Follow God, How? What it means to follow God?| My Misconceptions

Have you follow these things with the thought of fulfilling the will of God?

Or you ought to do these things so that God may hear your prayers?

I have…

Here are my misconceptions about how to follow God’s word / God’s righteousness.

·        Go to Church

It is always rejuvenating whenever I hear the Word of God but right after church its always hard to face rude people, especially people who constantly wronged you.

No matter how the priest say ‘forgive those who wronged you’, it is never easy to move around that person.

I always tend to magnify that they are wrong and they should change on their own.

How to Follow God in These Situation?

I will try to quote a bible verse that speaks aloud to my heart about these situations;

I don’t have any bible verse for this first bullet. LOL.

But for sure, going to church and have fellowship to other believers is always a good thing.

But at one point in my life, I know for sure, that going to Church is not enough to make God happy because of how I behave after going to church.

·        Give coins to beggars

I have this silly thought in my mind that whenever I give coins to the needy, that somehow, I hope that God hears my prayer about money too.

Yes I give money to the needy with the thought of ‘I hope God answers my prayers too’.

How to Follow God in These Situation?

I love these Bible Verse:

There will always be poor.

          Deuteronomy 15:11

There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land. 

I think God is ok when we help the poor especially our neighbors who asks for help.

In my humble opinion I think God is happy when we understand the needs of other people, even we don’t have the capacity to help.

Ignoring them means ignoring God himself.

Just like Jesus said.

I was hungry and you give me food, I am cold and you give me clothes to wear, I was a prisoner and you visited me. (apologies for the verse, please look it up to a bible for the exact words) Mathew 25:35-40

Whatever you do to the least of your brethren you do it to me.

Praise God.

·        Stay silent/ don’t fight back when people wronged you

I thought that I am following God when I stay silent and do not fight back to people who wronged me. But this hatred becomes a fuel to worse sin. That is to gossip and spread strife to everyone- which is so unacceptable and disgusted by the Lord.

          Proverbs 6:16

There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to  him.

          Proverbs 6:19

A false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.

So I thought when I am angry to someone, better I confront them rather than make a bigger sin to the Lord.

Put the fire out before it burns down the whole house.

·        Smile even though you don’t like the person

Ok I admit it, I don’t get along to a lot of people, but this comes down to wrong view of people.

I view myself as a victim, I always see the flaws of people, which fuels me to hate them and sin to God most of all.

How to Follow God in These Situation? 

Like I said up, confront the other party immediately rather than give room for even worse sin against God.

·        Pray always for the wrong things like money and good career

Yes, I do pray to the Lord a lot to fulfill the desires of my heart.

Are you familiar to this verse..

Mathew 6:33

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

I am claiming this verse all the time.

But I think I am praying for the wrong thing.

Nobody in the bible asked for money and God granted it.

The only person I read in the bible who ask for material things is Jacob. Genesis  28:20

When he was running away from the wrath of his brother Esau, Jacob asked God to provide food and clothing and be successful on his journey to the place of his uncle.

I think sometimes we ought to create a small world inside our head and fit our reality to this verse. Saying to ourselves “God is rich of course He will not let me to be poor”.

I now realize that what I am asking for, money, should not be asked to God. Just the basic needs are more than enough. If you really follow God, you will not have this need of luxurious things, this and that, because this will be unimportant to you.

You will know that following righteousness and getting along with a lot of people is rewarding enough.

·        Pray for failures of my enemy

Guilty.

Yes, I always tend to do this because of my wrong perception of dealing with other people.

When you have the wrong view of what is happening around, you tend to hate the people who do wrong. Like people who gossips about you, or saying nasty things about you, ignores you when you meet them on walkway and says bad things about your work.

Who wouldn’t hate a person like that?

How to Follow God in These Situation?

But the Godly perspective means, at least of what I understand, the enemy is constantly pushing us to do bad things to each other which leads us to grow far away from God.

By the way the enemy is not your co-worker, relatives or friends, the enemy is the enemy of God.

Just like what happened to Job’s wife.

Job’s wife becomes the mouthpiece of the enemy, and just hate God for the things that happens to you.

And I realize, when we get angry to people, friends, colleagues, sister, brother, mother or father, we are fulfilling the motives of the enemy and that is to hate each other and grow far from God.

The bible is very clear that we should be at peace with everybody.

          Romans 12:18

If its possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

And when we are at war with everyone around us, we tend to blame everything at God.

Its like a domino and the ultimate goal is to be far away with the Lord.

Final Thoughts

I hope you get an insight of what it means to follow God’s will.

This is just how I interpret the following verses I sited up, but it can have a different revelation for you and that is ok.

As long as the ultimate goal is to grow closer to our Lord Jesus.

Following God’s will does not mean going to church and still hating your neighbor when you get home.

It does not mean staying silent but having a huge grudge in your heart, instead be bold and talk it through and be at peace with everybody as much as possible,

It does not mean to ask for money, but follow the example of Jacob to just ask for the basic needs.

It does not mean to pray for the downfall of your enemy, but to be at peace with them just like Isaac when he choose not to quarrel over a well and just move on and dug another one. Genesis 26:19-21

God is our greatest provision and He will supply all our needs.

That is it for now.

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