“Satan’s greatest method for Christian defeat is to prompt us to react improperly toward the weaknesses of others.”

We are in an imperfect world and live an imperfect life with imperfect people.  Hey, if I’m imperfect and you’re imperfect, then shouldn’t we give each other a break?  Easier said than done, I know.  However, it is what Christ requires.

We observe this principle in Matthew 5:39, “But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Since proper “reaction toward others” is a requirement of our Lord, it is also our avenue of “reflection on Him” Satan desires to utterly destroy.  And make no doubt about it, he will deploy as he seeks to destroy!

Turning the other cheek so to speak is not so easy for the weak!  Proper responses are not a literal action we must take, but rather an attitude that Christ wants us to possess.  If you put out your cheek, yet within you an attitude full of hate or revenge or a desire to “get back” at the individual (whether with tongue or fist) continues to prevail in your meditations, then you are not obedient to this command.  The Lord is implying a reference to the attitude deep within our hearts when He speaks of turning the other cheek.

Now, you might be wondering, does it work? A famous, eccentric Methodist preacher named Billy Bray tells of his remarkable conversion in his biography.  He was an ex-minor and when he got saved and gave up his evil ways, his fellow minors were disgusted.  One of them annoyed with him struck him in the face and stated, “Take that for turning to Methody!” After being struck, Billy compassionately looked at him and said, “May God forgive you man, as I do.” It was Billy’s attitude, not his physical turn of the cheek that eventually yielded fruit and brought this man to Christ.

Another story is told of a young soldier who found himself enduring difficulty and on his knees often in prayer.  His regiment did not give him any slack and one evening, while kneeling beside his bed, a cruel fellow soldier threw a boot at his head.  This did not deter the young soldier as he continued to pray through the cursing and abuse.  He did not defend himself in word or action.  When morning came, the ruffian who had been so cruel got out of bed and noticed a pair of newly polished boots beside his bed.  Eventually, that man came to Christ.  I believe this is a picture of an attitude of “turning the other cheek.” The people to whom our cheeks are turned may not always get saved, but as a child of God we are responsible to react as Christ has commanded.  It may cost us our dignity, and it may cost us our pride, but Christ says in Mark 8:35, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”

It is for the gospel’s sake that we are to turn our cheek with the right attitude. Without this Christ-like attitude, you will never know what your testimony produce.  What is the worth of one lost soul to you?

My friend, it is so important that when you are beat, you do not allow the devil to defeat; but rather, Christ can replete the elite who choose to be discreet when tempted in the heat. When a troubled one you meet, turn your cheek and be willing to wash his feet.  Your enemy will have not choice but to retreat.  Spirit-led responses just can’t be beat when you go cheek to cheek!

“All Freedom is measured by its boundaries.
So carry a tape measure.”

How do you measure your boundaries – in inches or in cinches? Living free in your own power is not a cinch! It’s no easy task. When I began my journey back toward a relationship with Christ, I needed guidelines to help me stay within God’s parameters. I have found ten principles that will keep us within the boundaries of our freedom in Christ.

If we are ever going to have any success whatsoever in our efforts to experience freedom in life, we must determine that if God tells us that something is wrong, it is wrong. If God is against it, so am I. I grew up in a Christian home and had lots of boundaries and rules put on me. As a young person, I misunderstood their purpose. I used to plan for the day when I became an adult and could release myself of all those rules. I could not wait for the day that I could live in what I thought would be true freedom! But make no mistake about it, friend, true freedom is found in boundaries. For you only exchange boundaries for bondage.

After stubbornly refusing to allow anyone to tell me what was right and what was wrong, and after my life was destroyed from the “freedom” I chose, I finally realized the lie to which I had become enslaved. As I sought to gain stability once again in life, I struggled because part of me was still living like the world but on the weekends I would sober up and go to church. God taught me a valuable lesson after several months of struggling, ten principles to conquer stubborn habits and that is what I needed to have oneness with God in all parts of my life.

