NO GREY AREA IN CHRIST

In your spiritual relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ you are either in the light or in the dark. Where does this belief of a grey area come from? This belief of God did not really mean that. It comes from the mouth of Satan himself.

 
God said "You will die" the devil said "you will not". There is no grey area. The father of all lies makes it sound like there is a grey area but there is none. You are either in the light or in the dark.

I find almost every time I speak of the Lord I say this statement: "God said what He meant and means what He said". The other thing I say just as much is, "find the will of God for you and do it".

I thank God every day for that scripture. It is not what we know in our head that counts, it is the attitude of heart. Is our attitude that of a child that wants to learn? In truth compared to God we are all childish, untaught, and unskilled. Especially when it comes to spiritual things, even when we think we have a grasp on something we have not even begun to scratch the surface. We have to rely on God as a child does his parents to survive or we will soon wander off into the woods of our understanding and starve. When we rely upon God and walk (verb means you are moving) in the light we are cleansed from all sin.

We sin, we confess it, and He is faithful and just and will forgive us and cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness. You are in the light cleansed from ALL sin. That is what God said, that is what He meant, BELIEVE IT.

God does not convict you of a sin unless He also reveals what the sin is, that would be pointless and leave you clueless. Every time I have been convicted of a sin I knew what it was I needed to repent of. Some times it is an attitude or a way I have handled or done things that I have practiced for years. God has known about it, He is God. But for what ever reason it was now that He chooses to shine His Light on it and it is revealed to me as sin and I must repent. The closer you are to a light the better you see.

A large majority of problems that the people that we meet and the letters and emails that we get have one root problem, disobedience to what God said. If you turn for an instance from obedience, darkness is at once at work.

Some people believe, speaking of obedience in this way, get up and get a glass of milk, fill the glass only half full, and drink it in three swallows. These people go through their whole day this way and God never cared if they got a glass of milk or not.

The revelations that God wants to give you in your life are sitting there waiting to be opened, turned on. You turn them on by obedience. People spend hours on the Internet, read books on all sorts of subjects, try to discern if this is right or that and sometimes end up with garbage that they think sounds right. When if they would just get serious about obedience, immediately the light would turn on.

Sounds simple does it not? A child could do that. A child obeys their parent and learns something, gets some direction, grows more mature. Put the round peg in the round hole son, the child does this and the light goes on and realizes the square peg and the square hole look like they might fit.

Obey God in the thing He shows you and the light will go on for the next thing.

The two things God wants and it is repeated in hundreds of Scriptures is a heart that is totally devoted to Him and a person that will fulfill all of His will. Partial obedience is disobedience. There is no grey area. This might not be a great way to put this but it works for me. Picture yourself in a room and this room contains all the circumstances and situations you are in. Everything: relationships, financial circumstances, your responsibilities to yourself and to others are there in the room with you. God has a way and a means for you to deal with everything in this room and that is called His will for you. He wants you to arrange the furniture His way as it were. You must do this and the first room is generally the hardest. You must go over each and every thing and take it in prayer to God and His Word. Ask Him to show you again His will for each thing and what to do. You may see where you missed what God was saying in the beginning. He has not changed His mind and will show you again what you are to do. If you see that you have disobeyed, repent of what you did or did not do and seek what He wants you to do now.

The day I accepted Jesus Christ as my LORD and Savior the pastor of that Church told me to go and pray: to seek God's will on where I was suppose to attend Church. That pastor was more concerned that I do the will of God in my life than to build his flock larger. He said, "God has a place where your gifts will make room for you and they will be gifted to teach you." He said, "You can now call God your Father and He calls you His son, He has a plan for you and you have the responsibility to follow it." I wish I could have more fully learned that lessen then. It would have saved me a world of hurt.

This is not always easy. People, including myself, have gotten into horrendous situations. Painful, hurting situations. In hind sight you may see where you stepped off the path and you now see where it landed you. If so, repent of it and see what God leads you to do now. This is very important. Find out the will of the Lord now, some things you can not undo. Even when you now know God's will and obey it, it can be a painful, hurting path to set things right. You must want God's will and only God's will in your life. Your heart must be totally devoted to Him.

Eventually this room will be all straightened up and here is where a wondrous thing occurs. You will see a door to another room that was not there before and you know it is God that opened it to you and you go through. Inside this new room is all sorts of new experiences and situations you can apply God's will to. But you go in there moving in the will of God and you start in this new room by doing only the will of God. You learn from every situation and every circumstance and grow in the knowledge of God and His grace. You will make mistakes, but you will grow. You grow closer and closer to Christ as you walk along this path of the Father's will with Him. He knows it well. When you are done in this room another door opens, and so on. Some rooms are as large as countries and take years to finish, others are small and cramped. We all like it when we are sharing Christ with others under the anointing of the Holy Spirit like Jesus in the boat speaking to the listening crowds. What a wonderful "room" to be in. But what of Joseph, put in prison for a crime he did not commit? Not a pleasant room at all. Are you willing to let God engineer your life? Sometimes God will put you in a room that has very little to do with you, but you have to go through it, for later you will use that experience to help others. Are you willing to do what it takes to be used? To go where God wants to take you? He is with you every step of the way and at times it is a walk on the beach, other times it is a hard climb.

