When we repent, we ask God to forgive us of our sins. But Who is God? This daily devotional reviews Who God is and His take on sin and restoration.
Devotions in the Self-Discipline Review series
All year, we’ve been looking at self-discipline. We looked at self-discipline as the operational plan for self-control because it talked about improvement.
We are reviewing everything and hopefully putting all of the building blocks together. What I am doing is going through all of the devotions for the year and pulling out the nuggets.
I am formatting this as a glossary page. If I already have one, I will combine them later.
God wants us to repent. God wants our relationships with Him to be restored. In order to restore our relationship, we have to obey Him (What Happens When We Repent?).
We have to follow God’s laws. Strictly follow God’s laws. To the letter. All the time. If we don’t, we have to repent (How Did Moses Say Goodbye?).
Who Is God?
God is Sovereign God. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent (What Is Obedience?).
We have to believe Who God is. God was not created. God has always been here and will always be here. He has no beginning or end. He is not going to die (Who Is God?).
God is in all because He created everything (Who Is God?).
The only clue about how God made things is that we are told over and over again that “Then God said” and gave instructions on what to create. We are also told that He stretched out His arm. After God spoke and raised His arm, we have no idea how His words came into being. We don’t know how long it took to come into fruition. All we know — all we need to know — is God spoke with raised arm, and things were created. The how isn’t as important as the Who (Who Is God?).
God has to be powerful because He rose Jesus from the grave. That power is at work in disciples (Who Is God?)
God knows all that has happened before, all that is happening now, and all that will happen in the future. He allows it to happen (God Teaches Us Obedience).
The qualities of God are His holiness and righteousness. Those are what we are to imitate (Eph. 5: 1) (What Is Self-Discipline?).
God sees everything perfectly (Characteristics of Disciples’ Lives).
God loves us unconditionally. No, that doesn’t mean He gives us pass when we don’t follow His laws and commandments. It means God loves us as a parent would (Who Is God?).
God does love us before we put our faith and trust in Him — but He loves us much more so afterwards (How Does Moses Say Goodbye?).
Look what David called God — my God. He made this personal — relational (God Teaches Us Obedience).
God doesn’t want us to just pray occasionally. He wants regular communication (Isn’t It Impossible to be Obedient?).
To many, God is god in name only. It isn’t because He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. Instead, we do try to bring God to our level. We box Him up so He will do only what we want Him to do. That isn’t devotion (Devoted to Prayer).
God has one purpose — to further His kingdom. He does that by choosing to show us grace and mercy. He is not going to change His purpose (Blessings, not Curses).
God has already spoken. Now, the choice is up to us (What Is Sin?).
See Also
God’s Take on Sin
When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, they had face-to-face contact with God. That made their ability to establish a relationship with Him easy. God is going to help us in every way He know how to help us be successful in resisting the temptation. We just have to put our faith and trust in Him.
However, after the original sin, that contact was eliminated. We had to do something different to contact God (What Is Prayer?)
When mankind originally disobeyed Him, God could have written us off. He could have closed the door and not had anything to do with us ever again. Or worse, He could have just killed us. Instead, God showed us mercy (What Is Obedience?).
Sin is whatever God says is a sin (What Is Sin?).
Satan is the one who brought murder, theft, and all the other bad things into the world. That necessitated God giving us laws to bring us back to how He wanted us to live (How Do We Let the Spirit Lead?).
The separation from God is heart-wrenching (What Is Self-Discipline?).
Because of God’s infinite grace, He devised the plan of salvation that made Jesus our Redeemer in order to forgive us of our sins (How Do We Benefit from Being God’s People?).
God is really good at showing our sins to us. He wants us to see them as He sees them so that we can eradicate them. There is no compromise there (Isn’t It Impossible to be Obedient?; The Battle between Flesh and Spirit).
Our sins have been forgiven when we admit our sins, believe Jesus to be our Savior and Redeemer and confess God as our Sovereign Lord, but we have some obligations toward God (Out with the Old; In with the New).
Unfortunately, we continue to sin after we ABCD (What Does It Mean to Walk in the Spirit?).
The ABCDs of Salvation
If you have not become a believer in Christ, please read through the
Plan of Salvation and prayerfully consider what God is asking you to do.
A – admit our sins
B – believe His Son Jesus is our Redeemer
C – confess God as Sovereign Lord
D – demonstrate that commitment by making any changes needed in our lives to
live the way in which God has called us
The Disciple’s Job Description
God does not get tired of hearing our forgive-me prayers (Devoted to Prayer).
