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How
many times have we all said to ourselves, “I would have done that
if I ….” We have many excuses for why we don’t do certain things.
There are NO EXCUSES for not living in the plan of God. Billions
of years ago, God designed everything that we would need to live
in His plan. He designed equal privilege and equal opportunity for
all of us. We all have the same chance! God wants us to have His
highest and best!
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First of all, under equal privilege and equal opportunity, Jesus
Christ’s work on the cross paid the penalty for the sins of all
humanity. All mankind has the privilege and opportunity to accept
Jesus as their Savior. God has put a desire in the hearts of all
humans to know Him. We have free volition to say “yes” or “no” in
accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior. God makes His Son known to
us through the power of the Holy Spirit in common grace; the Holy
Spirit uses His power to make the gospel clear to us. Once we
understand the gospel, God the Father invites us to believe in
Jesus Christ. That is the best invitation we will ever receive!!!
 If
we don’t choose to believe, we have NO EXCUSES when we come to the
judgment seat of God to say that we didn’t know about the way for
salvation! We all have available to us equal privilege and equal
opportunity!
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Romans
1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of
God for the salvation of everyone who believes;
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Billions of
years ago, God decided on this equal privilege for Church-age
believers: to have their own priesthood! This means that we can
represent (stand for) ourselves before God. We can pray to God the
Father, tell Him our sins (rebound), or carry on a conversation
with Him. He is always there to listen. He never gets tired of
listening to us. We don’t have to have someone else be our priest
or represent us (take our place) before God! We have NO EXCUSES
not to keep in touch with God! We all have just as many privileges
as the other person, no one has more or less. All believers were
chosen to have equal privilege!
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1
Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the
praises of Him Who called you out of darkness into His wonderful
light.
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Also, billions of years ago, God decided that we should have equal
opportunity: logistical grace support and blessings for winner and
loser believers. This means that we have everything that we need
in the natural life and in the spiritual life. In the natural
life, God knew that we would need food, shelter, and clothing. In
the spiritual life, He knew that we would need Bible doctrine and
a way to learn it. God chose, or called, all believers in eternity
past to have equal opportunity.
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2 Peter 1:3 His divine power has given us everything we need for
life [natural life] and godliness [spiritual life] through our
knowledge of Him Who called us by His own glory and goodness
[virtue].
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When we learn and believe Bible
doctrine through the filling of the Holy Spirit, we will be
motivated to use it! We will not put off learning about God, but
we will go forward in His plan for our lives. There is only one
book that has the right motivation for us, THE BIBLE. The Bible is
the thinking of the Lord Jesus Christ. What great thinking!!! It
will get us through good times and bad times! What great
motivation!!!
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Psalm 40:8 I delight to do Your will, Oh my God; Your doctrine
is in my heart [mind]..
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We can have the wrong motivation in life and it
will take us in the wrong direction! If we are not motivated by
the Word of God, we have wrong motivation! So, it is easy to tell
when we are on the wrong track. When we are on the wrong track, we
will get into mental attitude sinning. What a downer!!! It always
comes back to what we are thinking!
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Mathew 7:18 A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad
tree produce good fruit.
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With the wrong thinking, we’ll get into
self-justification. We’ll try to give excuses for our wrong way of
living. We’ll be in self-deception, lying to ourselves! And we
will be self-absorbed. We’ll be thinking so much about ourselves
that we won’t have time for others, and most important, we won’t
have time for God. We’ll be in self-caused misery, the ME, ME, ME
attitude. What an attitude! Our arrogance will cause us to be
blind
to God’s way. How blind can we be? VERY!
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Jeremiah 49:16 As for the terror of you, the arrogance of your
heart has deceived you.
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This arrogance, which deceives us, leads
to all kinds of mental attitude sins. When we are so absorbed with
ourselves, we blame everyone else for our unhappiness. We become
bitter and jealous. We want to get even with those who do bad
things to us. We want to be their judge. We don’t let God handle
these people. We start having thoughts of fear, guilt, worry,
anger and hatred. What a messed up mind! This all happens because
of the wrong motivation in life.
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Proverbs 27:19 As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart [mind]
reflects the man.
Isaiah 44:20 He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him
aside. And he cannot deliver himself, nor say, “Is there not a lie
in my right hand?”
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Using wrong motivation in life will take us away
from what God has planned for us in equal privilege and equal
opportunity. If we go down that road, we won’t have all of the
wonderful blessings God has waiting for us. We won’t bring glory
to God. So, let’s go where God has called us, to His predesigned
plan for our lives. Let’s not use any silly excuses to keep us
from receiving God’s best. We don’t need excuses. God accepts us
the way we are. In our new man we are perfect in His eyes, and all
of the sins that we commit in our old sin nature have been judged
at the cross. WE HAVE NO EXCUSES!
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Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation [guilt] for
those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the
law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and
death.
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In the spiritual life, no one is better or
smarter than anyone else. In God’s eyes we are all the same,
perfect, because we have +R, God’s righteousness. As was said
before, God doesn’t judge our sins committed in our old sin
nature. They have already been judged on the cross! How freeing is
that? We don’t have to compete with others or feel badly about our
lives. In our new nature, God couldn’t love us more than He
already does. He couldn’t love us less, either. Now what is our
excuse?
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Galatians 3:28- 29 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you
belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according
to the promise.
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SINS THAT WILL KEEP US AWAY FROM EQUAL PRIVILEGE, EQUAL
OPPORTUNITY, AND ENJOYING GOD’S BEST FOR US.
ARROGANCE: Being blind to the grace of God. Excessive desire to be
noticed. Needing approval or praise from others. Thinking too
highly of what one has accomplished or owns.
PRIDE: Pre-occupation with self. Not caring about others. Reject
authority. Thinking too highly of what one has accomplished or
owns.
JEALOUSY: Demanding the attention of someone; being possessive of
that person’s love. A cause of anger and revenge; is
self-destructive. Caring too much about what others think of us. A
cause instability and disorder in the life of the believer.
IMPLACABILITY: Inability to be pleased or satisfied.
BITTERNESS: Severe temper, cruel sarcasm, troubled mind.
VINDICTIVENESS: Wanting to cause suffering in others to get even
for an evil or an injury, real or imagined.
GUILT: Putting ourselves down for doing something wrong. It is a
form of arrogance, thinking that we have to do more to get God’s
forgiveness. Insulting God by saying that He hasn’t done all the
work. Not accepting that God treats us in grace. Guilt takes us
away from God and His grace.
WORRY: Being troubled or uneasy in our mind. Being worried about
not having what we need. Forgetting that God has and will supply
all of our needs!
DON’T MAKE ANY OF THESE SINS A LIFESTYLE!
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NO EXCUSES
References used:
Robert R.McLaughlin Bible Ministries
www.gbible.org
The Doctrine of
the 10 Problem-Solving Devices
Lessons: 8/16-18/06
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