I confess I have little patience with those Christians who cling to the culture over the substance of faith. As with most things, there are exceptions. Young-in-the-faith Christians don’t always know or understand how corrupt the culture can be, and their discernment levels might not react to certain stimuli which will eventually repel them. It’s not about laws and regulations either—it’s about simple obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ in ways that will honor Him and not detract from who He is in the eyes of the world. Detract here meaning cause the view to focus more on an individual than on the Lord shining through the person. Jesus is irresistible when He is operating through a person. There will be a reaction to Him. Good or bad responses, He always causes a stir.
A person doesn’t have to say a word if the Spirit is allowed to operate in full. Those outside the faith feel uncomfortable, unrighteous, needy, or angry without being able to define why. The Holy Spirit draws a reaction of some kind.
Christians who desire to participate in a half and half relationship with God fail in the dying to self part. And since there’s really nothing attractive tied to self, the lukewarm Christian experience referred to in Revelation will ultimately prove eternally destructive if it is maintained at that non-committal level.
Even in the human sense, who wants to sustain a serious relationship with someone who vacillates from being concerned with the involvement to uncaring and irresponsible in the relationship? There is a cut-off point when someone who’s supposed to be close keeps wandering away looking for other ways to be entertained or impressed.
Spiritual inventory requires us to take note of priorities now and then. We need not remain naïve about what’s required of us. The first four books in the New Testament deliver the goods as to the transformation of a soul from death to life in the spiritual rebirth, the sacrifice given for us and then required of us. It’s not a mystery in the sense of the “how to” actions to attain “sainthood”. Jesus makes it clear enough for children to absorb and decide. “Follow Him.” Not an easy choice for some, a choice of many trials for most, the major rewards clearly await our transfer to the heavenly realms, but for those who truly understand the nature of their sin, it is a worthy offer to escape the eternal punishment due to humankind.
For those who play with the mercy of Jesus and cling to the offerings of the worldly platter, what awaits them? In just a matter of a moment life can disappear, the tenuous hold of what has really never fully belonged to us can be released. We are all awaiting eternity without consciously pursuing it. Is this all we want—what we have attained or hope to accomplish—here? Only what a corrupted planet has to offer? Hard to imagine this is it, isn’t it? That this sinful world is the ultimate? It is for me.
What do you cling to?
Father, you are what I need, what I seek, what I desire most of all. Help me to follow you day in and day out, in pleasure or peril, no matter what. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
*Please remember to pray for Kristy Dykes.*