Whose Standard?

I have been reflecting on two things; righteousness and wickedness and skimming popular understanding from the Biblical one.

What do you thing wickedness is according to the Bible? What about righteousness?

Does it surprise you that sin and evil are not the determinants when we look at the Bible?

And we will start at some Biblical examples.

Look at Cain. Was he wicked because he killed or did he kill because he was wicked?

Let us also look at Esau. Was he a thief or adulterer or even a murderer? Wasn’t he an honest and hardworking son that his father loved to even forget prophecy?

Wasn’t Jacob the conman, from his name to his character? Why dies the Bible term Cain wicked then?

According to the Bible, what determines whether one is righteous or wicked is the course of his heart.

Simply speaking, the righteous have their lives governed by God and their pursuit of Him. The wicked are self made and self making men. Their lives revolve around themselves and their interests. They are the points of reference and the determinants of the way their lives turn out.

Another aspect of wickedness is those whose lives are run through popular acclaim. In other words they depend on others to determine what is good or bad. Fashion determines for the most part how their life is run. And by fashion I am not just talking about dressing.

Who determines your pursuits? What makes you do what you do?

How fresh is your revelation?

You see, God is always doing a new thing. Yesterday’s miracle is already expired. Doing what God told you yesterday may therefore be outside his revelation today. Repeating yesterday’s command today may be relying on stale revelation.

Though God does not change, we should never forget that He is the creator and especially that He creates from nothing. It means that yesterday’s raw materials are totally useless today as God is never short of materials for anything. His level of creativity is beyond anything we can comprehend.

Two things are constant; God and His word. Everything else, even His doings, is subject to change.

Do you remember what disqualified Moses from the Promised Land? Didn’t he repeat a miracle he had performed earlier? And it was God who had issued the earlier command.

Doing things just because they have always been done that way could therefore very easily open you to judgment like happened to Moses.

Ever heard a song that was so fresh that your heart glowed any time you heard it? Then you heard someone else copying it expertly but then feel nothing.

Ever heard a sermon move you so powerfully that your whole life changed? Then you heard the same person preaching it more or less as well as when you first heard it and it tastes to your spirit as gravel in your mouth.

That is what I am pointing at. God moves to something else once His word and revelation has accomplished what He had sent it for. We are therefore laboring in vain when we replicate the freshness of those revelations. The cloud moved.

That is why a generation after revival is a very dangerous one for the move of God as they seek to recreate things that had run their course.

God will use someone to work miracles for a season for His own purpose and the person gets stuck there and refuses to move to any other command. When the miracles dry, as they sometimes may do, they somehow must recreate them whatever means they will use.

God will use someone in music to draw people to Himself and the same person goes on strike when a different order comes from heaven.

Do you now understand where this passage comes from?

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matthew 7: 21- 23)

Where are you in this?