Can you hear the Lord calling you to wake up, to stand firm? He is and we need to ready ourselves. Are you prepared for persecution? Are you ready for the Church to fall away? Are you ready for the most horrid of all circumstances to come flooding into your life? We pray and sing, 'Blessed be your name On the road marked with suffering Though there's pain in the offering Blessed be your name', and 'Bring me anything that brings You glory And I know they'll be days When this life brings me pain But if that's what it takes to praise You Jesus, bring the rain'. Are you ready to be a person of your word now? Am I?????
We need to stop being about our comfort zone and realize that the day is drawing near that our Lord is taking us up to meet Him in the Heavens. Life will continue to get more and more difficult before that happens. Are you going to let the offense of a friend, a family member, a church leader draw you away into self preservation emotions and sin, or are you going to keep your eyes focused on the One who is allowing the hard stuff to come. To bring wisdom into your life to draw you to that sweet place from brokenness, Surrender. Is your current hardship exposing your truth, your real hearts condition? Good then it's doing it's job. Are you repenting, I mean really repenting before a Holy God who died on a cross for those sins. Are you on your knees repenting asking for forgiveness - you know the kind of repentance that breaks that chain of suffocation around you. Okay maybe you don't know that kind of repentance. You better figure it out. There is no greater place of freedom in Jesus then when we figure out that real repentance.
Gods calls us to GO and make Disciples. Are we doing that, are we even one of those Disciples? Do you even know what it looks like to be one? My heart is greatly convicted this morning knowing that when I read what a disciple is my life just doesn't match up. So what the heck am I doing with my life. We (I) have become a generational Christian nation that is all about us. How everything effects us. The sound system at church acts up and I get completely irritated running around looking for someone who can fix it. Sure God cares about that but do you see what I am saying. Does He care more about that then the person who desperately needs Jesus and they are right in front of me. I get more emotional about the sound system then I do this dying, hurting soul. Somehow I (we) have made service about us and not about them, the lost, the hurting, the dying.
Lord Jesus what has become of us. We have become the Church in Corinth that you gave great warnings about.
1Corinthians 11:17-34
As Tony Huy so Spirit filled put it on Saturday night - the church in Corinth was doing more harm then good. It became more isolated then congregational. It was full of division. It became more about indulging its self then giving. They were going through the motions but it was so not their reality. They had made church about them. They had forgotten to really REMEMBER.
Wow does any of this seem vaguely familiar? I sit here and with regrettable honesty I must say Yes Lord I have made church about me. How did I allow such deception to dominate my life?
I have lived church with a greater purpose of isolation than anything else.
So what now Lord Jesus, forgive me for making church something you never intended it to be. This day Lord show me my error and get me back on the right path. I do Lord Jesus desire to be Your disciple.
1Corinthians 6:12 10:23
Everything is permissible for me - but not everything is beneficial nor is it constructive,
Everything is permissible for me - but I will not be mastered by anything.
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