Paul, in writing to Timothy, speaks of people guilty of "having a form of godliness but denying its power."
People who pretend to be religious and who pretend to be following God, but are really know more than wolves in sheeps' clothing.
They have the form of godliness--they act right, know the vernacular, do the right things, and at least to outsiders look righteous.
But they deny its power--the power of the Gospel. The power of true faith. The power of true obedience to God.
I feel like a vast majority of us--myself included--live a counterfeit faith. We started off on fire for God. We got involved in a church. We listened to the right worship cds. We stopped drinking, swearing, and screwing. BUT--at some point, we started to deny the true power of a life transformed in Jesus.
We become dulled Christians. We take the form of a Christian. We go to church. We give. We pray. We even read our Bibles, but at some point we've denied the true power of that Gospel. At some point, things got too hard. And as Paul says in verse 12, "everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted."
Maybe that scared some of us. It scares me often. And in that fear, we forgot that God was holding us and we turned back to safety of living on the ground. We denied what could have been.
I wonder what it would be like to truly embrace the power of a life transformed by Jesus. What would that be like? Look at the devastation in Haiti right now. What if we stopped looking for reasons not to act, but really trusted the power of God to equip us to reach out to our brothers and sisters in Haiti and show them compassion like Christ?
Think about everything that could happen if Christians everywhere stopped running from the scariest parts of walking with Jesus and said "I don't know how bad this is going to hurt, but I know that you, God, are far more important than what pain I will feel."
I read 2 Timothy 3:5 and I wonder...have I ever met anybody who didn't deny any of the power of living that transformed life? I don't think so.
I think each day, that I am denying something from God. Each day I am trying to compromise with Him. (Yes God, I'll show some compassion for this person over here, but let me ignore this person over here.) (Yes God, I'll give some money to my church, but don't ask me not to lust too.)
It's hard. God doesn't compromise. And because He doesn't compromise and we refuse to give up control, we end up shortchanging ourselves. Yes, we are Christians. Yes, a lot of us ARE trying to give God more control over our lives. And yes, none of us have seen more a fraction of the beauty that could happen in a life if we fully embraced God's attempts to bring us to fullness.
Humility is hard. Surrender is hard. Pouring myself out so that God may fill me up is hard.
But I have to stop letting those be excuses for not letting God reign.
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