I’ve got to start off by being completely vulnerable with you all that for years that word, Godliness, was very intimidating for me. You see it’s a bit scary because as an individual, I know who I am in the most inner part of my heart. I know what I struggle with in my mind and heart. I know the ins and outs of what I do or don’t do when people are or aren’t around. It’s easy to let those things, and even shame, dictate whether or not I feel that I’m capable of living a Godly life and leaving the old self behind.
Certainly, I’m not the only one out there that has felt that way.What do you think of when “living a Godly life” is mentioned?
I used to think of certain people in my life that love God and seem to have it all together. I would think of the women in our church that look like they had perfect marriages and families compared to me. I would see them walking into church looking like they had it all together. I just knew that they didn’t have any junk they were carrying around like me. But boy was I wrong!
A lot of this way of thinking came from my upbringing. My parents met at a revival and, shortly after, dated and got married. I’m the oldest child and pretty soon after birth, I attended church. The church we attended was a super strict religious church. The beliefs they taught were more about works-based righteousness. You worked very hard to be a good Christian, please God, and also please the people in the church. Your life was only supposed to be good and blessed because of Jesus and yet, if you messed up, God was mad and was going to punish you, maybe even kick you out of His kingdom. That way of life also transferred into our homelife and, to be quite honest, this instilled my belief of how I saw myself in God’s eyes.
The truth is, as people, we genuinely mess up. We have faults and shortcomings, none of us are without those things. Romans 3:23 “For everyone has sinned and we fall short of God’s glorious standard.”
I can look back at all the times in my life, where I walked as a defeated Christian and was very unsure if godliness was even something I possessed inside of myself.
All godliness means is the quality or practice of conforming to the laws and wishes of God. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like something we will continue to do throughout our whole lives as a Christian. It’s not just something we arrive at one day. It’s derived from the Greek word “Piety” in which the original translation comes from the word “Eusebes” (Yoo-Seb-Ace) which means a deep reverence devotion, the type of devotion in how a child is respectfully, devoted and loyal to their parents.
It’s so simple! All God is saying is that when we come to know Him, He wants us to live in such a way that our lives would reflect that we are respectfully, devoted and loyal to Him because He is our Father and we are His children.
2 Peter 1:4-8 tells us that by God’s divine power He has given us everything we need for a godly life and also that He has given us great and precious promises. Those promises enable us to share His divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires. Every promise listed in that scripture is who God says we are. If He says it, then friends, let’s start believing it!
What God has shown me is that I live out GODLINESS when my DEVOTION to him leads me to do the HARD work for Him.
So wherever you find yourself in this area of godliness in your life. I pray that you give yourself grace. God loves you and He is for you. He is our good Father who has our whole lifetime to perfect His work in us. All He wants is a heart surrendered and devoted to him.
Philippians 1:6 says “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”
We would like to thank Brenda Martinez for writing this blog post.
Women's Ministry 