- Jun 26, 2015
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The cure for our lukewarmness is the greatest need the church has in this present day. But guys, ot will not fall in our laps. It will not sneak up and overtake us. So what will it take to obtain thisremedy to our grave illness? Tears and some long needed heart- searching honesty. But sadly, both of those are currently missing from our religious repertoire.
What will it take to awken us from our anethesized religious stupor of 25 minute sermons, four songs and a clear view of the back of the head of the saint in front of us? Do we really believe we as the church are here on earth for that? Is this our definition of running our race as if there is but one prize? Is this really how we believe the saints walked out their faith in the book of Acts as they turned the entire world upside down in one single generation? Is this the actions of the bride prepared to meet her husband? Really?
The entire epistles are an exhortation to walking in holiness. They are promise-filled urgings to not let our guard down, to walk soberly, keeping our bodies under, possessing our bodies in holiness and righteousness, to be single minded and single eyed sojourners and pilgrims. And we have not been listening, and have traded the grace that teaches us "that denying worldly lusts, we are to live soberly, righteously and justly" for a grace that tells us not to worry or be "sin conscious", because our reservation is already made for the bus to Heaven.
Over and over, we are urged by the apostles to walk circumspectly, to understand that we have an enemy whose sole goal, if he cannot sway us away from the Lord, is to make sure we are not a threat to others who seek the answer we have been entrusted with. And he is doing a bang up job of it.
The world is rotting around us. And we, for the most part, do not care, unless of course, it affects US. We talk OF Jesus. Our activities at church center AROUND Jesus. But we are supposed to be IN Him, with the old us dead and buried. And our lives, our speech, our thoughts, our actions, the love we possess for Him and each other, they should all joyously exclaim to the lost that we have what they need. But our lives are set on mute, and by and large, the lost do not hear is or pay us any attention.
How many of us have walked with the Lord for years, even decades, and if we are honest, can still not testify with straight faces of amazing changes that we have seen the Lord bring about in us? What sins have been defeated? What fruits have we seen replace our less appealing fleshly characteristics? We are branches only, barren of life giving water to quench the thirt of true seekers.
Has our prayer life grown richer, deeper, as the years past? Do we look forward to time alone with God? Has our love for the Word, not just reading it but longing to obey what God counsels us, increased? Has out burden for souls..... friends, relatives, family.... become larger, or has it waned? Has the world, that we are told not to love, become more important to us than the things of God?
Guys, let's be honest here. Let's leave the excuses at the door. We all know the answers to these questions. We know the answrs to them pertaining to the church as a whole, to our church we are a part of, and we know, as hard as it may be, that in our personal walks, the desire to have Him increase, to truly become our Lord as well as savior, is simply not there. And for the few who truly are seeking a deeper walk, no instruction is goven as to how this may be brought about.
God has warned us, far more than once, that in the last days, there will be a generation of saints who will say all the right things, and yet not have the desire to truly walk in them. They will say to drug addicts and homosexuals, "God can free you!", and yet the secret sins that possess and enslave them have so hardened their hearts that they do not even fight to get freed from their grip any more. Defeat will be accepted as the new definition of overcoming.
Instead of letting the Lord lift us up to the place we can fulfill the standard of walking with pure hearts and clean hands, we have lowered the standard to fit our experience, and because all the others we are surrounded by are doing the same thing, we rest content as we make the promises of God no more than quotable Christian motivtional wall posters.
Saints, we are warned that these children of God, these true saints, will be found asleep at the wheel right before Jeusus returns.They will not be found rowing against the current of evil, and yet not flowing with it, but simply free floating, as if this is God's definition of Christianity. It is not. These people will be healed, yes, but only slightly, and yet amazingly, be found satisfied with having their "form" of Christianity down. We are warned that the lives pf these people will not scream out to the lost that Jesus is real and will change us from worldly sinner to other worldly saint. They will have correct form, but no LIFE.
In the early church, the church that turned the entire world upside down, men outside the church would exclaim "Behold how they love one another!" And today? Today that say "What a bunch of hypocrites, people who say they love God, but have no heart to actually obey Him". And you know what? They are, as much as it pains me to admit, spot on the money.
Why is this? Why are we asleep when we should be wide awake? Why has the church been transformed from red hot and on-fire to just tepid, lilewarm and simply going through the motions, and worse, quite content with that? It is because we no longer believe God's plan is to change us from sinner to a saint freed from its grip. We believe He died for us. We do not believe He lives for us, IN us, transfprming us before the eyes of the skeptics. We have an unspoken but well believed core doctrine that says that we can never truly walk as overcomers of sin, so don't worry about it. After all, we don't want to become sin conscious, right?
We best wake up. The Lord, our Lord, the ones He is addressing in the letter to the Laodecians, loves us. He loves us DESPITE ourselves. He tells us what to do . Hit our knees, admit to Him the sad state of our shallow compromising brand of Christianity, tell Him that the world has bewitched us, admit our hypocrisy, and cry out to Him for the answer as to how to walk in real holiness before Him all the days of our lives.
Of you are reading this, God is giving you a personsl call to believe He can do more, that He keep keep us from the power of darkness that is growing exponentially in this evil world. Will you get more chsnces if you choose to simply click off this challenging exhortation, and go back to what is "safe" and socially acceptable with your Christian friends? Most likely, yes. But one day, without a doubt, that answer will come up NO. And on that day, those who have tried to walk both sides of the fence, by not making a clear cut decision to lay self on the alter, and to be forever His servant, will find to their horror, that, in truth, theor postponement of that decision WAS their decision, and that they were never saved at all.
May God grant us eyes to cry again, hearts to hunger again, and ears to hear what God is sharing with us. The time to awake is now. To those who are truly listening, God will not disappoint, and just like the prodigal found out, our God loves to forgive AND cleanse us of ALL unrighteousness. Faithful is He who calls you, who also will DO iT!
