All behavior is caused. Every cause has an effect and every effect is motivated by a cause. Many live in the wrong effects because they are ignorant of what is causing them. Trying to change outward effects without dealing with the inward cause is completely useless. Secular psychiatry and the social welfare systems simply attempt to manipulate the effects that sin has made upon the world without even knowing what has produced them.
Society lives in the effects of Adam's cause, and it is going to take more than carefully planned reform programs to cause it to change. All emotional disturbances result from receiving the wrong stimuli. Counseling won't change the effects of a bad marriage, but changing the motivating cause of that marriage will.
God's love toward us causes us to be born again. The effect of salvation is a springing up of love for God and for the brethren. As God expresses His first cause of love toward us, His life within us becomes the effect. He continually initiates on the basis of that love, never on the basis of our own merits or the effects of our own human nature. This is called the election of grace. God doesn't want our lives to be merely a result of our own efforts, but rather the reflection of His first cause of love toward us. God's love produced kingship in David's life and apostleship in Peter's life. In spite of all the residual effects of our old Adam nature, God has already predestinated our lives to reveal all the eternal effects of His first cause of love.
- Atmospheric Cycles - January 30, 2018
- A Walk That Defeats the Enemy - July 14, 2017
- Don’t Be an Abstract Christian - March 18, 2017
