UCAN CG sharing: Defiance Key Scripture: Rev. 9:20-21 Defiance: a daring or bold resistance to authority or to any opposing force. Dictionary Main idea: God’s idea from the beginning in Genesis has been to show man how much he needs God. Yet from Genesis to Revelation we see that man’s heart is defiant to God. Man by nature tries to stand against God and seek his own way. This can be seen throughout the bible even the lives of the patriarchs. Yet in the ultimate rebellion against God which can be seen when God’s wrath is unleashed on man still men says no to God. We must learn that we are this way too. Accepting this we must strive to be humble and obedient. The Issue: Read Rev. 9:20-21 If we take a close look from Genesis to revelation we can see that God is constantly revealing to man, man’s inability to live right. God thus reaches out to man because if God didn’t man would never seek God (Rom. 3:10-12). We would be happily lost creating worthless religions and idols. Even in the perfection of the Garden of Eden we can see that man given a choice between perfect communion with God or living by his own will, chooses to go it alone. Adam chose to sin rather than obey God and we all inherited this same heart attitude. Man wants to be in control of his own life. For a Christian it is vital that we see that every time we sin we are saying to God I want my own way not yours. This is the definition of sin, the act of selecting to do something other than God’s will. Every time we do what we want we are saying we know better than God and want to run our own lives. This is defiance, a resistance to submitting to God’s love. As a result we bring hardship and troubles in to our lives. Example is the Tower of Babel, man wanting to reach to heaven didn’t listen to God but thought themselves good and they tried to build it. What resulted was confusion and chaos (Gen. 11:3-4). So it will be for anyone who acts independent of God. God out of his love for man will continue to reach out to anyone who will receive his son Jesus. During the Tribulation, a period of seven years when the church is gone (Raptured) and God pours his wrath on wicked man we can see that even as man sees God’s might and authority he will still rebel and defy God his only hope. The Tribulation is man’s final chance to repent and the passage says many will not. Such is the spirit of defiance in all men. In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit. Judges 21:25 The Discussion: 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 1 Tim 2:4 God wants all to be saved but not all will chose to be saved. Love must have a choice and so many will say no to God and live apart from Him. Ultimately this means eternal damnation since this is what life apart from God is. So for those of us who love God and truly yearn to spend eternity with him we must deal with our rebellious and defiant spirit. Now if a person truly wants to be with God then he or she must see that they need help to do so because our nature, our flesh, fights against surrendering to God. We want to do what we think it best and not submit to God. But if we examine the lives in the bible who tried this we can see that this is total foolishness. It doesn’t work. Man in no way can run his own life and find spiritual success. So we must begin by agreeing with God that we need Him. Next we must decide that we will fight our flesh and kill it daily. We can’t do it on our own we need God to do it but we must agree with him. All this requires humility. Humility is opposite of pride so we must ask God to reveal all the pride in our lives and we must repent. As we do this consistently God’s Spirit will give us more power to live beyond our flesh and we are set free. So the key to losing our defiance is to increase our humility. Phil 2:8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-even death on a cross. Jesus set the example that as we obey and humble ourselves we will lose the defiant spirit because we choose to bow down before God and willingly obey him. Then God will lift us up. For the passage goes on “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place..”V9 As we fight our rebellious spirit by the grace of God he will lift us up too and bring us in to closer relationship with himself. It all starts by being aware that we all have this defiant nature in us. And that this spirit will keep us from God. If we really see who we are and how needy we are spiritually and God is offering so much we will want to humble ourselves and obey. Note: For anyone who has ever been around children much this idea of defiance has been witnessed. If you watch little children and their parents often you will see even very small children defying their parents as if they know better. This lets us know that the spirit of defiance or rebellion is in all of us even at a young age. In fact as we grow it grows too. Ask the parent of a teenager. Now if you are a loving almighty God who wants his created children to be with him eternally then you got to figure out a way to get them to recognize how bad we really are and then by the Holy Spirit convicts them of their sins. If they cry out and want Jesus than salvation has come and the process of changing in to Jesus (sanctification) begins. We are the problem because we don’t understand what God is doing and we don’t cooperate. We are foolish and believe that we know what is best despite the entire bible. So we try to run our own lives and end up causing so much heartache for ourselves. For us Christians this means we look more like the world than Jesus and we lack the power and joy of the true Christian experience. We can all learn to see how defiant we are as God asks us to obey. Remember all He does is for our benefit and remember that you won’t like it but just trust God and do it and you will see that it is better.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 07:38:58 +0000
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