Doubting one’s salvation is not uncommon. If you’ve struggled with it, you’re not alone. Most of us have struggled with it at one time or another, myself included.

Doubt immobilizes and neutralizes. God has no desire for His people to live in doubt over their salvation.

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“Yes, brother Scott, but HOW DO I walk in the Spirit?!”

“Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh” so says Galatians 5:16. And often after attempting for forty-five minutes from a pulpit to motivate people toward a desire to walk in the Spirit, the HOW TO question is one I get rather often.

One might assume that one of the great problems in the Church is that no one seems to really want to walk in the Spirit as they ought.

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The devil is out to steal from us all that is truly precious, including our time. After all, time is life. Our first thought might be that Satan’s first order of attacks on our time is through tempting us toward laziness, but more often it’s through busyness.

Most people in the rat race don’t want to be in it, but rather feel obligated to it. We’re afraid to rest or take time away not only because of what we’ve heard all our lives about laziness, but also because of a deep-seated fear of being unproductive or falling behind.

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The will of God is not as elusive as we think. We often miss out on it because we allow certain things into our sphere of living that sabotage it. Last time, we discussed four of eight “saboteurs” of the will of God for your life: misguided “shoulds,” ignorance, toxic religion and toxic relationships. Here are the four more:

1. Personal Pet Sin

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“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Wow. The fact the most creative Being in the universe has personally designed a plan for ME is toupee-fluttering thought (not that I have a toupee), and of raises every bit of curiosity and caution that it should.

Shudder to think I might miss it somehow.

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There are all sorts of things I could teach, verbally ruminate or otherwise “vent” about in this newsletter. As rarely as we put out one of these little circulars, believe me, I’ve got a lot stored up I’d like to write about.

Instead, I’d like to talk about an ever-present Truth that I just can’t get past. I am consistently being reminded of it. A truth that regardless of age, ethnicity, gender or religion, we all will be reminded of until time is no more. A truth that we can ignore but not erase. A truth that will not let us go. A truth that we can’t get past first four words of the Bible with seeing. That is, that everything begins and ends with God.

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Hey Scott,

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Dear Scott,

Desiring the Best
Phoenix, AR

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My mind goes back from time to time to a two-week mission trip I took to the poverty-stricken country of Haiti. I remember the culture shock of the absolute absence of abundance. Growing up in a comfortable, middle-class home I had heard of poverty, and even thought I had seen it, but I realized my misinformation in the capital of desolation, Haiti. To be sure, when I returned to my home in America, I had a new perspective entirely on the material blessings God had wrought in my life. I learned that unless I see true poverty, I’ll forget how “rich” I am.

It is this same sense concerning the material blessings in my life that God has recently worked concerning the spiritual blessings in my life. As I have been studying and preparing some old-fashioned Gospel messages and refreshing my contemplation of the Old Old Story, I find myself deeply moved, even shaken within, as if my introduction to Christ and the Cross was a recent one. I was saved at the tender age of six and grew up with Jesus. And in the same way that I took so much of my material blessing for granted before Haiti, it has been easy for me to take my spiritual blessings in Christ for granted as well, seeing as how I grew up with an abundance of both.

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(This article was written during the impeachment hearings of President Clinton)

?It doesn?t matter what he does in his private life, as long as he gets the job done.? Sound familiar? It has become obvious in recent months that we are living in a culture that believes it can divorce personal life from public duties. The general consensus is that someone?s lack of character is none of our business, that character doesn?t matter. Frankly, that?s seriously wrong, big time. The integrity of one?s personal, private choices, that is, one?s character, affects every other area of his life and all those whom he influences. In other words, character does matter. And we all know it.

Character matters when a person applies for credit. Character matters when an individual borrows the possessions of another. Character matters when a person signs a dotted line. Character matters when a dad makes a promise to his child. Character matters when a person stands at an altar and pledges life-long marital faithfulness to another. Character matters when a man stands and swears to uphold and protect the Constitution while he occupies the highest office in the land. (And if his character does not dictate that he keep the former of these vows, we cannot be sure that he will keep the latter.)

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