Articles
Keeping a Righteous Zeal
While God’s children are out in the world trying to shine His love to others, scriptural truth can be traded for a lie. Toward the end of 2 Kings 4, Elisha was in the land of Gilgal surrounded by the sons of the prophets. He told his servant to prepare a pot of stew for the sons to eat. One of the men went into the field to gather food for the stew and noticed a vine with wild gourds. The man took the gourds back with him and put them in the stew. As the group began to eat, they cried out to Elisha, “O man of God, there is death in this pot!” The man who brought back the gourds saw what he wanted to see, edible food amidst a famine. Spiritually, the world is full of unrighteous distractions and influences that can appear to fill our appetites, but truly are nothing more than spiritual poison.
1 Thessalonians 5:21 explains that we should test everything with the scriptures to keep ourselves from sinning. By turning to God and His word, a person will be able to make decisions based on God’s standards instead of man’s. Yet as humans, we are going to make mistakes on our spiritual journey (Romans 3:23). The Israelites who partook of the stew turned to God’s prophet Elisha to be saved. God’s children today can go to God directly by praying. Blessed is mankind that we have graciously been gifted the opportunity to repent and be healed. Sin can easily go unnoticed if God’s children aren’t consistently occupied with Heavenly thoughts. Psalm 119:10 teaches His followers that we should be diligently seeking God and storing up His word in our hearts if we desire to stay obedient to His commandments.
God made His children creatively inventive and with modern technology we have even more opportunities to recenter our minds on righteousness. As we move on from one thing to the next, we can also forget how simple it is for us to say a prayer. Prayers can be short, long, simple, or complex, because God always wants to hear from us. Combining daily habits is another great way to maintain Godly centered activities. You can listen to God’s word, hymns, or biblical podcast during your daily commute or devote time for a prayer before opening the computer for work. Saying, “God bless” when finishing talking to or emailing someone is another great way to include God into your day. As long as we put in the effort, there will be endless opportunities for us to shine God’s light to others. In what ways can you stay on the path to Righteous success?