I had to come to a point where I set the standard that if God pointed out to me that something is wrong, I must adapt the same standard. I made the decision that if God would tell me through either my umbrella of authority or through His Word that something was wrong, I was going to get on the right side of the fence. The first line that I drew for myself was when I started coming back to church. I knew that using drugs was wrong. So, I drew a line in my life and set the standard that I was not going to use drugs anymore. But I could not stop there, I soon discovered. Because it would only take a bad day or a wrong choice and I was merely one step away from my addiction. I continually found myself falling over that line. However, as God began showing me more things through His Word and through my leadership, I began drawing more lines in my life. Each one pushed me further and further from the life I once knew. I continued to take steps in the right direction.

As I began to follow this first principle in its entirety, God gave me several others to help me maintain complete sobriety! They are what is now commonly referred to as the RU Ten Principles of Prosperity:

Principle #1- If God’s against it, so am I.
Principle #2-Every sin has its origin in our hearts.
Principle #3-It is easier to keep the heart clean than it is to clean it after it has been defiled.
Principle #4-We cannot fight a fleshly appetite by indulging in it.
Principle #5-Small compromises lead to great disasters. (Little sins lead to big sins.)
Principle #6-Those who do not love the Lord will not help us serve the Lord.
Principle #7-Our sinful habits do hurt those who follow us.
Principle #8-It is not possible to fight a fleshly temptation with fleshly weapons.
Principle #9-We lose our freedom to choose when we give in to temptation. Our consequences are inevitable and incalculable and up to God.
Principle #10- God balances guilt with blame. Accept the blame for your actions and God will remove the guilt.

These principles I still apply, as daily I seek to die, their relevance you cannot deny; if on self you once did try. So soon you will reply, “In Him I must rely”!

“To depart from evil, we need a healthy fear of the Lord.  If we not, we will fear what evil will do, rather than what He might do.”

Good morning!  Have you ever been overwhelmed with anxiety just thinking about the possibility of falling back into your besetting sin?  Through the years, I have worked with hundreds of people who were plagued by this very problem.  These dedicated disciples had the right idea in that they eschewed the habits that haunted their pasts; however, they knew not how to be freed from fear of their custom made, designer devils.  In other words, they mistakenly feared the evils that would result from sin rather than setting their fear where it belonged–IN the Lord.

If you have ever been to an RU meeting, you’ve probably noticed how we discourage our students from gloating about their particular stronghold(s).  As we say, “We don’t want to talk about the things we’ve done to God (our addictions), but rather, we want to talk about things God has done for us!”

This is one characteristic that makes Reformers unique from most addiction programs.   Why do you think we do this?  It’s because we understand that in order to depart from evil we must fear our Lord, not our former stronghold (evil).  Therefore, we encourage our students to maintain full and complete focus on the Lord and His goodness-not their habit and its badness; hence, we don’t talk about them with specificity.  You see, when we keep our eyes firmly fixed on the cross, all humanistic issues begin to wane and lose their grasp upon our lives.

Proverbs 19:23 teaches this concept very clearly, “The fear of the Lord [tendeth] to life; and [he that hath it] shall abide satisfied; he shall not be visited with evil.”  The author, wise Solomon, desired to emphasize this truth so much that he referenced “the fear of the Lord” fourteen times in Proverbs– he “says it a lot so it won’t be forgot!”

If you think logically, my friend, it makes good sense.  For our sanctification, God predestined the sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection of His Son that YOUR sin would no longer have power over YOU.  But in order to capitalize on His plan, we must remain focused respectfully on HIM!

Now, you’re probably asking, “how, exactly, do we do this?”  Here are three methods that I have personally found effective:

First, we must immerse ourselves in God’s Word.  The fear of the Lord is best defined as “a recognizing of what God has done and a realizing of what He may very well do-for you, or even to you!”  This recognizing and realizing is actually a reverencing of Him. When we immerse ourselves in God’s word, we experience revelation of His magnificence.  As we see His character and authority through the events and teaching of Scripture, our hearts will be drawn to have a proper reverence toward Him.

Secondly, we must emulate David’s prayer found in Psalm 86:11, “Teach me thy way, O Lord…unite my heart to fear thy name.”  In other words, we must beseech the Lord to connect our hearts (mind, will & emotions) to His, thus developing fear of His name.   God desires to reveal Himself to us and align our hearts to His character.  I can assure you, friend, this prayer He longs to hear that He may soon answer!

