Are You Spiritually Faithful?

So why do you cheat? Now before you go “uhm excuse me I’m no cheater!” let’s take the time and do a quick self-inventory and really search our hearts. Would you call yourself spiritually faithful? So many people have a relationship with God in the four walls of a church building but then they leave and flirt and mingle with the world. It’s so easy to look at people who cheat/commit adultery and turn our nose up and gasp at all their triflingness (yes I added a new word to the dictionary) but the gasps and finger pointing get a little quiet when you’re in the hot seat. Let’s have a quick heart to heart; what has caused you to step out on Christ? Is your relationship with the world overlapping with your relationship with Christ now? Remember we’re married to Christ and men because Christ has no gender ya’ll are included in that too FYI. Matthew 6:24 tells us that a person cannot serve two masters so that whole double dipping business is for the birds. The reality is if we're cheating on Christ with the world we've already decided who we really want to be with. You're not riding the fence, you've chosen the world. In order to acknowledge our spiritual adultery we must first identify why we are doing it. In the natural sense, people cheat for a number of reasons and although some may say they didn’t have a reason there is always a root to why people do what they do. So let’s apply this to our relationship with Christ and look at a few reasons why people cheat.

One of the reasons people cheat is because they are not really serious or committed to their relationship. Here’s the thing about our walk with Christ, if we are really committed to Him we are going to pursue Him and not sin point blank and the period. There are so many people who profess the name of Christian but the way they act, live, and speak confess more that they are not serious about their relationship with Christ. If you are really committed to Christ you are not going to be living it up with the things of this world. Bottom line, you cannot say you are serious about your relationship with Christ yet you condone things that are contrary to the will of God. First John 3:9 states that if we belong to God we will not continue in sin so what does that mean if we keep sinning? I’m not talking about occasional mess ups here and there, no I’m talking intentionally doing what we know is not the will of God. As long as you have not developed a reverent fear of the Lord you’re not going to be serious about your relationship with Him and you will continue to step outside of your marriage with Christ to indulge in the things of this world. We cannot pick and choose what parts of the bible we want to follow and ignore the parts the convict us of our hellish lifestyle. Let’s be real! In order to be a follower of Christ we have to deny ourselves. That means we realize that our life is not our own and we die to our flesh so that Christ can take over. So often people talk about the single season as being a time that you don’t have to check in with anyone and you can do whatever you want when you want. Not so, you still answer to Christ. Until we realize that we don’t do just do whatever we want but we do what is the will of our Father we have not truly committed ourselves in our relationship with Christ. 

Another reason people cheat is because they think they are missing out on something because they believe that there is something better outside of what they already have. In our walk with Christ it is so easy to be tempted by the things of this world. The devils job is to entice you and to trick you into thinking that the world has so much more to offer than what God has provided you with. The enemy often times likes to do this by getting us upset at how people who we know are not living for God appear to be getting blessed and yet we’re over here doing our part and it seems like we’re barely making it each day. Proverbs 23:17 tells us, “Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long” (KJV).  We have to get our eyes off of people and keep them on the Lord. The reality is that there will be people who live in the world who live it up and have a great life and die feeling as though they accomplished a lot and were successful. The other side of that reality is that if they did not have a relationship with Christ their soul went to hell and all their success in the world and the good time they had was temporary. Second Corinthians 4:18 says, “While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (KJV). Our focus has to be on eternity and the true word of God not on the temporary things that this world has to offer that are nothing more than idols that will only fill voids temporarily and still leave us empty. 

We have to remember what the bible shows us in Matthew 4:1-11 when Jesus is tempted in the wilderness. The devil attempts to get Jesus to abandon His mission by tempting Christ with the things that the world has to offer. If Jesus would have stepped away from God to indulge in the things of this world we would’ve been in some serious trouble. What the devil was trying to tempt Him with all looked good, however, in comparison to what God had sent Christ to do it wasn’t worth it. What are the things that the devil is trying to use to tempt you to step outside of your marriage with Christ? In comparison to whatever it is that he is trying to offer to you it doesn’t even come close to the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. Don’t take the bait!

Some people cheat because of lack of communication and when they feel like they are not getting what they need from the relationship they are in they start to look for it elsewhere. How do you respond to God’s timing taking longer than you would like for it to? When your relationship with Christ is not perfect and you are facing different tests and trials how do you deal? So often our communication with Christ is so one-sided; we speak and say what we want to but we don’t allow Him to get two cents in and God forbid He says something we really don’t want to hear we just ignore it and contribute it to being gas from a big lunch. If we could be real with ourselves for a moment we would admit that after we gave our lives to Christ things were not always a beautiful day in the park. There were some days where we felt like we were treated unfair, we may have felt that different things happened that we didn’t think we deserved; we may have felt as though God allowed things to happen to us that He shouldn’t have. So what did we do? We gave Him the silent treatment like we would do in a relationship. Now we aren’t reading our bibles, we aren’t praying, we aren’t fasting, and we aren’t having quiet time….lack of communication. We have to realize that this is exactly what the enemy wants! He wants to harden your heart towards God and make you stop communicating with Him so that he can now come in and plant seeds of discontentment, anger, and bitterness so that you feel that God has left you out to dry. The devil wants to convince you that this whole salvation thing ain’t all that it’s cracked up to be and you’re not getting what you need from your relationship with Christ so come on back over here to the world….satan is like a pimp whispering sweet nothings in your ear trying to pimp you back into the world! Stop giving the enemy a door into your heart by your lack of communication with God. We have to learn how to communicate and we also have to learn how to listen!!! God is always speaking we however are not always listening. 

Psalm 84:11 says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly” (KJV).

We have a tendency to spend so much time focusing on all the things that we think God is withholding from us that we can’t even see all the good that He has provided us with or what He has protected us from. If our eyes are not fully fixed on Christ it is easy to become jealous of the things of this world. It’s easy to look at people in the world and think that they’re having fun and they seem fulfilled because they have no cares. We can feel as though we’re trapped in a sense because they appear to have freedom and we feel stuck by living holy before God. Romans 6:22 tells us that we are free in Christ because we are no longer bound by the trap of sin and not only are we free but the benefit of this freedom is eternal life with the Father.  Stop convincing yourself otherwise like there is anything better in the world. We have to learn to communicate with Christ just as we would in any relationship when we are upset, when we are frustrated, etc. Oh and FYI, the one difference in our relationship with Christ compared to natural ones is that the problem isn’t with Him it’s always you…

Now what typically happens if a person takes a cheater back? They usually have a conversation about why they did it but then they also ask an important question; how do I know you won’t do it again? What are you going to do differently to make sure that you don’t go back to your adulteress ways? You cannot continue to do the same old same old and expect to get different results. Didn’t someone say that’s the definition of insanity? Just saying….but seriously! If you want to do better in your relationship with Christ, you have to do better and be better bottom line. Stop putting yourself in situations that you know will tempt you but also acknowledge the problems in your relationship so that you can identify the root and allow God to deal with that issue in your heart. Ask God to show you how to be faithful to Him and read up on people in the bible who exemplify faithfulness so that you can see what to mirror. If you don’t know who to start with Jesus is always a great One.