There must be a sense of need before your message is of any use. Thousands of people are happy without God in this world. If I was happy and moral till Jesus came, why did He come? Because that kind of happiness and peace is on a wrong level; Jesus Christ came to send a sword through every peace that is not based on a personal relationship to Himself. (Quoted from Os Chambers)
Perhaps this has something to do with the saying, “God loves to disturb the comfortable as well as to comfort the disturbed”?
I simply loved reading what Os Chambers had to say in the quote below, such wonderful succinct and to the heart revelation this is! It is so appealing joining a cause or crusade to try and get this world of nasty liars cleaned up, without revelation of His heart and how He has treated us, we will in our own polite way become hate mongers. When is the Son going to rise and awaken in our thinking, that apart from revelation, it will be either a blatant or subtle form of trying to legislate some form of ‘Christianized morality’ on people. Whether it’s trying to get men to be manlier, or to see the injustices within our governments to get their act together, or whatever, if it isn’t you and me simply loving every person He loves and has forgiven, then ‘IT’ sadly becomes a cheap substitute.
This in particular spoke to me, “The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization - I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself.”
Which one of us was NOT ruled by that disposition of “self-realization-I am my own god”? It talks about us having been by nature ‘children of wrath, sons of disobedience’ and how was that altered in us, by someone laying their own brand of morality on us, or was it simply choosing to respond to his relentless invitation to accept His full to overflowing heart of love for us? Then how do we think anyone else is going to begin to want to respond, choose life over death unless they see something much more than cleaned up versions of morality much like freshly fallen snow covering up a pile of shit? If a person isn’t at a heart level transformed, then simply getting whatever results we think are needed and necessary from them, is only going to put a pretty face on the Devil.
Rich
The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man's sin; but that the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Heb. 9:26) - an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization - I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. When Our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and up right, He did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; He looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition. Sin is a thing I am born with and I cannot touch it; God touches sin in Redemption. In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the heredity of sin. The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so, from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. "And this is the judgment" (the critical moment), "that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light."
In light of the thoughts I shared over here, “Morality For Christ’s Sake", I thought this video clip pretty much sums it up for what the morality gospel is doing to those nasty dirty messed up sinners out there. You know the baby killers, the gays, lesbians, and any others that just don’t fit in well with my/our code of ethics or morality!
STOP IT, just STOP IT, sinner, is that too hard for you to grasp? Right, let’s get this morality gospel into high gear, and legislate it without having any relationship with those being condemned with our self-righteous swords, hey, that reminds me of another time period, you know the “Holy Crusaders” "holy" men on a god mission to evangelize those poor backward Muslims, choose our God, or forfeit your heads! Must have sounded so inviting eh?
Like yeah, duh, sure okay, I’ll get the pretending down as good as you if you’ll just be patient with me.
Jesus said, “You clean the outside of the cup and it shines, but inwardly you are not in touch with Love-Life, but are in fact filled with death and corruption.” There is an inner transformation that is unfolding from deep within hungry hearts, those knowing Whose they are, and in turn are treating with respect and dignity those who are wanting to know they too have untold value and worth and that isn’t contingent upon cleaning up their act first!
If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables - of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair.
We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.
"So maybe when we "congratulate" one another for our brilliant abilities in sharing Life we should refrain and instead say, "I love seeing Jesus being so real thru you!"
Christianity is not about learning to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring.
We must see all the brothers and sisters as equals if we are to grasp the reality of Jesus' statement "My Father and Your Father". There are NO junior and senior kindergarten children in the Father's household.
Knowing Christ is a living, spontaneous knowledge. This is not an understanding that you possess so much as it is a knowing that possesses you.
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness!
I trust those visiting here will wade out into the waters of the Father's amazing grace, and likewise experience the unfolding reality of His total unconditional acceptance. Upon this unmoveable and secure footing we move on into His higher purposes for our lives.
Sometimes we have to live with some uncertainty and chaos before a new order can take shape.
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