In Blog

February 2017

If you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I hope you have discovered how very loving, merciful and gracious He is. I also hope you know how very faithful He is. (Deut. 7:9 & 1 Cor. 1:19) The word “faithful” speaks to being trustworthy and dependable. It is essential for us as followers of Christ to know we can trust God and rely on Him keeping His word if we are going to live by faith. However, as people who bear His name and have His Spirit, it is also important that He can rely on us as “faithful” servants who will do His will and live by His power, not our own. The Bible teaches that a great reward awaits those who belong to God and live a “faithful” life. (Matthew 25:21)  In church life, we are to seek “faithful people” to entrust the work of the Gospel to as 1 Timothy 2:2 directs us. Finally, we must all be found to be “faithful even unto death”. (Revelation 2:10)  So how are we doing? Let us each examine our ways if we sincerely want to please our Lord and hope for reward from Him. Do we read our Bible each day to find what God’s will is for us so we will grow in faith and love in our service for Him? Do we make the commitment to spend time in deep prayer and communion with Him every day so we can hear from His Spirit and let Him speak into our life? Are we faithful to worship and serve in a local church body so God can use us to bless His other children, and also be blessed by them? We live in a “me culture” that only concerns itself with what works for “self” rather than fulfill the great commandments to love God first, and others secondly. To be obedient in this calling, we must prioritize our life for anything to change. Let me take one more angle at this. To be an unfaithful person, as in a unfaithful spouse, means the person has broken trust and usually practiced a lot of deception. Of all the things that seem to upset God, being a hypocrite and practicing treachery is on top of the list. Think of who upset Jesus the most; it was the phony Pharisees who took advantage of others for selfish purposes in the name of God. An application of this for us would be “Are we living a double life of trying to look religious when our personal life is anything but that?”. Do we pull out our religious act only to appear righteous to other people even though we know we do not live it? My friend, we all fall short before our holy God, but let us not justify being a poser or thinking we can “pull one over on God or people”. It was the honest and contrite tax collector who was justified before God in prayer, and not the religious but phony Pharisee in Luke 18! May we all practice honesty and complete surrender to God in our prayer life and in our walk before people so He can then use us in this life. Our time on this earth is brief indeed, so let us make every day count by being authentic, sacrificial and faithful people who rely only on the “Christ is us” to make a difference!