How can I express this?
It seems that we just refuse to live by faith, refuse to listen to even simple instructions from the God whom we claim to be all-wise and all-knowing.
We play, we downsize, we manipulate until church is comfortable, doable, and we are content.
But we can’t be.
I can’t stand before God one of these days and admit that for all the accolades I throw his way that I just couldn’t bring myself to trust him in the things that matter most.
Everything that we do in church or in Christian service can be done while still keeping our heart far from God.
Praise, worship, sing, serve. . .talk to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Christ.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 MSG If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. (2) If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. (3) If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Bankrupt without love, and not what we interpret and define as love but God’s idea.
And that kind of love means faith. Faith to love Christ, follow him and die along the way.
All the stuff means nothing, clanging bells of nothingness.
I guess I am just tired of so much pettiness and selfishness in the Church, so much not caring about what matters, and calling a national emergency when we get our feelings hurt or don’t get our way.
(Romans 1:17 NKJV) For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
Hebrews 11:6 ESV And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Do we really want to stand before God with the satisfaction that we did a thing or two right, that we actually trusted his words instead of paying lip-service to his thoughts and ways?
By faith then. The things that we do in his name must be things in which we have to trust God.