2 John 2 --- because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever:
Lord, I come to you this morning with a broken heart for what happened yesterday in Uvalde, TX. I don't even know what to pray other than be there with those left behind Lord. We have turned our backs on you and removed you from all areas of our country, our lives. Even most churches are shamefully more focused on entertaining than they are on you and your truth. Oh Lord wake up your church, open our eyes to repent of our lazy, self-centered, over entertained ways. Lead us back to your Word, your Truth, back to Jesus, back to prayer, back to repentance. I don't know what else to even say, other than God, I ask you to move upon those left behind, those crushed, and torn apart. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
After much prayer and just being in His presence this morning. We made our way over to His Word. Where two things jumped out as we moved to the next verse.
We're two verses in and the word "Truth" has been used three times already. We went through truth yesterday as well as it was the source of John's agape love, which ties us all the way back to the book of First John and the truth of Jesus, that He is the truth. Which brings us to the next thing.
The second thing is we see a very familiar concept, again from the book of First John, with the word "Abides". The truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. We found over and over and over in First John that we must abide in Him and He will abide in us.
1 John 4:16 --- So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
So, once again we are confronted with the direction that we should be abiding, rooted together, sewn together, staying in place together, remaining where He is, moving where He moves because you're attached to him, etc…
This isn't achieved by head knowledge, religious checklists or simply going to church on Sun and being a good person. It's only achieved through relationship with Jesus, abiding in Him. Which, consists of reading His Word, prayer/talking with Him, and being connected to His body/active within the church. A hand isn't alive and can't fulfill it's true purpose if it isn't connected to the body.
That's it for the study today but there are just a few things left to say.
If all of us professing Christians would repent of our selfish ways and genuinely put God back in the place He deserves, above ourselves, above our entertainment, above our agendas, above our pretentious religiosity, and above our rights that we're quick to spew venom, anger and hate towards people over, only God Himself knows how things could turned upside down in this Country.
We reap what we sow. It's an inherent principle God intertwined into the fabric of all creation. I saw a group of "christians" online go after an unbeliever in comments who had taken something that was posted as hypocritical. Instead of sowing love, gentleness and walking as Jesus would've in it…. there was arguing, bitterness and hate sown, over something so trivial and minor. What will be reaped in this unbeliever's life now because all these good godly people, who he already saw as hypocritical, chose to argue and some other comments actually spewed hate?
Where is God in what happened yesterday? I see what is sown by "the church" online, on TV, and in person and we have the audacity to ask where God is. He's right we're we've left Him, which isn't in our hearts, isn't in the vast majority of church buildings, isn't in our daily lives or routine unless it's Sunday morning, and isn't in our entertainment that we're immersed in. We've sown self and we reap self. We've sown our human rights and we reap a society focused on humans and their rights. We've sown absent minded self-centered entertainment and we reap absent minded self-centered people.
Us "Christians" are playing a dangerous and deadly game of pretend and we better wake up and put God first in every single area of our lives, we better get back in His Word, back into prayer every single day, back to repenting for the things we've gotten out of order because until we do, all we are, as Pastor Bob Willhite preached in his final sermon, is believers on the broad road. If we don't abide in Him, then He doesn't abide in us and that means we are the hypocrites the world sees us as.
If you right this moment read this and say you are a Christian then get with God now and pray just like David did in Psalm 139:23-24 and then before your flesh starts to justify all the things that come to mind, stop, and really let Galatians 6:7-8 sink in.
Psalm 139:23-24 --- Search me [thoroughly], O God, and know my heart; Test me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there is any wicked or hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.
Galatians 6:7-8 --- Do not be deceived, God is not mocked [He will not allow Himself to be ridiculed, nor treated with contempt nor allow His precepts to be scornfully set aside]; for whatever a man sows, this and this only is what he will reap. For the one who sows to his flesh [his sinful capacity, his worldliness, his disgraceful impulses] will reap from the flesh ruin and destruction, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
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