The point it is making is we have to watch for temptations to come. Yes, God could just step in and save us — but He probably isn’t going to do that (Watching while Praying).
God is going to help us in every way He know how to help us be successful in resisting the temptation. We just have to put our faith and trust in Him (What Is Sin?).
God tests us but does not tempt us. Satan tempts us but, really, can do nothing about it (What Is Self-Discipline?).
Once we live as God intended us, we do not need the laws. There will be no use for them because we will be living perfect lives. There is a big gap, however, of where we are and where God expects us to be when we are perfect. The Holy Spirit is there to guide us toward perfection to live (How Do We Let the Spirit Lead?).
God doesn’t say we can keep part of His commandments but can slide on others. He doesn’t say we can keep some of them only some of the time (The Battle between Flesh and Spirit).
We may feel like our sins are too big or too bad for God to forgive. That is not true. There is only one sin that God will not forgive — and that is unbelief (Sins against God).
See Also
God’s Take on Restoration
We don’t have to clean up our acts before God forgives us. That comes after when we are working out our salvation (How Do We Benefit from Being God’s People?).
God gives us laws and commandments to follow. These are stated in the Bible.
God’s instructions — His laws and commandments — tell us the right end and the right way to get there (The Correlation between Fear of the Lord, Wisdom, and Obedience).
They not only tells us how we should and should not act, but they also tell us of God’s character (What Is Obedience?).
We have to remember that God does not force His laws and commandments on us. He has given us our own free will (What Is Self-Discipline?).
God still leaves us with free will. We still have to choose — daily — whether we are going to follow Him that day or not (The Battle between Flesh and Spirit).
God built by a sincere life of conscientious obedience to His laws and commandments. It is more the right principles under which we live (Who Is God?).
If we follow God’s laws and commandments, our soul will continue to be changed from spiritually dead to spiritually alive. Our character will improve because we will be imitating God as the laws show us His character. We will conduct ourselves morally. We will want to spend time with God to strengthen our relationships with Him (How Did Moses Say Goodbye?).
Obeying God’s Word is not optional. Some things don’t give us wiggle room. There is no fudging with God’s laws and commandments (What Is Obedience?).
Keeping God’s laws and commandments all boils down to love for God. If we love God, we are going to want to please Him. Keeping the laws and commandments expresses that love (Isn’t It Impossible to be Obedient?).
If we love God, our obedience stems from that love. If we love God, we are going to want to please Him. Keeping the laws and commandments expresses that love (What Is Obedience?).
That means God’s laws and commandments are true because they came from Him (What Is Obedience?).
Just following the rules isn’t it. It isn’t about us and what we can do. It is about God and what He has done through Jesus’ sacrifice (What Is Self-Discipline?).
Being a good person does not make us closer to God — unless we have made the decision to accept Jesus as our Savior and God as our Sovereign God. It isn’t about obedience. It is about a relationship (What Is Self-Discipline?).
Paul’s best advice was to walk in the Spirit (Gal. 5: 16-25). We can’t do it on our own. Self-discipline has to be God-discipline (What Is Self-Discipline?).
God gives us access to the Spirit upon conversion (What Does It Mean to Walk in the Spirit?).
That is our Sovereign God coming to dwell within us by placing His Holy Spirit within us (What Does It Mean to Walk in the Spirit?).
God chose a part of Himself to come to earth to live, die, and rise again to fix all the broken things. He sends another part of Himself to be with us 24/7 — that is the Holy Spirit (How Do We Let the Spirit Lead?).
Salivation breaks the bondage from Satan when he got Eve to believe that she previously had been in bondage to God (How Do We Let the Spirit Lead?).
God teaches us to submit. We can’t do that on our own. Our human nature is generally taught that we should be independent. We need Him to teach us how to do it right (God Teaches Us Obedience).
Only God is going to be able to teach us His Will. He does that through the Holy Spirit (God Teaches Us Obedience).
God is very accessible to us. He just requires one thing – submission. We have to approach Him in faith and reverence. If we don’t do that, He doesn’t have to acknowledge us (Can God See Us If We are Sinners?).
See Also
Father God. You are sovereign Lord. Yet, You love us and want us to restore our relationships with You. To do that, we ask Your forgiveness of our sins. Help us to live for You. Amen.
What do you think?
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