Psalm 37:5 Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him,
And He shall bring it to pass.
⁶ He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light,
And your justice as the noonday.

It is quite easy to praise God on those sunny days, when all in your life seems right. You received terrific and happy news on a health scare, or you came into a fortune of money, your favorite team won its game upon a great comeback, the love of your life said yes, your child was born healthy and alive, and many other things. The thanks protruding from you to God might be boisterous and loud, which is quite understandable.
But are you just a “Sunny Day Christian”? When that day comes that everything falls apart, or you lose everything, are you a Job? Job praised God when he lost absolutely everything just as he did when he had everything. Or is God now a second thought, or do you read Him the riot act, that He isn’t worth glorifying and praising. If so, you are what I call a “Sunny Day Christian”, which is not a Christian at all.

If you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, and really did so, you come to realize that the rest and peace He provided encompasses each and every event in your life. You might not immediately understand the purpose of the bad circumstance or the sadness that comes, but you do praise Him because it is according to His perfect will.

Want to discern “Sunny Day Christians”? Just view their reaction towards God on those stormy days. Are they burning Him a effigy or praising Him. And the preachers of the “Sunny Day” false gospel should be condemned. The Joel Osteens and those who teach a wealth and prosperity gospel, teaching a sinner to be “Sunny Day Christians”.

Look, if it was God’s will that you suffer a terminal disease for years on end, are left broke and homeless, if you are His child you accept His will for you and praise Him! Why? Because you realize that this is NOT your final state of being or home. You realize that God is using whatever He pleases in His grand plan and purpose, without always understanding specifically what that purpose and plan is. You just trust Him and the Psalmist says above, and that my friend is called FAITH, a faith which pleases Him!

Yesterday, I posted the awesome testimony of Camille Jolly, a French citizen who genuinely and honestly provided all the details of her life, the drawing of God to salvation, and the various things she went through.

There were several things I could relate to, as my rebirth was just a couple of years before hers.

Looking Back – She mentioned “I needed to look back on God’s drawing” several times. And this is true! Just because one is giving a rebirth later in life, doesn’t mean God wasn’t preserving you and thus drawing you all along. I can personally look back on my own life to see exactly what she said she too went through. You begin to see the sad circumstances, sometimes evil, and see God’s hand as He didn’t just take you out or your life went into a black hole after those points.

Confusion – When you are about to be given a rebirth and just after, confusion will arise as so many things are new all at once. The “confusing” part is trying to make sense of it all from your former life. Also if you were taught false things which contradict Scripture, it can be confusing as to knowing what the truth is. However if you hold to Scripture, discernment eventually comes.

Separation – When God appoints you to eternal life, a separation (sanctification) also occurs. Some friends, family, coworkers, those you loved in your former life will be decidedly unhappy with your new life and will go away. Somethings you practiced in your former life are shown to be sinful, so God is constantly separating you from those things. It can be subtle or it can be very obvious, but indeed a new creation will ALSO be separated from their former life of sin. Now sadness and all sorts of emotions can accompany this process, but you know that you are now with Jesus, so all will be well.

The Church – You had this idea what the church was in your former life, and initially you may hold onto to this ideology. That the church is this building with a steeple, a statement of faith, and where you need to go on Sunday. However, God teaches you He isn’t housed in dwellings made by human hands, and that the church is actually EVERY born-again believer in Jesus Christ. So your ideology changes! You see the church as believers and a gathering as a fellowship in Christ.

False Churches – She mentioned in France that it was hard to find an actual fellowship/church because of the many false gospels out there. Scripture shines a light on every false church! The problem is there are 100 false churches to 10 actual churches which are teaching the Biblical Gospel. And you will discover as she did, it is NOT the size of the congregation which discerns it, most often as Jesus said “few will find it” is the case.

Directness – If say you were in a religious system such as Roman Catholicism, the very first thing you realize is that instead of their roadblocks to Jesus, there is a direct unimpeded access by faith straight to His throne. So one CAN go directly to Jesus for the forgiveness of ALL their sins, no religiosity or works can be added.

