Tuesday, March 2, 2021

Love and Truth not pride and empty faith

 



Love and Truth NOT Pride and Empty Faith

Praise Jesus brothers and sisters.  There is a few words that I wanted to share today of encouragement and righteousness to point brothers and sisters of the LORD in the right direction.  First is we always have to remember what our goal and mission is; Remember the greatest commandment, and that is to love the LORD our God with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of mind, and all of our strength, and the second is like it, to love our neighbor as ourselves.  What does that mean?  Does that mean that we go out preaching in a way to belittle others, or we want to just sock the truth to others?  Does that mean that we refrain from loving people because we know that they are different and they believe differently than we do and they have different doctrines than we do?  A lot of Christians do NOT have the love of God in them, they have PRIDE and they hide a lot of their pride behind what they pose as “FAITH”.  But as true children of God we need to make sure that we are actually keeping the commandments of Jesus Christ, which is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our brother as ourselves.  How can we do that without being judgmental, hateful, prideful… because these are the things that make us fall into the world, and satan loves it when Christians become prideful and divisive, holding things from one another, wanting to gossip and slander others, being easily angered, easily frustrated, walking over others, becoming bitter, angry, holding things inside, instead of confessing, just holding it up and holding in the bitterness.  These are the things that satan loves.  But how do we refrain from that?  How do we PUSH OUT satan?  Well, we have to remember the greatest commandment which is LOVE.  Loving GOD with ALL OUR HEART, and our neighbor as ourselves.  If we do this, we will be in right standing with God.  We have to remember to love others. That doesn’t meant that we just accept all religions as the truth, or that we go out and say; “I love homosexuals and they’re in the truth also, they just have a different lifestyle…”  It’s not about justifying SINS, BUT IT IS ABOUT THE LOVE OF JESUS, and JESUS CALLED SINNERS TO REPENT OUT OF LOVE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS!  Jesus showed us how to keep the greatest commandment of all, and that is also what we have to do as humble brothers and sisters in the LORD.  We need to make sure that we are keeping the greatest commandment, and as part of HIS true church, that we are not hiding behind our faith, saying; “It’s faith”, when in reality it is PRIDE, it’s ANGER, it’s bitterness, it’s wanting to just put others down for making ourselves look good.  We need to check our OWN hearts daily and make sure that we put on humility, that we put on righteousness.  That we are not thinking ourselves as better than others.  Not trying to prove that we are something when we are nothing.  In Jesus, we are humble servants and we need to take His discipline well.  So, for any brothers and siters in the Lord who are hearing this message, I encourage you to keep the greatest commandment, which is to love the Lord your God with ALL YOUR HEART. 

              Secondly is this idea about “doctrines”;  A lot of Christians think that following God is all about doctrines, all about being biblical.  And that is why, when they first start a church, they think that they have to write out all of their beliefs, and they think that as long as they get people into their church that believe LIKE THEM that they will get people saved, they will get people evangelized, that they will get people doing mission trips and they will MAKE people holy.  We CANNOT make any disciples of Jesus if we ourselves are not in the LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST.  And we cannot teach people correct doctrine if we ourselves are not really in the truth FAITH.  It is better to have the LOVE OF JESUS IN YOU and to have FALSE DOCTRINE, THAT IN HUMILITY JESUS WILL CORRECT, than thinking you have ALL the correct doctrine, you know, believing all the correct things about God, all the correct things about church and about the bible… being in the KNOW about these things, BUT NOT HAVING TRUE LOVE.   What is more important is that hour HEART IS RIGHT BEFORE JESUS CHRIST, and that we allow Him to correct us and to mold us and to discipline us in the truth.  It is about WORDS and DEEDS, ACTIONS AND TRUTH, not about just doctrines and believes, you know; “I BELIEVE correctly, I was born as a Christian so I KNOW I am going to heaven…”  It’s not about that. 

Jesus can work with our funny ideas, because all of us have silly ideas about afterlife or about who God is, but those things will be corrected in time IF WE ARE HUMBLE TO BE TAUGHT BY THE GOOD TEACHER.  Those things are really irrelevant, but what IS important is to keep humility on, righteousness on, and THEN Jesus will correct all those things in us that are doctrinally not sound, that are not even true, He will correct those things, but we need to make sure that our hearts are ready to be molded by GOD and not by men.

              The 3rd thing is… (this is something the LORD has been showing me lately), TO NOT MISTAKE GOD’S MERCY FOR HIS APPROVAL.  And what I mean by that is, when we go through our life with Jesus, a lot of times we make certain mistakes, and because Jesus had mercy on us, and we didn’t fall into sin or we didn’t fall into big trouble, we think; “We’re okay, God had His approval on my life.”  And maybe we were doing something that was actually very harmful to others, very harmful to ourselves, and because God had mercy on us and He didn’t allow us to fall back into the world or do die, then we start to mistake God’s mercy for His approval, and just because God has mercy on you or someone in your family or someone else, doesn’t mean that He approves of our lives. (Some will say, “My dad did it and he turned out okay.”)  And if we know that, if we know that we were doing something sketchy, something that really wasn’t within the will of God, and we got away with it in our own mind thinking; “We got away with it and God blessed it…”  Really inside of us we know something is wrong and we need to CORRECT IT, we need to apologize for things that we have done that were wrong before God and others, and make sure that we correct those things that are not right before God.  We need to correct our mistakes. 

              I want to encourage you as brothers and siters in the Lord to stay humble.  Don’t think that following God is just about correct doctrine, getting in a good bible study, knowing the bible more, searching up more things on the internet… it’s not about sensations, it’s not about just knowing things about God, knowing the bible, getting in a good Christian gathering, a good Christian circle, IT’S ABOUT HUMILITY, LOVE, RIGHTEOUSNESS, PEACE, HONORING GOD WITH OUR LIFE.  And if we have THOSE characteristics because we are seeking FIRST the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, THEN He can work with us.  But God turns His eye away from those that are prideful and arrogant, who think that they are self-entitled do everlasting life.  Most Christians are FULL OF PRIDE, they are full of arrogance, they are full of themselves.  They could care less about the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and serving others.  Are we truly humble servants before the LORD?  Are we where we are supposed to be, not thinking much of ourselves, saying; “I want Jesus to become MORE, and I want myself to become less.”?  Is that where we are today as brothers and sisters?  May the grace of Jesus be with you.