Lowering Your Standards

Lowering Your Standards

9/23/16

In the name of equality, humanity brings to the table an agenda that would seem plausible in theory.  But when reality touches base with life the majority of those sitting at the table recognizes the faults of our existence and then tries to modify their stances.  The panic of happiness ensues with compromises that bring forth disastrous effects instead of the desired attributes of sound thinking.  How long will we be fooled with the notion that we can bring equality without lowering standards unless God is placed first in this process?  How long shall we reject the One source that could bring us everything standard we desire, and why do we continue failing at what God has already given us in order to reverse this downward plunge?  God is waiting for His children to recognize His prosperity before the world’s demeaning existence and to choose Him instead.

All of us have heard the example of having friends that bring us down or that we are in a relationship that is not healthy for our life.  I have had friends during my life that have brought me nothing but pain and agony while I was associated with them. When I was a young boy some of the friends that I hung around with my parents would not even allow me to spend the night at their house because of the uncomfortable feelings they had with them.  And when I ignored their advice and placed my friendship into their hands almost immediately they could see a difference in my attitude.  Of course, I was oblivious to this fact and when the friendship changed or ended I was angry and did the natural thing and blamed my parents for the ending.

One phenomenon that would almost surely arrive would be that my past friend would grasp on to another one of my current friends and it would not take too long for me to figure out a change in my current friend’s attitude towards me.  While being a youngster I failed to see the relevance of this change, as time went along and I found myself in this same scene years later I then understood what an impact they had on my life.  I saw the same patterns in my children emerging when my wife and I developed reservations about their friends for similar reasons.  The same disturbing self-lowering pattern of equality and acceptance was portraying itself once again a generation later.

It was in my adulthood that these patterns came to haunt me and while I was young my thoughts were totally different to my parents, I was sure glad they were watching out for me because I might have been further off course than what I was in the first place.  Parents are placed in a child’s life for a specific reason and that is to set an example for that child and to protect that child until he / she are able to fend for themselves.  It is the responsibility of the parent to teach the child how to act both in the home and when they are in public but if worldly standards are instilled as a norm then watch out, trouble shall exist when growth occurs.  It is obvious of what kind of relationship a child has with their parent as one watches them together for a parent cannot be a friend to a child when they are young; but it is so common a standard today, look at these effects as they unfold in front of our screens.  This is the basic and foundational case for lowering a standard in the name of peace, love and worldly acceptance, and woe to those parents and leaders who present such a lie to their acquaintances.

It was this destructive evidence that my parents saw in the friendship that I established with these people that disturbed them so much.  How could they call themselves true parents if they had not talked with me about these attitude changes and at times were forced to set boundaries and revert to even harder stances when my actions declared?  While I failed to see these changes and especially the lowering of the standards that they had so patiently instilled into my life, they readily picked up on all the signals that I gave just as parents are supposed to.  The question then becomes of where did this lowering of standards originate? The answer to that question is easy in that it lies with Adam and Eve.  We must first recognize and accept that the standard of equality went out the window with Adam and Eve.  It was their creation by God which set the standard for perfection against the lowered expectations of self that Lucifer portrayed some time before.  It was his fall that established a lower standard from what God had created and it was this “new” standard of acceptance on a worldly scale that he operated through to trick Adam and Eve.

The Bible includes countless examples of God establishing standards that are different from the world with counter examples of humans doing their best to mess His standards up by accepting worldly placements over God.  From the time of Cain and Abel onwards God has placed His Word into our lives trying to get it through our heads that He wants us to be separate and different from the world.  But as each example in the Bible unfolds so do we when we buck our parents’ authority when they caution us about some of our choices.  Many of us quickly dismiss the Bible as a bunch of stories that have no relevance to our lives today. That is another lowering standard lie that we fall for on a continual basis, the Bible is a Living Word and will help see us trough our difficulties if we adhere to its words.

When Jesus walked the earth it was the perfect example of how God wanted to share His ideas for our lives.  As we read the passages of Jesus’ life here on earth we cannot help but marvel at the works that He did with the people.  We also squeamishly read some passages where He and the leaders of His day got into confrontational settings which could have turned violent at any moment.  Then we read where those discounted leaders took the worldly powers at hand and used them to destroy Jesus’ physical life – I mean to fulfill God’s uplifting and separating plan for our life.  It astounds me that many people including many Christians do not even realize that what the Jewish leaders and the Romans did to Jesus was accurately fulfilling what God had stated back in the Garden of Eden, effectively fulfilling God’s Word as an accurate source of truth extraordinaire, thus providing another example of God’s exceptional standard that He was trying to get across to our lives.

