Jesus desires that we be hot with an on-fire love for Him.
Lukewarm lives turn people away from Jesus.
Lukewarm-Show-Christians have to keep trying to convince others they have been touched and changed by Jesus. They spend their time and energy telling everyone they are a Christian when their actions and countenance should speak for them.
Lukewarm prayers and Show Christians mock God! What an insult it is to come before God with a heart filled with worldliness. We kneel in an attitude of prayer so we can ask God to give us our fleshly desires.
We are always asking for what is best for us.
When’s the last time we asked God what He wants?
We approach God with the hope of getting rich and popular. We are deceived into believing we can waltz our sinful heart into His presence and leave with no conviction.
It amazes me that the priest in the OT were afraid to enter the Holy of holies in fear of dying due to sin in their lives. Today we walk in like we are above reproach. As if God has given us a free pass to enter His presence with sin.
We are ‘coached’ at church to believe we are in God’s presence when most of us there have hidden sins. There was no prayer of repentance before the service---performance started. Yet we are led to believe we can be ushered into God’s presence with our hidden sins.
We weep, get all ‘electrified’ spiritually and leave with a false sense that we were in God’s presence. This is giving us permission to live a double life-----lukewarm Christianity.
Afterwards, we get in our cars, in the church parking lot, light up a cigarette, drink our alcohol, swear, yell at our family or friends, run each other over trying to get to McDonalds or grab for our computers. In other words, life continues on without change! Sin still exists in our lives and we believe we have been blessed by God’s presence.
Being in the presence of God would bring radical change to our lives!
We would fall prostrate, crying out for forgiveness! We would be so convicted of sin that we would change!
What is hidden in my heart?
What do I think about all day?
What or who controls me?
Is God pleased with me or nauseated?
“ 16-18My counsel is this: Live freely, animated and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical,(opposite) so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
19-21It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn't the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God's kingdom.” Gal. 5:16-21 Message Bible
Jesus Loves Me!
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