Champions BYTES for 1/27/10: "What's Love Got To Do With It?" Part IV

IS CREATED WITH PURPOSE-INTENDED FOR GREATNESS AND CALLED TO
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"The future doesn't just happen - it's shaped by decisions."

-Paul Tagliabue (1940 - )
American former NFL commissioner

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"So this I say and solemnly testify in [the name of] the Lord [as in His presence], THAT YOU MUST NO LONGER LIVE AS THE HEATHEN (THE GENTILES) DO in their perverseness [in the folly, vanity, and emptiness of their souls and the futility] of their minds. Their *moral understanding is darkened and their reasoning is beclouded. [They are] alienated (ESTRANGED, SELF-BANISHED) FROM THE LIFE OF GOD [with no share in it; this is] because of the ignorance (the want of knowledge and perception, the willful blindness) that is *deep-seated in them, due to their hardness of heart [to the insensitiveness of their moral nature]. In their spiritual apathy they have become callous and past feeling and reckless and have abandoned themselves [a prey] to unbridled sensuality, eager and greedy to indulge in every form of impurity [that their depraved desires may suggest and demand]. -The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

Restoring oneness requires an immediate life change.

It demands immediate attention; imperative action in every relationship that is broken.

Paul wrote, "YOU MUST NO LONGER LIVE AS THE HEATHEN DO (or as you used to.)"

I read a recent story that ABC news aired on a 20-year-old Orange County woman who is suing her former employer (a major coffee chain), over a sexual relationship she had with a supervisor when she was 16 years old (The supervisor pleaded guilty to felony sex with a minor and was sentenced to 180 days in jail last February.)

During her stay at a home for troubled teens in 2006, the young teen wrote a "come clean letter" - a sort of confession to her parents - in which she listed the numerous men she'd had sex with from her workplace. In a deposition, one of her counselors said that after she lost her virginity, she had a "mind-set that she was damaged goods, so it didn't matter what she did."

The enemy would love to deceive you into thinking you must forever live the life you created by sin (or bad decisions.)

But you don't have to banish yourself from the best life God has for you.

You are not "damaged goods."

You are not obligated to live the life that is tormenting you. No matter what you have done in your past. Oneness in any relationship is in the same place you abandoned it. At the altar (the wedding and the cross) we exchanged vows that were to be lived out to achieve a lifelong union or state of "oneness" with God and/or our spouse.

The enemies of "oneness" and the dangers of losing it are outlined by the Apostle Paul in the book of Ephesians:

"When angry, do not sin; do not ever let your wrath (your exasperation, your fury or indignation) last until the sun goes down. Leave no [such] room or foothold for the devil [give no opportunity to him]." (Eph. 4:26-27)

Just because the opportunity to sin knocks, doesn't mean you have to open the door.

When oneness is broken, it gives the enemy a foothold in the place where you, God and man were once "ONE."

Paul encouraged his leadership team: "Let all bitterness and indignation and wrath (passion, rage, bad temper) and resentment (anger, animosity) and quarreling (brawling, clamor, contention) and slander (evil-speaking, abusive or blasphemous language) BE BANISHED FROM YOU, with all malice (spite, ill will, or baseness of any kind). And become useful and helpful and kind to one another, tenderhearted (compassionate, understanding, loving-hearted), forgiving one another [readily and freely], as God IN CHRIST forgave you (Eph. 4:29-32.)

RIGHT NOW, is your speech or actions useful and helpful to those closest in your life (family, workplace or church?)

What kind of weapon or instrument are your decisions in the lives of others?
Do they promote or demote God in your life?

God doesn't forgive you because of anything good you do.

He forgave you richly "in Christ" (because of what His Son did.)

When Mary questioned Gabriel (the angel) how she would become "one" with God and carry Christ to the world, He replied: "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

God can bring intimacy or oneness back to any broken situation you face.

His arms are outstretched all day long despite our rebellious nature, so we can come back to Him. If we will discard the behaviors that disrupted our relationships, "oneness" can and will blossom in our life once again:

If you will determine to yield to His will and live out His principles, you will rule in His power (in the midst of your enemies.)

Jesus replied to the Pharisees and Scribes grumbling against His leadership team eating and drinking with oppressive and [preeminently] sinful people by saying:

"It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to arouse and invite and call the righteous, but *the erring ones (*those not free from sin) to repentance [*to change their minds for the better and heartily to amend their ways, with abhorrence of their past sins]." (Lk 5:31-32.)

To encourage you, there was a season after walking 12 years with Jesus, Mary and Joseph (His earthly parents) lost Him "in the temple."

You see, we have all at some point of our lives lost our oneness with God. You are not the first one and certainly not the last; but men have also found Him again, and so can you.

Joel, the prophet, declared: "Therefore also now, says the Lord, turn and keep on coming to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning [until every hindrance is removed and the broken fellowship is restored]. Rend your hearts and not your garments and return to the Lord, your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in loving-kindness; and He revokes His sentence of evil [when His conditions are met]" (Joel 2:11-13.)

SO WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED THIS MONTH?:

God's love is unconditional; but oneness and trust are not.