Lastly, we must live moment by moment IN God’s presence.  When we overlook that God’s attending our daily schedule with us, we are not living in TRUE reality.  We must cultivate a mindset that is ever aware of His omnipresence.  This mindset will certainly lend to a healthy and regular reset of our fear of the Lord button, so to speak.

So we can conclude that when we live with a perpetual reverence of God’s ability to render according to every man’s work, we will most certainly depart from evil.  Conversely, if we fear the ramifications of our evil deeds and make it our daily meditations, we will most often create a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, that will inevitably lead us back into our designer desires at the hands of our designer devils.

My friend, we have no choice but to fear something; don’t be a slave to evil, rather, depart from it-How?  Count all as LOSS, Focus on the CROSS and Fear The BOSS!!!

Proverbs 22:8 (Dissected and Defined):
He that soweth iniquity (self-righteousness) shall reap vanity (emptiness): and the rod of his anger shall fail (be insufficient).
Daily Devo Paraphrase: Please notice the punctuation mark of the colon.  The colon (:) is a punctuation that precedes an explanation.  I like to say that “the colon keeps things rollin’.”  The colon simply says, “Hey, I’m going to further explain what I just told you.”

He then reveals a Hidden life truth worth enunciating with a deeper explanation.

He that soweth iniquity (self-righteousness): The word sow means “to scatter.”  It is promised that we will reap what we have scattered.  The word reap means “to receive as a return.”  Thus, Solomon says if we try to do right without God’s assistance, (that is self-righteousness) then we will find ourselves doing good, but doing it in our own power.

When we do good in our own power, we will receive nothing in return.  That is what vanity is.  We will not be blessed, and we will not experience joy.  We will never be content.  We are doing good; but absent of the power of God, it is without reward.

He goes on to say…and the rod of his anger shall be insufficient.  The “rod” being spoken of pictures an outgrowth, sort of like a branch or twig.  What he is saying is, “The outgrowth of anger that comes from the miserable sower of self-righteous iniquity will not be enough to turn back the consequences of the harvest he has reaped.”

We will surely be disappointed in a life that is spent in worthless self-righteousness.  We will try so hard to do good, and sometimes we will do good.  Maybe we will even do good often.  But, God will not reward it.  It will be worth nothing.  You and I, when we behave like this and are thus not rewarded, will surely turn to our anger to try to satisfy our frustrations.  But, it will do us no good, for even that effort will bring failure.

So, here is a word of encouragement to those of us who struggle with the rod of self-righteous works:  Lay down your rod and yield to God.

Are you having a hard time enduring the circumstance in which you find yourself? Make no mistake about it, we’ve all been there and will be there again. But some of us have learned a few things through it all; and sometimes it’s helpful to hear from them on the mountain, when you are struggling in the valley. But first, can I share another popular verse with you? You remember it surely. “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations: Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience, But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

Let’s dissect and define a couple of words. The word count here means to consider. Consider it all joy when you fall into divers – again, the same meaning as Peter’s word manifold – or various temptations.

Now what exactly is a temptation? Is it something sinful that you want? Peter taught, as James says, that if you would just count it joy to resist that temptation, you will receive patience. And that patience will have its perfect work, and you will be made entire or whole.

My friend, do you ever feel as though you are facing multiple temptation examinations, and are having a difficult time maintaining joy in the midst? You face whammy after whammy and say, “I would have more joy if I knew there was going to be an end in sight, but it just seems as though this will never end!”

Words mean things and our RU definition teaches us that at times like this, we are actually lacking the cheerful, calm delight and rejoicing in our particular circumstances. Instead, we yield to the frustrations of life. This position can seriously be a place of misery.

Yet, we know in our hearts we are to have joy because the Bible says “count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” But, how do we obtain this joy while being battered and shattered over and over again?

The Bible speaks of two ways in which we are to overcome or resist evil and the evil one. Revelation 12:11 says, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony.”

Let me reiterate, it is through the resistance of the temptation that we experience His spiritual release of joy. We have such a testimony in our lives, times past and in recent times, I am sure. As well, we have the testimony of others, whom have faced temptation and overcame the evil one-oh what joy exudes from the VICTORIOUS Christian life. When I am able though Christ to resist over and over again temptations that come my way, then I will have the “right to delight in my victory over the Dark Knight.”