"For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me" (Psalms 69:9).
This is more of a rant than an organized post. You probably could also classify this as the random musings of an angry lover of God. Sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it? "An angry lover of God"? Yes, I have to admit that that does sound odd, but on a deeper level it's very spot-on. I love God, and daily I am striving to love Him more than I did the previous day and as the Scriptures say, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength (Deut. 6:5; Mk. 12:30) and to love my neighbor as I love myself (Mk. 12:31). Loving God and others is one of the primary reasons why we as Christians need the Holy Spirit; loving God as He deserves and commands is totally impossible without His Spirit empowering us to do it. And for a moment just think about how hard it is to just like certain people, much more to love them, especially when we are treated unjustly, with hate and scorn and disdain—our flesh wants to lash back with similar sentiments—again, loving our enemies and those the world calls "unlovable" is precisely why we must have the Holy Spirit.
I've gone on about love because it would be through love Christ said the world would be able to identify His followers as truly belonging to Him (Jn. 13:35), not holiness, righteous service, or acceptable worship, all of which are necessities for Christians. Since our lives are, more than anything, to be governed by love, one might see love and anger as qualities that cannot coexist in the lives of Christians. I can understand that. For those who may not be particularly knowledgeable in the Scriptures and who may have heard the world's "version" of Jesus Christ and his message of universal love, peace, and harmony, I can understand why they'd be confused. Yet the Jesus Christ of the Bible is one who loves in a way that is totally foreign to this world and also hates in a way this world cannot hate. Yes, that's right.
Christ is able to effortlessly love those who hate Him; He showed His love on a cruel, rugged cross drenched in His blood, and He also showed His perfect hate for that which He took upon Himself—sin—at the very same rough, bloody cross. Jesus showed He was very serious about sin by His death, submitting to the Father's will in that His death was man's only hope of freedom from the iron grip of sin. When one considers what Christ went through; He was perfectly innocent, full of grace and Truth, love and virtue and this world did its best to totally destroy Him, and ever since then, has been trying to eradicate His memory from the history books and hearts of mankind.
In the world's attempts to destroy Jesus Christ, it has become much more forward about its intentions. At one time in the United States Judeo-Christian principles were highly esteemed, even by the ungodly. But now, as the thin veneer of civility and morality is peeled back, the world is becoming all the more obvious in its hatred of Jesus Christ. As the world, from virtually every sector, aligns itself with all that is blatantly antichristian its derision of Christ's Name becomes nastier. I recently read a CNN article about the rapture of the Church and how Jesus would never endorse the doctrine of the rapture. This article painted the Lord Jesus Christ as an uber-tolerant lover of any and every thing about man, who doesn't need or even want him to change, who'll take the elect as quick as he would the devout Catholic, the pious Muslim, the tormented pedophile, as quickly as He would the homosexual couple in love.
Of course, the idea that sinful man doesn't have to repent to have fellowship with God is a fallacy (Mt. 3:1-12; Lk. 13:1-5; I Jn. 1:6-9; 2:4), and all of those lies are attacks on Truth, and when Truth is attacked, that should make Christians quite irate. In America, we have grown accustomed to our peaceful, idyllic liberties, but it's high time we got angry about how blasphemous this society has become concerning Jesus Christ.
Hollywood constantly churns out movie after movie like Dogma, This Is the End, Bruce Almighty, Antichrist, The Da Vinci Code, and literally scores more, showing the world where that godless industry stands. And where it has stood has never been in question, but now, like so many other sectors of this society the masks are merely coming off and they are showing Christians that they will no longer tolerate what we hold dear, that which has been so profound a blessing on this nation.
Christians, we have to awaken out of the malaise our comfortable living has induced and we have to get angry! But in our anger, we must go beyond the simple peaceful protest; we have to go beyond tweeting about it, posting our feelings on Facebook and Google+ and complaining to our friends. This is really about channeling that righteous indignation into more meaningful action, and that which will honor and glorify the Name of Jesus Christ and will endure the scrutiny of His examination at the judgment.
In our actions, we have to share the glorious Gospel, testifying by speech and conduct that Christ is worthy of esteem and praise and honor and worship because of the great love He has loved ALL people with and how He has offered Himself as the escape from the wrath to come (to those who receive Him by faith). We show our hatred for sin by sharing the cure for it; we hate the slavery to sin by declaring the freedom through Christ, a free gift from God (Eph. 2:8-9). We do not channel our anger into hate for people. We do not use our anger to inflict harm on others. On the contrary, we wreak havoc on the kingdom of darkness with love and Truth for the lost but nothing but hatred for Satan and his infernal kingdom.
We have to divest ourselves from the entertainment system's blasphemy of our Lord. We can no longer watch their movies or listen to their music. I know that may seem hard, even impossible to some, especially since just about all of us have been raised almost from infancy on the industry's cartoons, movies, sitcoms, and songs, the snippets of which still float around in our minds still as fresh as day we first heard and watched it.
We have to use the talents and gifts and abilities to fight the Satanic propaganda and provide godly alternatives for ourselves and our children. Some of us are gifted in writing, speaking and teaching, singing, organizing, motivating and encouraging, and all of these gifts can be used to defend Jesus Christ.
We should not accept the blasphemy of Jesus Christ lying down, but rather by focusing our anger toward Spirit-led Bible study, and effectual fervent prayer according to the will of God.
So much more could be written about this. We must stop looking for our elected officials to stand up for us, especially as they show that they do not love or know Jesus Christ, whether their name is Danny Davis, Nancy Pelosi Mitt Romney, John McCain, Al Sharpton, or Barack Obama. No matter how much they offer lip service to our Lord, it is the blood-bought Church of the Living God that must defend the Lord of Lords, free speech rights or not.
Of course, we shouldn't be surprised by the world hating Jesus Christ because it does not know Him. We should also not be surprised when the world ramps up its attacks on Christ, in fact we should only expect it. But we absolutely don't have to stand by and do nothing.
No comments:
Post a Comment