Blessings,
Gideon
What will it take to awken us from our anethesized religious stupor of 25 minute sermons, four songs and a clear view of the back of the head of the saint in front of us? Do we really believe we as the church are here on earth for that? Is this our definition of running our race as if there is but one prize? Is this really how we believe the saints walked out their faith in the book of Acts as they turned the entire world upside down in one single generation? Is this the actions of the bride prepared to meet her husband? Really?
The entire epistles are an exhortation to walking in holiness. They are promise-filled urgings to not let our guard down, to walk soberly, keeping our bodies under, possessing our bodies in holiness and righteousness, to be single minded and single eyed sojourners and pilgrims. And we have not been listening, and have traded the grace that teaches us "that denying worldly lusts, we are to live soberly, righteously and justly" for a grace that tells us not to worry or be "sin conscious", because our reservation is already made for the bus to Heaven.
Over and over, we are urged by the apostles to walk circumspectly, to understand that we have an enemy whose sole goal, if he cannot sway us away from the Lord, is to make sure we are not a threat to others who seek the answer we have been entrusted with. And he is doing a bang up job of it.
The world is rotting around us. And we, for the most part, do not care, unless of course, it affects US. We talk OF Jesus. Our activities at church center AROUND Jesus. But we are supposed to be IN Him, with the old us dead and buried. And our lives, our speech, our thoughts, our actions, the love we possess for Him and each other, they should all joyously exclaim to the lost that we have what they need. But our lives are set on mute, and by and large, the lost do not hear is or pay us any attention.
How many of us have walked with the Lord for years, even decades, and if we are honest, can still not testify with straight faces of amazing changes that we have seen the Lord bring about in us? What sins have been defeated? What fruits have we seen replace our less appealing fleshly characteristics? We are branches only, barren of life giving water to quench the thirt of true seekers.
Has our prayer life grown richer, deeper, as the years past? Do we look forward to time alone with God? Has our love for the Word, not just reading it but longing to obey what God counsels us, increased? Has out burden for souls..... friends, relatives, family.... become larger, or has it waned? Has the world, that we are told not to love, become more important to us than the things of God?
Guys, let's be honest here. Let's leave the excuses at the door. We all know the answers to these questions. We know the answrs to them pertaining to the church as a whole, to our church we are a part of, and we know, as hard as it may be, that in our personal walks, the desire to have Him increase, to truly become our Lord as well as savior, is simply not there. And for the few who truly are seeking a deeper walk, no instruction is goven as to how this may be brought about.
God has warned us, far more than once, that in the last days, there will be a generation of saints who will say all the right things, and yet not have the desire to truly walk in them. They will say to drug addicts and homosexuals, "God can free you!", and yet the secret sins that possess and enslave them have so hardened their hearts that they do not even fight to get freed from their grip any more. Defeat will be accepted as the new definition of overcoming.
Instead of letting the Lord lift us up to the place we can fulfill the standard of walking with pure hearts and clean hands, we have lowered the standard to fit our experience, and because all the others we are surrounded by are doing the same thing, we rest content as we make the promises of God no more than quotable Christian motivtional wall posters.
Saints, we are warned that these children of God, these true saints, will be found asleep at the wheel right before Jeusus returns.They will not be found rowing against the current of evil, and yet not flowing with it, but simply free floating, as if this is God's definition of Christianity. It is not. These people will be healed, yes, but only slightly, and yet amazingly, be found satisfied with having their "form" of Christianity down. We are warned that the lives pf these people will not scream out to the lost that Jesus is real and will change us from worldly sinner to other worldly saint. They will have correct form, but no LIFE.
In the early church, the church that turned the entire world upside down, men outside the church would exclaim "Behold how they love one another!" And today? Today that say "What a bunch of hypocrites, people who say they love God, but have no heart to actually obey Him". And you know what? They are, as much as it pains me to admit, spot on the money.
Why is this? Why are we asleep when we should be wide awake? Why has the church been transformed from red hot and on-fire to just tepid, lilewarm and simply going through the motions, and worse, quite content with that? It is because we no longer believe God's plan is to change us from sinner to a saint freed from its grip. We believe He died for us. We do not believe He lives for us, IN us, transfprming us before the eyes of the skeptics. We have an unspoken but well believed core doctrine that says that we can never truly walk as overcomers of sin, so don't worry about it. After all, we don't want to become sin conscious, right?
We best wake up. The Lord, our Lord, the ones He is addressing in the letter to the Laodecians, loves us. He loves us DESPITE ourselves. He tells us what to do . Hit our knees, admit to Him the sad state of our shallow compromising brand of Christianity, tell Him that the world has bewitched us, admit our hypocrisy, and cry out to Him for the answer as to how to walk in real holiness before Him all the days of our lives.
Of you are reading this, God is giving you a personsl call to believe He can do more, that He keep keep us from the power of darkness that is growing exponentially in this evil world. Will you get more chsnces if you choose to simply click off this challenging exhortation, and go back to what is "safe" and socially acceptable with your Christian friends? Most likely, yes. But one day, without a doubt, that answer will come up NO. And on that day, those who have tried to walk both sides of the fence, by not making a clear cut decision to lay self on the alter, and to be forever His servant, will find to their horror, that, in truth, theor postponement of that decision WAS their decision, and that they were never saved at all.
May God grant us eyes to cry again, hearts to hunger again, and ears to hear what God is sharing with us. The time to awake is now. To those who are truly listening, God will not disappoint, and just like the prodigal found out, our God loves to forgive AND cleanse us of ALL unrighteousness. Faithful is He who calls you, who also will DO iT!
Blessings,
Gideon
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