We look at the miracles that Jesus performed and marvel at what He did, but at the same time fail to understand that when Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead He was raising the standard of humanity back to what Adam and Eve had before the fall. When God was speaking to Eve concerning what was going to become of her life, Adam should have immediately picked up on the fact that both of them were no longer equal and that it would be his responsibility to raise the female up to his level so that she would not stray further from his side.  He failed miserably at this understanding and to be brutally honest all men have followed suit by not realizing the truth about this verse in Genesis.  It was the fact that Jesus took the current condition of that person and raised them up to another level of existence, just as God had done when He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and what He still desires for our lives today.

Jesus did not purify the water into wine for show He did it for the purpose of advancing His Father’s Kingdom over the world’s disastrous protocols.  Jesus represented God on earth as a connection to God not as a deviant or some side circus show in order to excite people into believing God.  Jesus had (has) a direct purpose for His presence on earth and it is not to entertain the magistrates of any political institution or party.  His sole purpose for living is to be the perfect sacrifice that allows us to be cleansed from this world and to live separate from what wishes to destroy us.  Therefore, since God cannot be a part of this world neither can His children and since this is a true statement we cannot align ourselves in any way with the world which means that if the world calls for equality without God then there is no equality involved at all that is worth mentioning.

Look at what the world has to offer its inhabitants, nothing but doom and despair as the old song says.  It cannot offer anything but this because it is flawed in nature and has no true answer to provide other than this message of chaos and death.  Given this fact, it means that every single time we accept the world as our friend we automatically lower our standards, in other words, we pick friends that will change our attitudes for the worse and not the better.  If God is not involved first, foremost and complete in the choices that we make our standard is lowered and we risk our chances at having an eternal life with God.  That is a hard statement to say and it is even harder to swallow but it is the absolute truth from the Word of God.

Sadly, as each day passes we are witness to more violence and heartbreak from the world.  A large part of this horrid behavior stems from the lack of foundational truth the Church has been showing us for centuries.  While there is nothing wrong with a church which is financially stable there is something wrong with one where wealth is presented as a way of living instead of a standard of God.  A standard of God would be sharing the Kingdom message instead of promoting multimillion dollar homes and buildings that proclaim no gospel truth to the dying world.  A gospel truth is where God takes away fortunes because the human has squandered their blessings instead of using the talents to advance God’s Kingdom.  We must remember that God’s Kingdom does not represent any human advancement in ANY proportion nor should it give any glory to mankind.  It is this fact that angers Satan so much that all he can do is react through physical and spiritual violence and it is through this action that mankind shows affection.  There is a huge reason why God’s Word states that it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man into the heaven; this truth can also be incorporated into other areas of our existence and not just limited to financial resources.

God has no intention for any of His children to live in poverty, suffering or any type of ailment.  While the consequences of sin are death and the fact that we cannot escape this physical result God does wish that we live as long as possible to be examples of His goodness and love through His Word.  The world shall proclaim the exact opposite and will mock those who wish to live differently from its standards.  The Church has had her spiritual ear taken by the world and is now in peril of falling completely apart with the entity that she has chosen.  God is still calling out to His people and to anyone who is willing to listen to His voice of life to return to Him and accept His ways into their hearts.  Our spiritual communication with God is hanging by a shred of a string and our enemy is hard at work for a complete separation from God, the WRONG separation that we need to be pursuing.

Repent Church! And turn back to God before He must whisk our status from under us.  God does not wish for anyone to be divided against His ways but in order for this to occur we must first lose our selfishness and worldly garments and replace them with God’s Word as our standard.  When we do this we are actually performing the same miracles that Jesus did while He walked the earth, for we are changing our lives to a higher standard which is represented by a holy equality in the eyes of our Creator.  God asks us to study Adam and Eve a bit deeper and see where we have included their fall into our lives and to study the numerous examples of this falling so that we may stop this pattern and return to what God originally had in mind for His prized Creations.  God also asks us to approach His Word with a pure and humble heart so that He may reveal His truth into our lives so that we may daily proclaim Him to the dark and dying world.

DLB