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Righteousness
An Intense Desire For
Knowing And Getting What Is Right
Being a person who hungers and thirsts for righteousness is a person who deeply wants to do the right things and stop doing the wrong things. There are good things you can do to yourself and those people around you. And, there are bad things you can do to yourself and other people. God and the Bible are the ONLY qualified source of what is right or wrong. What the Holy Spirit speaks into your conscience and what the Bible says, are your only way of knowing what is right or wrong.
It’s The Power To Live Righteousness
Righteousness is the desire AND ability to stop doing bad things and start doing good things to yourself and other people. It is simple to see that having a deep desire to do the right things and stop doing the wrong things is vital to life success; but, you need the power to live that way. Jesus is telling you that you need to have a deep desire to be helped to recognize and yield to good things; this is a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
It Is The Door Into Great Relationships
You have known people who WANTED to do bad things to you; and, you have known people who WANTED to do good things. Being a person who has an intense desire (a hunger and a thirst) to be fair, honest, kind, caring, and friendly is a person worth being around. They are the kind of person you would want to do business with, establish a friendship with, or in some cases, marry.
Defining Righteousness
The Power To Only Do Good
The Bible uses several words to present the concept of feeling, thinking, saying, and doing things that are good and not feeling, thinking, saying, or doing things that are bad to yourself, others, and His plan. He uses the words holiness, purity, uprightness, godliness, and righteousness. Anytime you see these words in the Bible, that is what it is trying to say to you. The word “godliness” sums righteousness up by saying that all good and the absense of all bad is Who God is. Godliness in you is what God does in you through this power-attitude.
God Is Righteous
God is all about righteousness; in other words, He is the only true representative of good. You may not have a full picture of this yet; but, the more you spend time with God, the more you will find out that He is pure or righteous in His character and attitudes. These power-attitudes of God will PROGRESSIVELY help you want what God Has.
Your Progressive Spiritual Growth
- As you yield to being poor in spirit, you will grow in the discovery of how wonderful God’s character and attitudes are.
- As you grow in this discovery, it will help you see things that are already in your life that shouldn’t be there; this will empower you to mourn, repent, and ask Jesus to set you free from them.
- As Jesus empties you from human effort and world training, that will help you with meekness. You will learn that He is TOTALLY trustworthy and therefore qualified to be given your complete trust.
- That will bring you to hungering and thirsting for righteousness for yourself. You will like what you see in God and want to be like Him.
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Wanting Righteousness From Others
Trying To Require Righteous Treatment
We all want to be treated with righteousness; we start out in life trying to MAKE people only treat us good and never treat us bad. We want people to only give us good things and never give us bad things. This is where we learn about “human effort.” Human effort is a process that all humans start out with to get the relationships and things they want in life; this is presented in James 4:1-3.
Our Human Technique
For Getting Righteous Treatment
James 4:1-3 (NIV) What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.
This doesn’t sound like righteousness, does it? But, these “human efforts” are used to try to force others to treat YOU with righteousness.
The Key To Righteousness
Look To God For Righteous Treatment
God tells us how to go about getting righteousness in the last part of James 4:2: “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” All other efforts are HUMAN EFFORTS and fail to produce the results that is being looked for.
Righteous Treatment Comes Through Prayer
Prayer is God’s way for you to get what you need; but, getting it only within the realm of righteousness. You establish a meekness relationship with God that is only involved in holiness, purity, righteousness, and godliness (the righteous character and attitudes of God).
Your Righteousness Filter
By praying, you run all your desires and requests through God, Who is righteous. This protects you from getting things that you or others think would be good for you, only to discover later that they weren’t. By getting them through asking God, you are receiving them through a righteousness filter. He checks everything out before He allows it to be passed on to you. That way you only get those things that are good for you and those around you.
Surrounded By Righteousness
You Need To BE Righteous
To Receive Righteous Treatment
If you are around righteous people, righteous things, righteous opportunities, and a righteous God, but you lack righteousness yourself, then you will end up destroying all the benefits of righteousness that are all around you. You need to pray for righteousness to come into all of who you are. This is where a prayer for righteousness comes to your aid.
Being Filled With Righteousness
By you being poor in spirit (teachable), mourning (feeling bad and getting help for the bad in your life), and being meek (learning how to trust God with the issues in your life), you are now able to pray to God for changing your attitudes and character. You are ready to start praying for righteousness to fill you with a spiritual quality that will change you, your circumstance, and those people around you.
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