Passion for the Gospel – She mentioned this cage stage as some will call it, and I can relate. Once you are saved, you want to shout the Good News to everyone and anyone. You want ALL your friends and family to get it. She describes herself as “Peter with a sword, cutting the ears off”, and I too did this. You think at first, “why aren’t they getting this news?” so you try to force your new faith on them, and they simply get angry or ignore you. Whereas you then learn over time, you aren’t the Holy Spirit, you aren’t the converter, and your job is to simply share the Good News and then get out of His way!

Rest and Peace – One thing God graces you with is the ultimate rest and peace in Jesus. You realize that whether it be good, bad, or ugly, you are always in that rest, so a peace without understanding comes.

Sinfulness – In her case and in mine, the very first thing God shows you is how very wicked and awful you truly were all your life, and that Jesus paid your ENTIRE debt by grace alone. I was saddened, and shaking my head at myself (still do) at just how awful and evil I was. But more so eternally thankful to Jesus to pay my sins by His precious blood!

Trust – You realize that by this salvation, you can leave almost everything and trust that God has got you, that He goes before you! Camille left on a boat to a strange country, and God protected and guided each of her steps. I can relate this to as well, the leaving go and letting God. It can cause anxiety at first, but if you TRUST there is an Almighty God, that anxiety turns to joy in a big hurry.

Joy – If you listened to her entire testimony, there is a joy within her. She smiles, says some funny things, all due to this joy in her focus now in Jesus Christ and His promises. If you aren’t joyful in your salvation, I am sorry to say you probably were deceived and never granted salvation.

In 2014, something amazing happened again, God added to His church a person named Camille Jolly. She was a French citizen who actually travelled by a cargo boat to the U.S. to Texas to thank some ministers she was listening to on the Internet. She was born into an atheist family, was drawn by God, was pursued by a false gospel of Roman Catholicism but in the end her devotion and faith to the word of God won out.

The video below is her actual first testimony upon arriving in the U.S. It is so genuine and authentic! Imagine God sending you in front of a large congregation just after your rebirth to share your testimony, this would be your FIRST stop. She is understandable very nervous, but listen to her explain she is trusting God in this and the testimony comes out beautifully. Many can relate to the same set of ups, downs, confusion, and the realized drawing from God one can go through in a rebirth.

 Deuteronomy 31:8 “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.”

I know it sounds a bit cliché by some televangelist as he says in effect to “hold onto God”, but in truth, we should always be holding onto Him. If still in a fallen nature, the sinner doesn’t understand it or just flat out rejects the premise.
Do you believe the verse above? “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you nor will He ever leave you”? And we aren’t talking about someone who fails on a promise like this, but the actual Creator of the Universe, that is WHO is making this promise.

Because if you don’t believe that promise, you don’t trust God or there is a powerful God. And the test always comes when we are faced with a crisis. Will you trust that the Lord “goes before you”? Or will you try to get ahead of Him and muddy up the whole plan.

This test of faith is a really hard one, even for the experienced believer. We naturally want to use our intellect, our will power, our own creativity to solve the crisis. Or we become pessimistic, “God won’t do a thing to help”. And often times when this occurs we disrupted the cure that God promised. He says “well if you are going to go ahead of Me, just solve it on your own then”.

One thing you need to understand about God, is that Scripture calls Him a “jealous” God in the context of never bowing or sharing His glory with man or their idols. It is going to be ALL God’s doing, or it isn’t. He needs NO help, He doesn’t need your input or creativity. What He asks for is FAITH and TRUST, this is what pleases Him.

Job 11:18–19 “You will be secure because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety. You will lie down, with no one to make you afraid, and many will court your favor.”

Psalm 27:1 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”
We are ALWAYS shown our faith in the crisis, whether it be strong or weak. During the times outside of this, you might fool yourself into believing “my faith is as strong as ever”, only to be shown by God is a crisis situation you went ahead of the Lord, you didn’t turn it over to Him.

The prime disinfectant to every worldly man-made tradition when it comes to Christianity is Scripture. There are ways to discern if one is importing an invented tradition into the doctrines of Scripture, some are highly noticeable, some are not. So I put a brief list together below for you to examine if you are importing a tradition, by which it is being placed ABOVE or in a primary ideology over Scripture.

