Live True to Your...Self? Self-Esteem Anyone? $2.00 each.

o I've been pondering all day what I should write about in today's Monday - Humble Orthodoxy post. Since I've been thinking for a wee-long while now without being able to come up with something substantial, I've decided to just write away.

While I was reading some articles over at Pyromaniacs, a particular phrase caught my attention - a phrase that I too wrote at last week's and this morning's article. In essence it is this: "Humble orthodoxy in a life of a believer essentially means to primarily live true to God."

I thought that it's something worth writing about.

What does it mean to live true to God? Some might get the impression of a pious chap who would do all the right things and say all the right stuff. A kind of person that prays 'till the rooster crows and reads his Bible 99% of the time. As much as that is a wonderful picture of a Christian, that is not what I am necesarrily talking about in living true to God.

KJV Titus 1:16 They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate.

It is very possible to say and do things in the name of God, but still have such works be dead deeds in the eyes of the Lord.

To be true to God essentially means that for a Christian, as compelled by the Spirit of God, he must have such a view of his Creator, having grasped a knowledge of who God is, he would be able to live accordingly to Him he professes to be a servant of.

It isn't by living a life that doesn't fail to live in perfect exactitude to the commands of Scripture. But the state in which the reality of the living God has come upon the believer.

Why do you think God said in 1 Peter 5:5 and James 4:6 that He "opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble"?

Why? Why would God give grace to the humble? Ah, but it is in the state of humility that pleases God to shed forth His grace.

Imagine a man, the most rebellious of all sinners, utterly God hating and filled with moral anarchy. Imagine that man being drawn to God Himself, causing the man to have his eyes open to the reality of his rebellion against God and his wickedness against Deity. Imagine that man finally truly grasping the reality of the immeasurable depths of the Holiness of God and the unattainable heights of the requirements of His Justice and Truth. Imagine that man, awakened in the reality of his just condemnation against God.

Now imagine you in his place, when you finally understood what it meant when someone said:

"Intense the agony--
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain."

A realization of the completeness of the nature and attributes of God, the deadness of your sin, the magnitude of the abomination of your works and soul against the Master of the universe - and you say, as an old man once said in the Lewis Revival, "I believe Hell is too good for me!"

Such a person dear loved one is one that pleases God to give grace to. Such a person in essence has his heart reduced to powder, without out hope, without God. It is he that God gives grace to. It is he after being given grace would live, not by obligation nor by persuasion, a Chrisian life. But he would live so because he is so indebted to the God who has saved Him.

And the man says: "I can do nothing of my life. I can say nothing of myself. I cannot help but live true to my God - to live true to my Savior."

A pious chap who would do all the right things and say all the right stuff. A kind of person that prays 'till the rooster crows and reads his Bible 99% of the time? Ah, a chap that doesn't realize that he does these things, exaggeration aside, but is singularly compelled by a grave understanding in tears and trembling of the immensity of the love of God given to such a sinner as he.