any other human being chances are good they'll fall short in supplying all we need for our worth. GOD will never fail us, God cannot fail us. God's promise is for the FUTURE life without all the issues and angst, all the failures, and faults, all the horrors and nightmares. What we endure now is but for a moment in the light of eternity. Please, Lord, let us be all about YOU and not at all about OURSELVES.

All through Jesus Christ our LORD and SAVIOR now and forever!!!!!!!