Honoring the Lord

We are entering a season Saints, where it is imperative that we develop a spirit and posture of honoring the Lord. If I am discerning the spirit of the times correctly, we are getting ready to enter a Season of Divine Judgment, and when this happens, the people of God must make sure that they are walking in a spirit of fear and reverence before the Lord.When we talk about the Judgment of God, the automatic connotation of it is negative. However, it doesn't have to be. Judgment is deliberation, assessment or evaluation. It's the passing out of God's divine grades. So if you get an A in the class, Judgment is a good thing. If you get an F, it's probably not something you're looking forward to. This is the season for which we are entering. But whatever your grade is, be not presumptuous, make sure that you're walking in a spirit that Honors the Lord.

One of the primary areas for which we need to honor the Lord is in our Giving. The Bible says to honor the Lord with our substance (or finances) (Proverbs 3). There are still too many Christians that are not giving God what they owe Him financially. At the bare minimum we owe God the tenth of what we financially earn (Malachi 3). You can't be honoring God and robbing Him at the same time. However, there are others that have been tithing for a long time, and God is calling you to give more. It's called sacrificial giving, and it doesn't always have to be to the church. Sometimes God will call you to give to a ministry. Sometimes He will call you to sow to someone in need. Sometimes there's a special cause that He's ordained you to financially support. But whatever it is, be obedient to the will of God and honor Him with your finances.

Another way God wants us to honor Him is with our bodies. Romans chapter 12 instructs us to present our bodies to the Lord as a Living Sacrifice, and that this is our reasonable service. Many times, when Christians read this text, they automatically think about sex. Yes, this reference is applicable to that subject, but it's not restricted thereto. One of the things that the Lord is continuing to show me is how we dishonor Him by the way we eat. If we were to be honest, and this includes a lot of Christians (particularly us preachers), our eating habits could be described as extremely dysfunctional. The older I get the more the Lord has to "tweak" how I eat. Remember that the Scriptures describe our bodies as the Temple of the Lord (1Corinthians 6). Yet we put all types of smoke, liquor, sweets (personal conviction), fast food and other toxins that just flat out are not healthy. This is not honoring to the Lord. Would you want to live in a house that 's always being bombarded with toxic material? I thought not, and neither does the Lord! Let's honor Him by taking better care of the vessels in which He resides.

The last thing we want to touch on in terms of honoring the Lord is with our minds. The Bible says to "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2). Whether we as Christians are willing to admit it or not, we don't have the right to think however we want to think. We have a Cognitive Mandate from Christ to think like Him. So if you're walking around with bitterness in your heart, you're not honoring God. If you're walking around with lust in your heart, you're not honoring God. If you're walking around with pride and arrogance and conceit in your heart, you're not honoring God. God is meek and lowly in heart, always forgiving our sins (Matthew 11, Ephesians 4). There are some thought-patterns that we as Christians have adopted that do not reflect the Mind of Christ. We need to repent! And let the Holy Spirit transform us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12). Saints, God has been too good and He's been too faithful for us to continue in our carnal ways. Let's Honor Him and submit to His Divine Will for our lives.