You start this process knowing the cost. You should realize it is not about you, it is not about what others think about you, it is not about what you think of others. It is all about God, and as you do this it soon becomes a habit, a good habit. Jesus said, "My yoke is easy, My burden light." Your faith grows as you see and experience the faithfulness of God. You enter that rest that God has promised you. Whether in the boat or in the prison, God is with you.

Do you believe that the circumstance, the situation that you're in right now, no matter how you got in it, is a surprise to God? It is not. God did not sit back and say, "Wow, I never saw that coming." He knows exactly where you are at and exactly how you got there. His arm is not too short or His power too weak to lift you up and out. Quite the opposite, He is willing. The question is: are you willing to seek Him, listen and be obedient?

Understand that all these things in the room are not the only things in the room. You are in it too, and God is absolutely going to deal with you as a Father deals with His child. He loves you with a jealous love and He is going to show you everything that separates you, the object of His love, from Him.

God tells us here right up front that this discipline is not a joy to go through, and He also tells us what it yields so we understand why we must be trained by it. He also said no true son or daughter is exempt. There are walls in your natural nature that you have built and rely on. God will break them down and it can hurt.

You are the alabaster jar and God will break you. Your natural self life will be broken and cracked again and again so the sweet scent of Christ can fill the room.

Many know God's Word and then do what they want to do anyway. They are now reaping what they sowed. They, like Eve, heard the serpent's voice, "you will not surely die," "God's ok with this, look what you can get." You will fall and you will reap what you sow. Disobedience, sin, has a price and it can lead to death. So repent of your sin and seek what God would have you do now.

I can give many examples. A woman marries a nonbeliever, she fell in love (why did she put herself in that position to start with?) and of course he's the one and of course God will save him (there is that nonexistent grey area). It's been five years and he flat out wants nothing to do with Christ. He does not want her to go to Church, wants her to go out to the bars, get drunk, party, like other couples he knows. Her relationship with Jesus has put a strain on her relationship with her husband.

What would you do if you where in her place? God's Word is plain and God's will always lines up with His Word. It is not easy in this situation but it is plain.

She should have never put herself in this situation, disobeyed what was written from the get go. True, she can repent of that, she can be forgiven, but she is still married. What does God's Word say to those who are married to unbelievers? The man is not abusive, works hard for his family, just does not want Christ. She must tell him as the Word tells her that she will be the best wife to him as she can be, but Jesus comes first. She does not submit to things that are sin and she has to obey God when it comes to his Word. It is God's Word that tells her to be the best wife she can be and it is God's Word that says do not forsake fellowship with other believers. He may be fine with that or he may not. Either way she has to stand on God's Word and follow Christ. She has to be obedient to God where in the beginning she was not.

It is said all the time "just walk with Jesus and He will bring you through." This is true. Realize that His pace is different from yours, His strides are different from your natural ones. You must be trained and disciplined to keep His pace. You must be willing to allow Him to do this. You are the one who must make what is His goal into your goal. If you are born again of His Spirit and yoked to Him should this not be the case? Or are you still trying to pull a different way?

When we talk about doing God's will there are two great hindrances. One is yourself. You want to do things the way you want to do them and you want the results you wanted when you did them. God spoke to Adam and Eve and said one "don't." One tree in the whole garden He said, "You must not eat from." What tree is there in your life that God is saying "don't?" It is the one you have to disobey God to eat from. No grey area.

God said to trust in Him with all your heart and "lean not to your understanding." You find you are not only leaning on that tree of your understanding, you are hugging it for dear life. God does not take your free will from you. He tells us to use our free will to choose to do His will.

The other hindrance is our enemy, who hates you with a hate so deep we cannot even understand it, and he hates God even more. The devil will let you do all the things you think are good and Godly and not lift a finger to stop you. But the one thing that is God's will for you, if you start to do that everything and everyone comes out of the woodwork to try to stop you. Discouragement, "that's not God", "are you nuts" you find hell is suddenly awake and you woke it. Why? Because the devil knows when you obey God you are a threat to him, he knows that you will grow and become a bigger threat to him. Satan was trying to put a stop to God's plan for the human race with Adam and Eve and is trying to now. I say this quite a lot too, the devil is evil, not stupid. His hate may blind him in that he still thinks he can defeat God. He is not blind to how to lie and push our buttons and how we react. He is not blind on how to use the things (some seem so good and noble) that we want to keep us from the things God wants for us.

We know that God has the victory and has given us (who believe) that victory. Part of that victory is the devil's demise and he knows this. You must first "submit to God (and His word), resist the devil and (then) he will flee", in that order. You must "fight for the faith" and your faith will be "refined as in a fire," Jesus said;

As you grow in Christ through obedience you will grow more sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Do these two things, first abandon yourself to God; love Him with total devotion, with "all your heart, soul, mind and strength." Second, seek His will and do it fully. It may take you down roads that you had not planned but it is His plan and it is a good plan. Day by day, room by room, you will fulfill what He created you to be and do. No grey areas, no darkness, just the Light and Love of God filling you. But remember, it is your responsibility to clean up your room.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions about this article.

Scripture quotations taken from the Amplified Bible.