"If anyone
would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up
his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for me will save it." Luke 9:23-24
I was thinking
this morning how the Church leaders, along with a bunch of fanatics’ out there,
love separating salvation from Luke 9:23-24. I know there are a great number of
them, when they do that, their intend, is to please the mass. When you learn to
see Salvation from God’s point of view, meaning when He gives you a peak to the
big master plan that He alone put together, you cannot help but come up with a
different point of view. You know for sure that, holiness, spiritual maturity,
intimate relationship with God, engaging His heart, yearning to be like Christ
day in day out, true discipleship, surrendering to Him as your Master, and
losing yourself to Him and so much more, are all a continuous blessing string
of His grace. They are the work of our faith and evidence of our Salvation. To truly
understand these things, you have to learn to live and walk in the Spirit,
which also is an after effect of Salvation. Salvation is complete and not
lacking anything at all. It is like receiving a beautiful and expensive necklace made of pearl.
This is not
my first post on this issue and it will not be my last, simply because I lived
out with God what He meant to do with the “real Salvation,” not the one we have
become accustomed to in the last century. We went on revamping Salvation
with our common sense, and we took so much away that we are left with a
counterfeit of God’s true Salvation. Yes, it is true that He worked a new life
“in” us, at the moment we truly receive Him into our hearts, but we have to
allow Him to work it “out.”
What gives God
great pain and cause Him to lament for us, is because we chose to take one
single pearl out of the whole necklace and we are content with what
we have with an attitude that He should accept our will. Imagine you are living
in the sewers and one day, the king who has deployed everything in His power to
find his long lost son or daughter, found you. Then you are informed that you
are royalty and the King, who is your Father has been looking for you and wants
you by His side. Now, you are over the top with this news. Once you reach the
King’s palace you are told to clean up, get rid of your dirty and smelling
clothes and put on the royal garment, then a guard will come and get you to
lead you to meet with your Father.
During the
time of preparation, you look around you and decided this life is not for you.
Not because you do not like it, but it is going to take too much work,
discipline, and way too demanding. So, you decide to find a way out of the
palace and go right back to living in your sewers. All the while, you are proud
of knowing you are royalty and shout it out to everyone who is willing to
listen to you. To what extend are you royalty? In deploying all
resources out there to find you, the King had a plan in mind which involved a
different quality of life, a place for you, next to Him, and an intimate relationship
with you. What have you done with His generosity and His love? In choosing to
live in the sewers, where is your allegiance? How is the King suppose to
feel about your decision and rejection of the offer of a relationship, His heir
and a transformed life? Your decision
to live in the sewers tell your new found Father, “well, I am glad to know I
belong to the King, but, I have no intention of being taken up with your
interests and purposes for me.” In saying that, aren’t you changing the terms
between you and the King? We seem to be
spending more time telling Christians how they cannot lose their salvation,
than teaching them how to walk in the spirit, how to surrender and how to live
a life of obedience to God.
This practice is dangerous simply because we
do not know their reasons for accepting Christ to begin with. Especially, if
you are able to tell through your close relationship with the Spirit of God,
that some of your Church members are not showing evidence that a major work
took place on the inside. This means, the Spirit of God has to help you bypass
the Church attendance, the regurgitation of Bible verses, the empty service on
His behalf and all the outward religiosity. Even when you find out
through the Spirit, your job is not to judge but, if you are a leader, you ought
to examine yourself first and to what extent He is the main instrument behind
all that you do. Then, you come alongside those that He showed you are not part
of the flock, or those that have taken a long detour and are not quite aware of
their need to come back. (various way: preaching, prayers, counsel, different Bible study group etc.,but, only through the Spirit's leading, if done in the flesh you will keep failing them.) Majority of Christians, even after years of
being in the Church, trample Salvation under their feet. In the meantime the
Church, which is the body of Christ at large seems to missed that. We go on
proudly with our own interpretation of a lot of verses in the Bible, while many
claimed to have been saved by faith but simply not interested or incapable of
walking by faith. What kind of godly relationship and faith are we promoting?
Not long ago,
I was following a conversation on Linkedin where some people believe that this
Christian life will happen to us through osmosis and if we have to do anything,
then it is no longer grace. For the life of me, I cannot understand why these
people cannot see that they have been brainwashed into adopting the wrong
attitude, as such, they are rejecting God’s grace on a daily basis. They
misapply and misappropriate the word grace along with God’s intention and
divine purpose, yet not aware of it. But, doesn’t the Bible tell us that we have
to diligently stand with Him? Or to make every effort? If there is no
need for us to do as He said and embrace all that is in the Bible, instead of
choosing to decipher things on our own and put words in His mouth, then we are
doing the same thing Adam and Eve did when they let themselves be tempted by
Satan. Furthermore, Christ could have done the same thing to His dad and say,
well, I am not leaving the comfort of heaven, you are God and you can do things
differently without me going down there. He could have bargained His way out of
it, yet He was obedient unto death. He honored His Father’s way, His process
and divine purpose.
We have to
stop living like the unbelievers with a spirit of entitlement. We need to let
the Spirit guide us in what we write, say and preach so that the impact we make
on weaker Christians, will not affect them the wrong way. Some say they keep
reminding people about the fact that they cannot lose their salvation, because
Satan the accuser could rob them. Not only it is the wrong way to rationalize
things, it is the wrong focus and it is also an insult and blasphemy to God. In
fact, the wrong focus might cause these weaker Christians to be in greater
danger as they adopt the wrong attitude and message, and GET SET IN THEIR WAYS.
So sometimes, in trying to prevent Satan, we are the very instrument that he
uses to get his work done. Our focus is wrong because while Satan is powerful,
but my Lord and Savior is bigger than Satan will ever be. He is Stronger and
Mightier. He is also able to keep those who have been entrusted to Him by God.
What He wants from us, is to allow Him to use us as we live and walk in
abandonment to Him, in the Spirit.
As I write my
posts, it is not my job to please people or tolerate our disregard for the true
Christian life. It is not my job to encourage the lack of walk in the Spirit
that is being displayed within the body of Christ. Doing so, would be applying
some sort of misguided love that has nothing to do with the true love Christ
wants us to use to reach out to others, Agape Love.
