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Honoring God with Your Decisions

This week on Better Together, Priscilla Shirer leads a refreshing conversation about how we can honor God with the decisions we make everyday. Join the conversation as Laurie Crouch, Chrystal Evans Hurst, Victoria Osteen, and Elaine Fisher discuss walking by the Spirit and denying your flesh.

To daily take up our cross and follow Him.
There’s this denying and then there’s this choosing to walk in a different direction that we honor God.
This to me is a daily decision. It’s not like a once in a lifetime, I’m gonna follow God there.
You can have it. No, it’s every day.
There are gonna be choices that in the moment I want to, to operate out of the flesh.
I want to respond in a certain way or do something that feels better to me in terms of how I respond to somebody or I wanna win the argument or whatever.
Or I choose to trust in the empowerment of the spirit to walk in a way that will honor Him.
At least one of the benefits that come out of tough times in our individual lives is that we come out of that tunnel to the other side that we never thought we’d make it through.
And then the Lord gives us opportunity to comfort those with the comfort that we have been given and to give them that same hope that listen, I just went through this tunnel and made it out.
Let me tell you and let me show you how the Holy Spirit helped me how um prayer works, how you know, community during my time of suffering was so important people encouraging me.
Now let me offer that same encouragement to you.
Um Victoria, you know, your, your husband did that for me. He called me while mom was sick.
And I mean, that man encouraged me and just said, you know, we, we walked through real difficult times as well.
So let me remind you of some of the things that it’s so easy either to forget or to just have so doled and push down underneath all of the, the um urgent sort of things that are that you’re facing in the middle of a crisis.
It can be so dull that you just need someone to come alongside of you and say, let me remind you of who Jesus is that he still is who he says he is that he is still able and fully capable of covering you and your family to have people’s voices in your ear.
Who can remind you of that and can also give you perspective from their own seasons of suffering.
It buoys you up and keeps you going to the next 24 hours like nothing else like nothing else.
Yeah. You know, I, I always think going through suffering and hardships and people dying that you believed God for.
Yeah, I mean, we’ve, we’ve all put our faith on the line for so many things and just God, please, you know, please let this happen.
And, and to think that Jesus got the Father’s no as well.
You know, he, he got, he got God’s no. And so I think praying, the Get’s prayer, it’s, it’s God.
I know you can, I know you can deliver me. I know you can do this.
I know you’re the great physician.
I know you, you know, you are the, the father to the fatherless and the husband to the husband list and all the things that you are.
You’re the great physician and I know you can do it.
But if you don’t, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. And Jesus had to do that.
Please let this cup pass from me.
We can, we can say who God is and then we can pray God. Please don’t make me do this.
Don’t let, don’t let me and my Children have to walk this road.
But then it’s, but not my will but dying be done.
You know, and, and knowing the faithfulness and the love of God and the comfort of the Holy Spirit to take us and the grace and the mercy of God to bring us out of those times to, to, to strengthen us.
I mean, think about some of the hardest things you’ve gone through. It makes you who you are today.
You, you absolutely the tenacity.
I mean, if it’s given me nothing but tenacity to believe God even harder the next time, whether it happened or not, it, it does something on the inside of us to strengthen our faith.
I believe. If you don’t let go, if you don’t stop, if you don’t give up and you know, and don’t you think that we have to re retrain our own thinking and make sure we do this with the Children or the other people that we’re discipline and pouring into as Christians, we can tend to think or pretend that a good life is mutually exclusive of pain, a painful life that those two things can’t exist.
That we’re, we’re striving for ease and happiness and we’re looking for that.
And I know people that’s, that’s kind of a, a western kind of perspective on, on being a believer that ease is what we’re after.
That happiness is what we’re after. There are some people Christians in other parts of the world.
Um I remember someone saying to me that that lives in another part of the world that when there is suffering happening amongst them, that their first prayer is not deliverance from that suffering.
They pray that too. But that’s not the first prayer.
The first prayer is Lord help me to glorify you in this suffering while I’m here since I’m here.
Can your name be made great somehow through the suffering? Now, Lord, yes, heal and deliver and free.
And we know you can do all that.
But while, while you’re gonna leave us here in this moment for whatever time frame it is a week or a month or whatever Lord would your name be made great while we’re here?
And I just thought it, it’s important for me.
And then as even as I talk to my sons about what it means to, to walk with the Lord and be a believer and be a Christian, it doesn’t mean ease.
It means that when there is pain and suffering, God can still be glorified through your life and that he is fully able to turn the situation around.
But since life is going to come with difficulty and it is you, you don’t have to go looking for the storms of life.
You just keep living and the storms somehow find you.
So since that’s going to happen, then we at least need to be mindful of praying.
Ok, Lord, why have you allowed me to be in this pocket?
And would you be glorified through the way I respond, the decisions I make the way I treat others while I’m in it.
Let me glorify you while I’m here, we’re gonna have to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to forgive like that, to live like that, to walk in compassion when people are wronging us or have wronged us or offended us.
I heard someone say you’ve probably heard this before.
That unforgiveness is like drinking poison and wanting it to kill the other person, but you’re consuming that over and over and over again.
And so that idea that, you know, if you knew that you were taking in something that was poisonous in a physical sense and it was what was keeping you toxic and not feeling well and not able to function in all areas of your life.
Well, physically, well, we would stop taking that substance.
But if we know that unforgiveness is what is doing that spiritually, we’re less willing to put down that cup and stop drinking that unforgiveness.
Um But it is toxic to us and it’s toxic in a spiritual sense and it’s toxic in a physical sense.
I mean, people’s actual physical bodies are breaking down under the weight of carrying um unforgiveness throughout throughout their lives.
And so I think this is an important conversation.