1. When one imports a tradition, plain grammar is often ignored from Scripture. Words such as “never” for example are somehow neglected or just plain missed, because for the tradition to work with Scripture definitive word definitions need to change or just flat out ignored. Example would be Jesus stating in Matthew 7:23 “I never knew you” or in 1 John 2:19 “they never were with us”. An invented tradition of losing salvation for example, would need to ignore the word “never”.

2. Cherry picking verses. A noticeable importing of a tradition will invariably lead to cherry picking verse out of context in Scripture. An entire doctrine will be attempted to made out of just one verse. When if one is not importing traditions, a systematic string will be tied to several verses throughout the Bible.

3. The doctrine is nowhere to be found. When one imports their man made tradition and then is challenged to produce a teaching from Scripture, they’ll appeal to 2 Thess 2:15 most often in the attempt to claim there are traditions outside of Scripture. Problem is, Paul said in that same verse every tradition was already in practice when he wrote that verse, thus Scripture should be the test on these. Or John 21:25 where the appeal is to say that things Jesus did are not found in the Bible. This is true, however in the earlier chapter John said in 20:31 that ALL that was written was more than sufficient to practice faith.

4. Your worldview trumps Scripture’s view. An uncomfortable truth such as God’s sovereignty over salvation will prompt one to import their tradition of man being also sovereign over salvation. John 1:13 cites that salvation is “not by the will of man”, so in this when tradition gets in the way, that verse needs to be completely ignored by the one importing traditions of man.

5. Your church claims authority over or equal to God. When this is done, the person will always put their church’s teaching over God’s teaching in Scripture. The traditions of the church trump God’s doctrines in every facet. This is what I would call a cult-like indoctrination, where church leaders claim they are God on earth prompting the congregation to follow them no matter how false the teaching is.

6. God can only be God if your traditions say so. If He for example says something through His word which doesn’t fit your idea of justice, mercy, love, grace, etc., the tradition tells you to either ignore it or give God an ultimatum which is He either change that ideology, or He cannot be believed or your God.

When your traditions get in the way of the truth, you will stop learning! You are not open to any challenges to your faith which would discern truth from error. You simply block out what is being pointed out logically from Scripture and allow your traditions guide you instead.

Every last human being who walked this earth other than Jesus Christ has been deemed GUILTY by God of sin!

You can think you are a better sinner than others, but that doesn’t make you less guilty. The verdict from God comes in immediately upon sin. He isn’t mulling it over, waiting for your defense attorney to plead your case so that He would somehow deem you innocent. He isn’t taking in your volunteer work, that you viewed yourself as a kind and caring person, or your religious involvement in your church either. None of this can over turn the verdict of GUILTY.

This is the common misunderstanding believed by many who call themselves godly Christians, that if you work hard enough, God can declare you innocent. I just saw a video of a street preacher declaring this falsehood, “in the end God will either declare you guilty or innocent”. When in fact ALL will be declared guilty! Yes even that 2 year old child you think is innocent has been already found guilty by God.

So with this dreadful bad news, there is good news! The only thing left is your sentence of which by His grace and mercy, God has sent a Savior Jesus Christ. By whose sacrifice provided a way for a sinner to be pardoned, to be completely forgiven. The sinner being found guilty is set free from the wrath of God! This my friend, is the Gospel in a nutshell. If you are following something else, it isn’t the Good News recorded in Scripture.

If you do believe Jesus can pardon you of your sins, what is preventing you from placing your faith alone in Him? Is it your church who put up a roadblock of legalism? Is it your worldview? Ask yourself, if Jesus is the ONLY WAY you could be forgiven, pardoned, by God, why would you shirk Him? If you think you can implore a loophole with God’s justice, you will be sadly mistaken.

On Judgment Day, ALL will be declared guilty. However those who have placed their faith in Jesus alone, He being the only Mediator, will be shown to be pardoned and forgiven for all eternity. Those seeking to be deemed “innocent” by your works, by your actions, will sadly discover God never changed the guilty verdict and without a Mediator, your sentence remains which is eternal hell.