Before there were Kings: The Appearance of Godliness

“Israel would appear to be godly, but they were missing it…

Israel had grown cold in God, and the active presence of God had become rare…

They remembered the forms of the past… The Ark of Covenant leading them in crossed the Jordan River during flood stage and in their march around Jericho… they thought it was a guarantee of victory…

In remembering these victories, they missed that these were God directed moves… they were trusting in the form, they thought that bring the Ark into battle would summon the power for victory… a form over God’s presence never works…

Our enemy is real, and if we’re coming at him with forms and not the presence of God, our defeat is going to be the only outcome…

Don’t go to a knife fight with a Nerf ball…

They were going into battle doing what seemed to be Godly, but because of their lack of relationship with God were in fact only doing what they wanted moving outside of the will of God… Darkness was light to them…

Function must supersede form…

The function of the presence of God must be placed over the appearance of the presence of God… we must move beyond the appearance of things…

It wasn’t about going through a form that seemed godly that would give them victory, it was about turning their hearts toward God…

Many have a form of “spirituality” of “godliness” but deny His power for freedom… it’s God’s desire to move us from the place where we found Him…

The power of God is to free us from sinful characteristics, not give us license to continue in them…

God doesn’t want us to have a relationship of intellectual assent toward God…

God doesn’t want us to be deceived, thinking we are well when we are not…

God’s willing and loving enough to tell us if we have broccoli in our teeth…

He desires that we have a relationship that springs from a heart that is madly in love with our God of mercy, grace and justice, and from that place truth will flow and be lived out within our lives…

We should never be content with a form of godliness that denies the power that is only found in the presence and proximity of God…

God wants us to have victory in life and over those things that would bind us, but these victories are not found in forms, but in the abiding presence of God…”

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