How committed are you to God?
Do you denounce abortion and homosexuality, yet do not tolerate strangers from other lands, who are in need? Do you dutifully go to your house of worship every week, but do not concern yourselves that the poor and needy be provided for? Do you profess to living by Jesus, yet do not love your neighbor as you would love yourself? Do you favor putting the Ten commandments on government property, yet routinely allow your government to incarcerate the falsely accused?
The Bible tells us that we cannot serve God and another master, whoever that other master would be that encourages us to do the negative things described above. And we may very well know that it is wrong to do things that are contrary to God, yet some of us do them anyway. But Jesus said that we are to love God with al our heart, soul and mind, and the Bible tells us we do this in both our faith and our works. As James 2:24 says, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. It is not enough to have faith that God exists, and He is here for us; we need to show Him through our works that we serve Him and nobody else.
The Bible tells us to look to the future and discard the part of the past that becomes useless to us. From that, we are to make a clean break. In Luke 9:62 Jesus says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 15:29 asks, “… [W]hat do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead?” That isn’t too hard to understand. I’ve heard people say they wash their hands of a particular matter. We can’t get anything more from the flesh of a dead person who once lived on earth, and although every person’s death may diminish us, we start anew…That’s where a baptism referred to above comes in.
But some people, who claim to loving God, cling to a past that is no longer useful to them, even though either that part of the past has been disclaimed, or unsuitable to the present, or that has long been deemed to not be in the best interests of God-fearing people. Those people do not want to effectively wash themselves and move on, they cling desperately to a past they remember at the price of discarding the future. They look to the past behind them while ignoring the field to be plowed before them. They cannot wash themselves of that past because they do not have the true water of the spirit of God, nor do they have the soap of knowledge and wisdom to help wash that past away.
When God told Abraham, whom the Bible acknowledges as having demonstrated his righteousness through his works, to sacrifice his son Isaac, he had a choice…He could cling to a past that is represented by the presence of his son Isaac, or he could sacrifice his son and look to future, to the fields that needed to be plowed, so to speak. Well, we know that as Abraham was about to put the knife to his son’s neck, God in His Grace told him to put away the knife. And so, Isaac remained before him, like the proverbial fields that needed plowing. And those who profess to be descendants and heirs according to the promises given to Abraham, have been tested ever since, as God tested Abraham.
God tests us all to this day, to see how committed we are to Him. As nobody is perfect, and we are forever tempted by evil, many can only accept passing the test better than others as their highest achievement.
Do you denounce abortion and homosexuality, yet do not tolerate strangers from other lands, who are in need? Do you dutifully go to your house of worship every week, but do not concern yourselves that the poor and needy be provided for? Do you profess to living by Jesus, yet do not love your neighbor as you would love yourself? Do you favor putting the Ten commandments on government property, yet routinely allow your government to incarcerate the falsely accused?
The Bible tells us that we cannot serve God and another master, whoever that other master would be that encourages us to do the negative things described above. And we may very well know that it is wrong to do things that are contrary to God, yet some of us do them anyway. But Jesus said that we are to love God with al our heart, soul and mind, and the Bible tells us we do this in both our faith and our works. As James 2:24 says, a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. It is not enough to have faith that God exists, and He is here for us; we need to show Him through our works that we serve Him and nobody else.
The Bible tells us to look to the future and discard the part of the past that becomes useless to us. From that, we are to make a clean break. In Luke 9:62 Jesus says, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 15:29 asks, “… [W]hat do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead?” That isn’t too hard to understand. I’ve heard people say they wash their hands of a particular matter. We can’t get anything more from the flesh of a dead person who once lived on earth, and although every person’s death may diminish us, we start anew…That’s where a baptism referred to above comes in.
But some people, who claim to loving God, cling to a past that is no longer useful to them, even though either that part of the past has been disclaimed, or unsuitable to the present, or that has long been deemed to not be in the best interests of God-fearing people. Those people do not want to effectively wash themselves and move on, they cling desperately to a past they remember at the price of discarding the future. They look to the past behind them while ignoring the field to be plowed before them. They cannot wash themselves of that past because they do not have the true water of the spirit of God, nor do they have the soap of knowledge and wisdom to help wash that past away.
When God told Abraham, whom the Bible acknowledges as having demonstrated his righteousness through his works, to sacrifice his son Isaac, he had a choice…He could cling to a past that is represented by the presence of his son Isaac, or he could sacrifice his son and look to future, to the fields that needed to be plowed, so to speak. Well, we know that as Abraham was about to put the knife to his son’s neck, God in His Grace told him to put away the knife. And so, Isaac remained before him, like the proverbial fields that needed plowing. And those who profess to be descendants and heirs according to the promises given to Abraham, have been tested ever since, as God tested Abraham.
God tests us all to this day, to see how committed we are to Him. As nobody is perfect, and we are forever tempted by evil, many can only accept passing the test better than others as their highest achievement.
