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12/29/20 Higher Fences

Fathers, if you continually find yourself putting more restrictions on your children and applying stronger consequences to help them comply with what you feel is best, you’re doing something wrong. You can build higher and higher fences all you want as they continue to grow, but one day they’ll find a way over the fence into total rebellion.

Somehow, your children have been taught compliance under your stewardship. They get in line to avoid the consequences you set in place, but their hearts are wandering or maybe empty. Perhaps it’s time for you to get on your face before God and repent of your ways. Are you also walking in compliance before God, doing things to avoid consequences, rather than doing them because you love Him and want to please Him with your obedience? Is this somehow being communicated to your children and they’re just following your lead?

Fear not. As you spend time with God and your love for Him grows deeper, you will learn to walk in Christ-like obedience. Then you will be able to love and nurture your children into walking in genuine obedience through the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God will accomplish in them what the laws you’ve established can never do.

If it seems too late and your children are walking in full-fledged rebellion against you and God, your only recourse is to pray and intercede until they find freedom in Christ. They’re in rebellion in part because your priorities and/or methods have been out of order. Do you care enough to do what is necessary to help them? They need you!

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

12/28/20 Be Still and Know

“I am a God of the impossible! There is nothing too hard for Me. If you really believed that you would take your hands off your worries. You would lay down your concerns and submit them to Me. You would believe My Word. You would trust Me to do what I have covenanted to do for you. I am God and there is no other. I have created everything and own everything. Nothing is impossible for Me. Trust Me. I love you!”

Psalm 46:10 NIV

Be still, and know that I am God...

Psalm 111:2 NIV

Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them.

Isaiah 31:1 AMP

Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses and trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but they look not to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek and consult the Lord!

It is so easy to forget the promises of God. It is so easy to bring God down to our level with all of its overwhelming concerns and helpless situations, instead of remembering Who He really is. I can so easily praise God with my lips and my hands raised, and in the next moment deny Who He is as I focus on my circumstances.

Teach me to praise You by honoring Who You really are, Lord,

Jim Corbett

12/28/20 True Obedience

Jesus learned obedience through the things He suffered, meaning the times that He won over His flesh. Complete obedience means that He willingly and joyfully submitted to His Father in all things, no matter what. The heart of someone who is truly obedient thrives in doing another's will, forsaking his own will in the process.

Please notice that there’s a difference between obedience and compliance. Compliance is doing something because we fear the consequences if we don’t. Our joy will never be complete as compliant individuals. We will always want more for ourselves in our relationship with God. Obedience is doing something we’re told to do out of love. When we cease from doing the right things only because they’re right, and do them only because we want to bless our Lord, we enter into that little known realm of true obedience. When our greatest joy is to do our Father's will, we will walk in true obedience.

As husbands and fathers, it’s impossible to represent Jesus properly to the world and our families unless we take on His heart. He was always obedient. In obedience to His Father's will, He lived, loved and moved as His Father desired. God can’t trust merely compliant men to raise His children and properly care for their wives as He desires. He can only trust Christ-like, obedient servants who understand His heart. Which one are you?

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

12/26/20 Spiritual Integrity

“Walk where I tell you to walk. Do what I tell you to do. Live like Jesus lived. Delight in what I am doing, no matter what the outcome of your life might be. It’s called being a follower of Jesus. He is honored when you really act the way He acts because you said that you are going to follow His ways. It’s called integrity. It’s called obedience. It’s called praise.”

Matthew 21:28-31 NIV

28) “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’

29) “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.

30) “Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ’I will sir,’ but he did not go.

31) “Which of the two did what his father wanted?”

Mark 4:24 AMP

And He said to them, Be careful what you are hearing. The measure [of thought and study] you give [to the truth you hear] will be the measure [of virtue and knowledge] that comes back to you – and more [besides] will be given to you who hear.

1 John 2:6 AMP

Whoever says he abides in Him ought [as a personal debt] to walk and conduct himself in the same way in which He walked and conducted Himself.

Our life in Christ is really pretty straight forward. We are supposed to act just like He acted. What really amazes me is that we, as followers of Christ who have the truth, often resemble the One we follow less than those who follow other gods and other ideas. They are full of zeal. We are filled with lethargy. They have their heart issues and causes as a priority in their lives. We place the desires of God far behind our own desires. They are strong in their beliefs and are willing to die for what they think is true. We have the truth and can still be fearful, doubtful, double-minded, and uncommitted.

Forgive me, Lord, for dishonoring You with my life,

Jim Corbett

12/26/20 A Witness to Many

I once heard a character in a movie state that people marry so they have someone to witness their lives. The more I thought about it, the more I saw it to be the world’s way of feeling valued and needed. People without the Lord continually attempt to find acknowledgment and purpose for their lives. They marry for their own good to satisfy an inner need of some sort.

One of God’s purposes for marriage is for the husband and wife to witness each other’s life so they can help each other become all they can be in Christ. They’re to observe each other’s spiritual needs so they can pray and encourage each other in the things of God. It’s the opposite of the way the world thinks.

We, as believers, are to marry for the good of the other. The world marries for their own good to fulfill their own needs. As Christian men, we are to lay down our lives for the good of our wives. Our obligation before the Lord is to love our wives as Christ loved the church. He died for the church. We are to die to our own desires daily for the good of our wives.

Let’s talk more!

Jim Corbett

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