Worldliness Prevents True Strength From Operating In My Life

In the Bible, loyalty to God is defined as a willingness to let go of strength, opportunity, ability, and will BECAUSE of a trust in God.

Jesus could have done anything, but He only did what the Father told Him to.  The fact that He didn't use all of His strength, ability, opportunity, and that He laid down His own will, was a demonstration of loyalty to God.

Loyalty to God is also the door that God's strength enters my life.  It's not a choice for less, it's a choice for more.  

It takes confidence in who God is, what the Bible calls faith, to be loyal to Him.

*Politics/human power

*Money

*Identity

*Perceived success

*Lust

*Fear

^These, and many more, called "worldliness" or "mammon" are off-ramps to true power. When the church divides herself between God and these she is lukewarm, AND disloyal.

1 John 2:15-17 NKJV — Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.

God hates the disloyalty of compromise between God and worldliness because it is deceptive. Those bent on winning the world for God are forfieting their souls!

Matthew 6:24-25 NKJV — “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

All of my efforts to fix the world, especially my part of the world, and make things right apart from direct obedience to what He directly tells me to do daily... These efforts compete with God, they don't compliment His power.  There is no compliment to perfect power, only vain efforts to compete with it.  I am supposed to humbly choose to see God is God, and I am not.   My power is filthy rags compared to the smallest expression of God's strength.

2 Chronicles 16:7-12 NKJV — And at that time Hanani the seer came to Asa king of Judah, and said to him: “Because you have relied on the king of Syria, and have not relied on the LORD your God, therefore the army of the king of Syria has escaped from your hand. “Were the Ethiopians and the Lubim not a huge army with very many chariots and horsemen? Yet, because you relied on the LORD, He delivered them into your hand. “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him. In this you have done foolishly; therefore from now on you shall have wars.” Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in prison, for he was enraged at him because of this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at that time. Note that the acts of Asa, first and last, are indeed written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. And in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was severe; yet in his disease he did not seek the LORD, but the physicians.

To truly see God's strength in my life... in my freedom, safety/security, health... I need to learn loyalty to God's strength.

It's easy to discern a false/worldly ministry from a true one.  A true ministry of the kingdom invites me to give up control by showing me that IT is giving up control... it doesn't promise freedom, or deliverance, or opportunity, or impact... it doesn't promise anything. it doesn't appeal to the world, it calls the willing out of worldliness!  It makes space to die to fleshy strength and becomes a corporate witness of yielding.  They are so rare.

1 John 4:1-6 NKJV — Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are of the world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Jesus didn't come to win the world for God.  He came to show the humble the way out of worldliness and back into Godliness before God judges the world and rinses it with fire.

John 17:9-21 NKJV — “I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. “And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. “Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name. Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. “But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.