Four Steps to Align with God’s Heart
Most people think they are right and everyone else is wrong. We could summarize almost all arguments in history as one person saying, “I am right and you are wrong,” while the other says, “No, I’m right and you’re wrong.” The biblical viewpoint is that God created us good, but we have all sinned (Genesis 3, 6; I Kings 8:46; Psalm 14, 53; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:23).
I suppose we could say with a bit of dry humor that God enters the argument and says, “No, you are both wrong. I am right.”
The beginning of the message of the biblical prophets was that we all have to admit that we are wrong, and that God is right. “For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed” (Romans 1:16–17). It does not do any good to skip over God’s righteousness and try to establish our own righteousness. “For by trying to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3).
This is how we start the process of alignment in our own lives.
1. We recognize that we are “out of line.”
2. We recognize that God has the right alignment.
3. We change our position.
4. We get in line with His alignment.
The Bible calls this “repentance.” It is a moral change. It is a change of will. There is no way to get into right alignment without this change, without repenting. It seems to me that there are two kinds of repentance. There is the “big” repentance, which usually happens once in a lifetime when we turn away from the things of the world and choose to believe in God and follow His Messiah. (This may happen more than once in the case of serious back-sliding or falling away.)
Then there is the second kind of repentance: this repentance is a daily turning away from the “world, the flesh and the devil,” which are around us all the time. In this second type, we repent every day and forgive those who have sinned against us (Matthew 6:12). Then we walk forward with the Lord in faith.
This kind of daily repentance/realignment is like following a compass on a hiking trail or a GPS navigating program. You continually check the compass and adjust your path to follow the coordinates. We keep changing in order to “stay in line” as we move forward. Our alignment with the Lord is a living and dynamic relationship. We have to keep changing, keep repenting, and keep moving forward. Yeshua is walking; we follow after Him.
Repentance is the first step of alignment; the second step is faith. If we believe in God, we believe in the One He has sent, the chosen Messiah. Yeshua (Jesus) is that Messiah. In every generation, the Israelites had to believe and submit to the chosen prophet or king (Exodus 14:31). That was part of the faith. Yeshua is the chosen anointed One over all the generations (John 14:1).
To believe in Yeshua is to submit to Him. The declaration of salvation is “Yeshua is Lord” (Romans 10:9). What does it mean to say that Yeshua is Lord? It is a verbal commitment to do whatever He says. Yeshua said, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don’t do what I say?” (Luke 6:46). To call Yeshua “Lord” is to make a commitment to obedience. To be saved is to do what He says. If someone says that Yeshua is Lord but does not do what He says, then he may be just deceiving himself (Matthew 7:21–23; Romans 1:5, 6:16, 16:26; I John 1:6, 2:4).
We believe and receive what Yeshua freely gave us on the cross. Because of that, we submit to Him as Lord and commit to do whatever He tells us.
Alignment brings us into a God-given set of priorities for our personal lives. In the Gospels, Yeshua outlined some of those simple priorities. Eternal life is the most important: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” (Matthew 16:26). We submit to God’s created order and His moral standards. Spiritual alignment is moral alignment.
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