Transformed, Not Just Informed: A Call to Genuine Faith

As my husband and I continue reading through the Bible a chapter at a time, we’ve come upon Jeremiah’s challenging task: to warn God’s people of their wrong behavior. This is particularly timely since this week’s Scripture memory verse is Matthew 6:13. As James reminds us, God never tempts anyone, but our own flesh causes us sin.

While praying over this, I was reminded of a specific way our sin nature misleads us. There is an important warning that is stated clearly throughout Scripture that every Christian has to be cautious to not ignore. I believe guarding against this is critical to a fruitful walk with the Lord. 

Fair warning, this truth will likely perform a little surgery on our hearts and it might hurt a little, but it's incredibly helpful!

In Jeremiah 7, God tells Jeremiah to warn the people against their evil behavior. What were they doing? They were worshiping God with their words, but then going about their lives without doing what God told them to do. God was "calling them out" to use a modern phrase, stating their "christian lifestyle" meant nothing to him. 

God isn't pleased when we just know information about him but don't let him transform our lives.

Christ reminds us to pray against this destructive self-leadership pattern. We all can get comfortable with our personal sins and get prickly about another person's sins quite easily. But in this section of Matthew, Christ teaches us that it is good to ask for help to not let ourselves be led into temptation.

Did you catch that? Let's not be led away into sin by ourselves because of any one or anything else. God doesn't play favorites. He treats all his children the same. We all fight the same sin nature. We're all held responsible for what we did, not given an excuse because of what anyone else did to us that caused our actions. 

Even Moses fell into this trap. Because he was led into sin, God did not allow him to even enter the promised land. How did it happen? He allowed the people to lead him into sinning in anger and acting in disobedience to God (see Numbers 20:7-12).

We are just like the people in Jeremiah's day when we tell God we love him and then allow ourselves to be led into sin without confession or accepting correction.

We're unlike the people in Jeremiah's day, however, because we are given the Holy Spirit thanks to Christ's rich love. He helps guide, curb and empowering us to live lives devoted to the Lord, allowing him to grow us to be more like Christ.

When we keep in step with the Spirit, He reminds us of our own failings and brings us to confession. He delivers us out of this self-destructive pattern. When we allow the Holy Spirit to curb our comfortable living with sin, our hearts can soar in the freedom of Christ-focused self-forgetfulness. What a far greater life that is than living in a fake reality of word worship of God without His life-giving love and true heart change.

This week, I pray as we meditate on this verse that we bring our whole selves to him in humble submission, allowing him to teach us how to not be led into sin.