Saturday 10 May 2014

Themes of Life: Duties to God

There are common themes in all our lives. Our life is partly about how we handle these 'themes', such as: faith, relationships, family, money, vocation and work, unemployment, illness, the vulnerable, society, the natural world and so on. I'm starting to consider these, by examining the primary duty of Christians set out in the Bible, which is towards God:

Theme : handling our duties to God
Our duties are : loving God with all our soul, strength and mind; knowing and acknowledging God to be the only true God - and our God; worshipping and glorifying Him by thinking, meditation, remembering, highly esteeming, honouring, adoring, choosing, loving, desiring and fearing Him. Believing Him, trusting and hoping, delighting, rejoicing in Him; being zealous for Him, calling upon Him, giving all praise and thanks to Him; yielding obedience to Him; full submission to Him with our whole soul, mind and heart; being careful in all things to please Him and to sorrow when He is offended; walking humbly with Him.

Our temptations are: atheism, rebellion against Him; idolatry in having more than God as our god, or having anything instead of God; omitting His due status; ignorance, forgetfulness, false ideas, unworthy and wicked thoughts about God; bold searching into divine secrets which are not revealed to Man; profaneness, hatred of God, self-seeking, immoderate setting of our minds on other things, besides God; unbelief, heresy, distrusting God, despair; refusal to respond to His correction; hardness of heart, pride, presumption, trusting in the security of this world; tempting God; carnality and sensuality; corruption, blind zeal, lukewarmness about God; deadness in the things of God (while bearing the name of ‘Christian’); backsliding, praying to things other than God; dabbling in and consulting occult powers; obeying its influences; making people lords of our conscience rather than the Bible; despairing in God and His commandments; discontent and disappointment with God; impatience at His commands; charging God for the evils He inflicts upon us; ascribing praise to good fortune, fate, chance, ourselves, human beings rather than to God.



Reference: Westminster Confession of Faith, Larger Catechism

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