Questions

 I thought I'd share three questions from my prayer journal that have been asked by writer/speaker John Bevere....

"For I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Matthew 28:20...."If He's always with us, why do we do so much of what we do?" 

We love to quote the above Scripture when we're wanting to reinforce our feelings about our security in Him. When we face all the dangers of life, we take comfort in the knowledge that He is with us. When we're called to difficult, even impossible tasks, we are strengthened in knowing He is with us. We take heart in life because we know He is with us. So, what do we do with Bevere's question? If we know He's with us, why do we do so much of what we do?....How is it that we can behave in our thoughts, words, and actions as if He's not present? How is it that we can so easily forget or ignore His presence when we're drifting away from Him, or just plain rebelling against what we know to be right? We're all guilty of this to some degree aren't we? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that we don't really do much to cultivate an intimacy with Him that makes for a constant consciousness of His presence. He's the "fire alarm" we pull when we're in trouble, but we easily put Him back on the shelf once the fire is out. We're not tender to His presence and so we're able to act out in so many ways that are alien to Him. To our shame, we, like the ancient Israelites, honor Him with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him. May it be that each of us become so entwined with His life that we are never without a deep sense of His presence. Knowing that He is with us, but also knowing that He will not be with us in anything we do that goes against His heart. May it grieve us to grieve Him.

"Will God have to call another to do what He first assigned to us?" Scripture abounds with instances where God called men and women to not only certain tasks, but certain lives. Tasks that were impossible from the human standpoint. Lives that took them into great dangers, challenges, sacrifices, sufferings, and yes, death. Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Peter, John, Paul, the disciples whose names we know, and the multitudes whose names remain unknown. They fulfilled their calling. Have we? Indeed, do we even know what our calling is? Certainly it involves something far more than attending church, giving our tithe, and performing a few good works along the way. The rich young ruler was called by Christ to sell all and follow Him. He could not do that, and so he turned away. Have you ever wondered what it was Christ was calling him to? Who did Jesus need to call in order to carry out that which was first to be assigned to the young ruler? Everyone who believes upon and receives Him has a calling. Do we, you, have any idea what that is? Is what He's called us to going unfulfilled? What souls are at stake? How is eternity being affected by how we are answering or not answering that call? Who has He had to look for to do what He first assigned to us? What will be the cost of our not knowing, not going? When we stand before Him on that final day, what will we use as our reason for not living out that which He created us for and called us to?

"Are we offering a salvation message that omits the cross while still offering its benefits and blessings?" Paul said that the center of his message was the cross and Christ crucified. He said any presentation of the gospel message that didn't have the cross as central to it was a counterfeit one. Scripture in the New Testament, both in the Gospels and the various epistles are clear as to the centrality of the cross and His death upon it and subsequent resurrection. Yet, there are professing churches everywhere in our culture that have either "dumbed down" that message or excluded it all together. They offer listeners His life, but it's a life that doesn't include His cross, or ours. There is no cost to us in the message. No cost, and no cross. Is this the message you have heard? If it is, you have yet to hear His message of life. Have you ever gone to your own Calvary with Him? Have you been, Paul writes in Galatians, "crucified with Christ, so that it is no longer I (you and me) who live, but Christ lives in me?" Have you embraced His blessing while rejecting His cross? Have you fallen victim to a false gospel message? Will you receive and embrace His true one? It's proclaimed at the foot of His cross. "At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,and the burden of my sin rolled away." Do you know the reality of that truth? Do you know the message of the cross?

Three questions that demand our answer. How do we answer? How do you answer?

Blessings,
Pastor O