Did not your father (King Josiah) eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He plead the case of the afflicted and needy; then it was well with him. Is not that what it means to know me? But your eyes and your heart are intent only upon your own dishonest gain...-Jeremiah 22:15-17
Knowing God seems to be really important in most christian conversations and sermons today. But I often wonder if we really understand what it means to "know God". According to the above verse true knowledge of God is found in clear demonstration of love and compassion. The evidence that one knows God should be seen more than heard.
I want that to be true of our church and my life.
It was said of Jesus that he was "powerful in word AND deed" (Luke 24:13-32). What a legacy...
"Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness and his upper rooms without justice." -Jeremiah 22:13. The “wine” of heaven is to endlessly experience God’s love passing through one’s soul as it is expressed to others. To lose sight of this central reality in the christian life is to get lost in a quagmire religion that produces perpetual navel gazing. So many Christians are caught up in chronic temperature taking of their spiritual life. It's all about degrees, they are hardly ever able to rest in the confidence of their salvation. They have been taught that the main goal of the christian life is to attain some spiritual height that is only reached through straining the gnats of their imperfections. But what happens is they end up being so self focused on spiritual perfection that they end up swallowing a camel sized dose of irrelevant christianity!
I would rather be around a person who is real than someone who is good...at least the version that the church often produces. Somehow the church has been pumping out sterile, persnickety, phobic christians that have come to believe that the essence of following Jesus has been reduced to listening to people talk about other people that did something with their life worth talking about!!! God help us get free from the quicksand of a faith with no hands to work. You can't build the kingdom of Gods with just breath! It takes work, sweat, sacrifice and costs you something to see something. God banish the endless streams to religious blabber that fill us up like a barrel of buttered popcorn but just leave us wanting to take a nap and only produce another pound of spiritual gut blubber.
We are called sheep for a reason...we are designed to produce something that benefits others. We are created to be sheared. Too many of us are walking around with tons of wool hanging off us. It's gotten matted and dirty because we have forgotten our purpose of existence. There are countless lost people shivering in the cold of this world because the church hasn't been sheared of it's fruitfulness. The evidence of a powerful ministry coming from the pulpit is a behemoth pile of wool laying before the altar of God.
God give us sharp shears...this world is getting colder.
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