According to Romans 10:4, Christ is the end of performance for righteousness for those who believe. However many believers still approach God based on their performance. This is because of deception from the enemy of God and His church! The church is being so caught up in the busyness of dead works to please men and look good to the world that we are not being discipled. We are not seeking first God’s kingdom and His righteousness!

I used to think that seeking first God’s kingdom and His righteousness was staying busy serving the church! That is wonderful if that’s what you want to do and it doesn’t cause you to neglect your marriage and family or other more important obligations. If you are not doing something from a great desire in your heart that comes from delighting yourself in the Lord, it is most likely dead works!

God’s Kingdom is in You

God’s kingdom is in you! Seeking first God’s kingdom begins with finding out who you are in your brand new, born-again spirit! Clicking on the blue title above this paragraph will take you to a list of scriptures beginning with Jesus telling of the kingdom coming. This is before His death, burial, and resurrection that made a way for the Holy Spirit, God Himself, to dwell inside believers. Many of Jesus’ teachings are hard to understand because what He was doing was putting the final nails in the coffin of the law and man’s inability to keep it! In other words, our desperate need for a Savior!

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

John 3:5

Born Again

Jesus was talking about entering into His kingdom at rebirth immediately! Once you are born again, you are no longer a sinner. You are a new creature, the righteousness of God because you are now in Christ. You have been transferred out of the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God’s dear Son! Hallelujah! As Christ is so are we in this world. We are in this world but not of it! Praise God! The only power the enemy has now is deception! Find out how Jesus took back the power in the post: All Power Is Given: Matthew 28:18.

Born Again Believers are Not Sinners!

That’s why those verses that say that all those sinners, even liars, will not enter the kingdom are not talking about believers. I used to pride myself in being honest! And then I realized that I am not! Someone might call me a “liar liar pants on fire!” I have realized before that I accidentally told a big fat whopper lie! If you even exaggerate the truth, it’s a big fat lie! I admit it! I still catch myself wanting to exaggerate or telling lies sometimes. That’s not good, and I repent immediately.

When I tell a lie, it’s a fact that I am a liar. But that is not the truth about me anymore. According to God’s Word, even when I sin, I am no longer a sinner because of Jesus. Even when I tell a lie, I am not a liar because of Jesus! Our born-again spirits are just as perfect as Jesus, and we are sealed with His Holy Spirit! We have a soul which consists of our mind, will, and emotions that have to be renewed, and a corruptible body of flesh that will be buried when we receive our redeemed incorruptible bodies at physical death.

A Living Sacrifice

This explains how you can have your physical feet on the ground and your mind in the clouds! The Bible is the perfect mirror that you have to look into to find out who you are now in Christ. There is no other way to “see” your perfect, little, born-again, new spirit.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Romans 12:1-2

Now that you know, you can fight the temptation, resist the devil, that comes against you from the lust of your corruptible flesh and the parts of your soul (mind) that haven’t been renewed yet by the washing of the word.

Your performance does not change your position with God! Nothing can take you from the love of God!

You are God’s Righteousness

The blue title above is a link to Blue Letter Bible. I searched for God’s righteousness! Hallelujah! I found Him in me along with His kingdom!

For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

2 Corinthians 5:21

Dead Works Involve Pleasing People

Doing dead works to be a man-pleaser is a huge temptation that the enemy can set in motion to destroy if we allow it! I remember God telling me to tell people things, to warn them, but I didn’t want to hurt my relationship with any of them. I am looking back on massive destruction and even suicide in so many lives that my obedience to His Rhema Word could have possibly prevented! My own life was on a massive path to destruction too until 2019.

Remembering my days of dead works to please people and the destruction and devastation I witnessed in the lives of my friends and church family have left me completely broken and shattered at times. But I am quickly and completely comforted by the presence of my Father through His Holy Spirit! Forgiven! I also take full responsibility for my disobedience in warning them. Ignorance is not innocence.

For do I now persuade men or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. 

Galatians 1:10

Dead Works Deceive

People are being deceived! They are heaping up heavy burdens on people including themselves and think they are doing it in Jesus’ name. They are using guilt and condemnation to manipulate and don’t realize all of that garbage is from the wrong god. The only thing that kept me from falling headlong into this insanity was the fact that I had not predominantly been raised in religion, and that I had prayed to be filled with the Holy Spirit and for a hunger and thirst for His righteousness!

I got caught up in the pride of dead works and teaching works-righteousness more than I want to admit! But I do admit it! I taught classes on wrong beliefs from my own misunderstanding of the Bible and got caught up in works. Thank God, I was reading and studying the Bible for hours every morning at home so I was getting more Truth straight from the Word!

It still felt so good to be accepted and appreciated by people finally after all those years of wanting to fit in at church! The people in the church loved me and my family and God! We were all being deceived!

Spirit-Led? No, Deacon-Led!

Some of the churches we attended were “deacon-led,” and we could see that the pastors were tormented, to say the least. I witnessed too many pastors being “forced” to use the pulpit to bully the “unacceptable” instead of to preach the gospel! I have never seen pastors so happy as those waiting for their resignation notices to be up! Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!

I would like to say that this performance-based, dead works mentality is uncommon, but it’s not. That’s why so many pastors eventually leave the church too, or commit suicide, or just dive headlong into sin! There is too much pressure to please men and not enough root or hearing God or BELIEF! The torment of never being good enough!

The Church is Good!

Now, with all of that being said, the church is good! I wanted to move into the church when I was born again. All four kiddos got loaded up every time the church doors opened. I wanted to be involved and to serve in everything Jesus! That was the desire of my heart because of my new nature.

Unfortunately, it isn’t ALL Jesus. I would go to church excited from spending hours with Jesus at my kitchen table only to go have all the life sucked right out of me with guilt, condemnation, doubt, and unbelief. Yes, I did it too! I heard a sermon on the tax collector and the pharisee one morning, and I thought: “Oh my God! I’m a pharisee!!!” I looked down on those who weren’t doing the same religious duties! That’s what makes them dead works!

For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

For they being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.

Romans 10:2-3

It is really SICK!!!

“Let’s laugh at our morbid obesity or whatever “pet” sin we are submitting to, but how dare those people “to choose” to smoke, drink, or be homosexuals!”

Sin Leads to Death!

It’s all sin; it’s all addiction, and none of it is funny because it ALL leads to death! And it is ALL done away with in Christ Jesus for those who will ONLY BELIEVE!!!

More Dead Works

Most of us were fat so that didn’t come up as one of the sins of the world! The “sin” of smoking only came up when all the “smokers” were gone serving at the children’s retreat! God forbid we run off the 20% who are willing to do all the work! Especially the hardest most necessary work! Thank you to those guys and girls who were serving our children while I was in class learning and teaching more dead works.

Many believers still approach God based on their performance because they are deceived! This false belief comes from the deceiver! The problem with deception is that you don’t know you are being deceived! I didn’t know.

The Violent Take It By Force!

This entire post makes me sick and angry! I hate the devil! He is out to steal, kill, and destroy! No wonder he is working so hard to keep Christians focused on their own faults and failures or the faults and failures of others instead of the righteousness of God that we already are in Christ! The violent take it by force (Matthew 11:12)! Hallelujah! The more you fight the enemy’s dead “busy” works and seek God, the more YouWillWantTo FIGHT!