Focus on God first; then behavior
Last week, I was reading several books. One thought jumped out at me because of the different perspectives/backgrounds of the two authors. My wife reminded me of a saying we learned from Erma Prutow at Sterling College. Erma said "Truth is truth." She meant the source does not matter because all truth is God's truth. Here is the summary of what I learned from these authors: in our battle against sin and behavior, we have the order mixed up in the church. We try to fix behavior so that we can better focus on God. Whereas, God's Word teaches we need to fix on our eyes on Jesus first so that behavior will be fixed. Here are the quotes from Matt Chandler and Joseph Prince: "What ends up happening to so many of us is that we spend so much time trying to put sin to death that we don't spend enough time striving to know God deeply, trying to gaze upon the wonder of Jesus Christ and have that transform our affections to the point where our love an...