Um I wish I was just looking on my phone for a second to try to find the exact verse.
But the Apostle Paul talks about forgiveness and this beautiful verse, he says, forgive and extend kindness to the person that you’ve forgiven.
Basically, it’s almost like when we’re dealing with the layers of forgiveness, as you mentioned, crystal.
It’s almost like he’s saying, what will help you.
And the other person is not only if you just say you forgive, which is important, believe, have faith that you are forgiving this person, but also walking in that actual forgiveness by extending an intentional act of kindness, whether it is just a smile across the, you know, you see them somewhere and you smile at them or text to say happy birthday on their birthday or you take that meal when they’re sick and something’s going on what that does for you and continuing to solidify the work of forgiveness in you and also what it does for them and maybe getting them off of that walking on eggshells and pins and needles wondering whether or not they’ve been forgiven or even cracking down or, or chiseling away at the hardness of heart of that person.
Maybe that has not said they’re sorry.
Um But maybe it chisels away a little bit when you continue to walk in that forgiveness, what it does for you, but also what it does for them is what I think that the Apostle Paul was getting at forgive but extend an act of comfort or kindness to that person.
And I think that helps us to get through the layers and to the depths of making sure we’re actually forgiving that person and walking in it in a practical way.
You know, when you just said it’s like drinking poison and expecting it to kill the other person.
I was just thinking, why would I be drinking poison? Yeah, like yeah, why?
And I think there’s a variety of reasons one is that you don’t realize that it’s poison.
But I was thinking it made me think about, you know, people say all the time about how you, you are what you eat and, you know, if you know this stuff isn’t good for you, why do you eat it?
Well, sometimes it tastes good. Exactly. Exactly.
But if you’ve ever had something for the first time that maybe initially isn’t your favorite and then you keep eating it after a while, you get used to it.
I think unforgiveness after a while tastes good.
Like you actually can become used to comfortable with the feeling of I’m not giving you what you need, especially if you talk about it, especially if you get on unforgiveness.
Yeah. And so I’m thinking about the person who’s listening to you and as we’re talking, they’re like, that’s cute.
You know, like I’m, I’m, you know, because you start to feel the power of the Holy Spirit as he’s moving and you, you start to feel that conviction and I’ve seen women do it.
I’ve seen him go. Oh, yeah. But I’m not calling her. You know what I mean?
You can see the rea, and I’ve seen this in my own life where there was something that’s so hard or forgiveness is so what I don’t want to do that I’m willing to sit with the thing that’s not good for me because it’s hard to go on a diet.
Well, also you may have to change your friend group because you have to change by the negative thing that you have to make the change, right?
You have to make those changes.
And so, you know, I’m just thinking about the person who’s watching and we, we said that, but I just want to underscore that poison just because you don’t feel like it’s killing you doesn’t mean that it’s not having an adverse reaction in your own heart and mind forgiveness if you know that there’s someone that you haven’t forgiven if there’s, I’m sitting here going ok, Let, let me, let me like, you know, what do I want to get out of my system?
That is not good for me because I am not actively thinking, how can I forgive and how can I show kindness?
Galatians? 51 says that it is for freedom that we have been set free, therefore stand firm and don’t be subject again to a yoke of slavery.
So that’s my favorite verse. That verse leads into this whole chapter about walking by the spirit and not walking by the flesh about this daily choice we have to make to choose the things that will honor God in our life and trusting in the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to do those things.
But then also simultaneously denying our flesh’s continuous desire to walk in a particular direction or pursue certain things that are gonna produce things that are contrary to what it means to walk by the spirit.
So there is this choice that we’re having to make just like Jesus did on his way to the cross to bear the burden of actually carrying his own cross to his crucifixion.
And we are instructed in a way to do the same to, to daily take up our cross and follow Him.
There’s this denying and then there’s this choosing to walk in a different direction that will honor God.
This to me is a daily decision. It’s not like a once in a lifetime, I’m gonna follow God there.
You can have it. No, it’s every day.
There are gonna be choices that in the moment I want to operate out of the flesh.
I want to respond in a certain way or do something that feels better to me in terms of how I respond to somebody or I want to win the argument or whatever, or I choose to trust in the empowerment of the spirit to walk in a way that will honor Him.
So I wanna talk about that just a little bit and sort of personalize this.
Um You know, Jesus carrying his cross and what it means now as followers of Jesus to deny ourselves and take up our cross on a daily basis.
What does that look like for you all?
How are you seeing it outworked in your life as to what walking by the spirit means and denying the flesh?
And then what are the benefits that you’re seeing that come to your life and your relationships as a result of that choice?
You know, I think if you just broke it down to super simple in your daily choices of want in your own way, you know, something doesn’t feel good, you know, kick it to the curb.
You know, all those choices that we make during the day.
If I take that moment to decide to act by the flesh or say something snappy or do I always regret it?
It comes with pain. And I notice that the longer that I live, if I have now, if I make a mental note, OK, I could choose this or I could choose this and I choose the bad one.
There’s always regret. There’s always a kick in the pants from it in my own personal life.
You know, and I think that when we choose to follow Christ, we choose daily, we choose every to, to make every moment count, glorifying God in, in, in our actions and our deed and our service and, and everything that we do.
And I think um taking up your cross and following Him is just a change of your perspective, a change of your plans, a change.
When I decide to follow Christ, I am going to choose to do what he’s called me to do.
Not just my own fleshly desires. Yeah.
And that denial, that denial can be hard because it could be things that obviously are appeasing to your flesh.
But it can also be things that are worthy goals, but maybe in a certain season of life.
That’s not where the Lord has asked you to invest your time, your energy and effort.
We were talking about that just a little bit.
And so it’s a denial of maybe what are worthy but just not right now. They’re not for right now.
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