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Sunday, October 17, 2010

Riddle Answer

What has a lot of hands and feet, runs night and day but has no heart?

Answer:  a backslidden church

Please explain:  The church at Laodecia in Revelations 3:14-22 was a church that was rich and doing well outwardly but had lost their zeal and love for Christ.  As a result, they had what many churches have today:    routine with no passion; activities but no personal devotion to Christ.  They can live right on Sunday, but by Monday they carry on, living like unchanged people.  They have gotten so dull, that they may be dead like the dry bones in the book of Ezekiel; or more proverbially like the chicken with his head cut off that doesn't realize he is dead and is still running around the yard.

Is your church doing a lot for the community, activities for the children, retreats, bible studies but bickering, arguing, divided, hateful, gossiping, club hopping choir members,  or deacons and preachers that treat the church like their own personal cash cow? If you are in a church like this and hate what you see, please pray to find something better.  God does have people that are on fire for God. Don't confuse emotionalism with spiritual fire.  True spiritual fire results in a spiritual, holy life.  Be careful to move on when God tells you because it has been my experience that it won't be long before you start to feel it's not so bad and make excuses for the wrongs that you see.

When my spiritual fervency fades, it is time to get back to the old path of loving Christ so much, I refuse to go along with wrong, not matter what the cost. 

A lukewarm church is like a couple who stays together, because it's too expensive to divorce, or it's "cheaper to keep her" but have lost the romance out of their marriage.  They have the house, car and friends but their relationship is dead. How is your relationship with the Master?  This is the condition of many churches, and all who can need to pray. 

a good solid church I can recommend is http://jolietchurchofgod.org

What is the Old Path?

So I guess you are wondering exactly what is the Old Path?  

The Old Path is what all Christians need to get back to! 

We live in the American age of the "mega church".   A mega church can have 100,000 members, but if none of them is living a holy life, what is the point? 

God calls people out of sin to a holy life.  He takes them from the kingdom of darkness to the light.  The old path is holiness.

Do you have to be Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama or a monk in a monastery to be holy?  Not according to the bible.  Being holy is obtained through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  Many churches teach the St. Augustine view that holiness is something imputed to us through Christ's work on the cross.  In other words  YOU CAN'T REALLY BE HOLY.    But God never asked anything that was impossible.   Christ is our righteousness, but  he also gives us power to actually live right and overcome wrong.   Holiness is not just something we dream of as a believer, but it is imparted to our lives through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

MY TESTIMONY

The Lord saved me in 1982  while attending the University of Chicago, (a hot bed of agnosticism) and to top things off,  I was a member of a mega church on the South Side of Chicago under a now infamous Pastor of national fame. Still, I found no peace.  Why? I was still carrying a load of sins. I had a whole barn full of things I was doing in my non-church life.  I think they call this "hypocrisy". 

The point is, I was going to a church where holy living was something that no one  seemed to expect nor was it taught as being a reality.  However,  through all of this, God started dealing with me about living a holy life.  I asked people at church who had been Christians longer than I had, "how do you live holy?"  None of them seemed to know.  Their response was, "nobody can be perfect", which was not what I was looking for. My soul was at stake and I needed answers.  I would have settled for staying out of trouble with God for one day.   That would have been good enough for me.

Well, before I gave up on holiness as a pipe dream, I asked God to show me someone that was living right, because frankly, I was tired of getting on my knees every night about the same sins.  "There has to be something better than this" I thought.  I was so frustrated with myself "why can't I stop doing things that I know are wrong?  Why do I keep giving in?"  God was faithful to me and heard my prayer for help.  I met a young lady in my Calculus class  who was serious about being saved--unlike me.

She was not the "I just go to church, attend bible study but I have two boyfriends and some weed in my pocket" saved", but REALLY saved from her sins.  I wanted what she had, so I followed her up.  I heard messages that convicted me of my sins.  I told God that I was tired of living this double life and that I wanted real salvation.  Mind you,  I thought I was a Christian anyway because I believed in God, Christ and all that,  and went to church; but God showed me three scriptures that I did not even know were in the bible:

I John 3:8-9 (He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.  Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.)

and

 I John 1:9 (If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness)

God saved me in my room at home, and no one had to tell me that a change had taken place in my heart.  I knew God had cleansed me, forgave and delivered me from my sins.


Come back again and I will tell you more....