|
Other blogs of El Gato |
|
|
|
Ebook - Molly the White Mare |
|
|
|
Homepage |
|
|
|
Values or Virtues? |
|
|
|
The Goose & the Princess |
|
|
|
Man's Strength |
|
|
|
Apathy & Christian Worldliness |
|
|
|
Waiting |
|
|
|
Christians Who Hurt Themselves |
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||
|
|
|
| ||
Apathy & Christian Worldliness
When Christians turn away from God they rarely do so all at once. Usually they start with the eyes. They look at the possible pleasures in the world and see that not only is everybody having fun with them, but they are hardly guilty or suffering judgment of any kind. Indeed, most seem to be prospering and happy. Thus a desire is opened, one that will not depart unless it is immediately brought to God.
Ah! But it is so pleasant just to look, especially when our current circumstances seem so barren. God would not object to just a little enjoyment in our dreary lives once in awhile, would He?
At this point comes the sin of proximity. Of course we have no intent of actually doing any of these unGodly things, but what if we moved just a little closer, just to get a better look, sort of a vicarious enjoyment of things that we of course would never actually participate in. God forbid!
At this point all sorts of thoughts occur. Maybe God wants me to witness to these people. He never intended for me to stay unhappy here, right? I could use the lessons I've learned to help the people who do these things. I'll need to join them in their activities of course, although I'll never participate in the evil they do. God knows how bad I need people in my life, after all. They obviously won't come to me, so I have to go to them. I know they are not right with God, but at least we can be friends, right? Justifications abound - many of them Scriptural! - but now we find ourselves in fellowship with the very world that God once delivered us from.
Fellowship very rapidly leads to assimilation. We begin to dress like the world, talk like them, model their behaviors, and soon enough we participate in their sins. At first we are a bit guilty, but at this point we want what is being offered here far more than we want the bleak, colorless, and often uncomfortable ways of God, don't we? Not surprisingly, we no longer feel "connected" to anything we had with God and, as our emotions have now won control, we start to think that it is actually best for our emotional health to begin cutting all ties with God and His people.So we bury our guilt (we can't expunge it) and plunge headlong into the world to drown out our knowledge of the evil within us.
At any of these steps along the way God could bring judgment, but He does not. As the verse above says, if judgment were brought immediately our hearts would not become so full of evil. But He does not. It seems God is doing nothing, and we can continue happy as larks in our new life. We are still believers after all. OK so we're doing some bad things, but God knows our hearts, right?
Yes, God knows our hearts, and He desperately wants to change them! He is giving us space to voluntarily repent. If we just once listened to our consciences instead of our emotional demands we would run to God and He would clear us of our sin and refresh us with His love and mercy. Alas, the sin has hold of us now, and we mistake this space to repent as our opportunity to continue. We forget the good that we once had and remember only the times in the desert, for which we blame both God and His people who led us there. We forsake our promises, find legal loopholes for our behavior, and continue with the world...until the day that God has had enough.
"Their sorrows will be multiplied who hasten after another..." (Psalm 16:4). There is a price for sin, but for those who start with God there will be a day when this price is multiplied beyond that which those who are not His have to endure. You have had time to return voluntarily, now God will show you your folly through suffering and pain (not all suffering is the result of sin, by the way), and it will be worse for you than for all those around you who do likewise. Why? Because you belong to God and they do not. Their day will come in eternity, but today "judgment begins in the house of God." God will hedge you in with thorns, cut you off from your worldly lovers, and leave you isolated and alone until you repent. You don't want to consider these things now, but the day is coming if you fail to return. You have God's Word on it.
At whatever step along this way down you are, you can come back to God and He will restore you, but know that the longer you wait the harder it is and the more severe and long-lasting the consequences. There are those of us right now who need to repent of fornication and adultery, renew promises and vows we made to God and to others, pray for the restoration of relationships that we know were given us by God but on which we have cruelly turned our backs, and completely sever our ties with a world that doesn't really care other than for what it gets for itself. Have you really gone so far that you cannot turn back? Was what you had with God really so bad? Remember how you felt when you sought God at the first and ask Him to restore that freshness of love in you. Yes, He will require that you sacrifice your current life, but in your heart you know it is really no life at all. Do not let things go until God begins multiplying sorrows, for "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God." You no longer feel a connection because you have been led away and seduced - step by devious step. It is you who are hardening your heart in order to continue in the world, and if you would soften it just once you would see that your connection to God has been there all along. Let it be today, friend, that you return. Please let it be today.
| Site Tools |
|
|
|
Verse of the Day |
