Today, I had a "wake-up" call...It's not that I hadn't felt it before; it's just that today, It became so intensely surreal. Today, God is overwhelming my heart with something that is breaking His Heart. What I am sensing and feeling, you have hopefully been also. What God the Holy Spirit is speaking to me, I pray that He also is to you. I wish that I could chrystalize it into just a few simple thoughts and not offend anyone, because that is not my intent. Yet, when the Holy Spirit desires to refocus our thoughts ,actions, and agendas, it doesn't always feel necessarily joyful.
In John's Revelation, God warned the church at Ephesus, that while they had remained true and faithful to doctrinal principles, something had tragically happened in their relationship with Him and other believers. While I choose not to digress into a "doctrinal study," at this juncture, I do want to state what apparently was breaking God's heart in relation to the Ephesus church in chapter 2- namely they had lost their "first love." In other words, because love is the core value in our relationship with God and our fellow brothers and sisters, apparently, this church saw itself as being so gifted that they had risen above the "Law of Love" which must govern every action of a believer's thoughts, words, deeds, responses, attitudes, and actions. In short, they had lost focus and were allowing SATAN'S SCHEMING to redirect their thoughts, attitudes, actions, and responses towards what 2nd Timothy 2 calls" foolish and ignorant speculations which produce quarreling and word fights." In other words, their focus had been shifted from what really mattered (The Great Commission for example) towards divisive issues that in the scheme of eternity had and have no significance.
So where am I headed...What has so stirred my heart? Only this...A very short letter from my (our) family in Syria and our sister church, Jesus Christ of Nazareth Church, recieved yesterday.
While so many of us have been involved in "social networking" debating authors and 'heretical books', our brothers and sisters across the Middle East are being murdered. If the Assad government falls, there will be NO JESUS CHRIST OF NAZARETH CHURCH left, in Damascus, Syria. The believers even now in Egypt are being murdered and Syria is next.
Brothers and sisters, we are at WAR...Not just physically but spiritually, and that is the most serious...How can we be so wrapped up in our personal lives and foolish arguments not recognizing that "Rome is burning" while we are focused on idle babble!
The time is NOW to focus back on the things of God and HIS AGENDA, NOT OURS. Our energies, time, and efforts must be focused on what touches His Heart-namely those faithful ones who are carrying the Gospel Message in lands that most of us would be too afraid to visit.
They need our FAITHFUL prayers...They need to know that they are not alone...They need to know that they have a church in Ohio that has them covered by a praying people that are focused on God and not self. They have been watching from afar what seemingly has occupied some of our "spiritual thinking" and responses towards one another, and they are bewildered to say the least.
I have not written this to offend anyone, and the vast majority of you who will probably read this, are already praying and have Godly focus...( We have an incredibly AWESOME and praying church) No, I have written it for one reason; because one saint of God in Damascus asked me to and, in turn, opened my eyes to the fact that Satan's plan, as it has always been, is to stop the believers from praying and thus weaken our "war efforts" by getting us to war with one another.
God help us that we never lose our FIRST LOVE!
Friday, May 13, 2011
What Truly Matters Most
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1 comments:
While I agree we need to be praying for our brothers and sisters, we can't just disregard the other things we're called to do. We're specifically told to test every spirit, contend for the faith, test everything and hold on that that which is GOOD... not everything. And another one of the churches in revelation was rebuked for allowing false teachings, "Satan's so called deep secrets Rev. 2:24".
It's a tactic of the enemy to divide us with arguments over doctrines that have no eternal consequence. However, some of the teachings that the body is now struggling with are doctrines that absolutely DO have eternal consequences. And I hope you understand in my response that I am not intending to offend... but as you said, correction isn't always joyful, yet it needs to be done. For me, this argument is not about me being right and someone else being wrong... or even that I disagree with you;) It truly is because I love God's word, consider it absolute, unchangeable truth and I love his people and don't want to see anyone deceived. While there are some people who get into these debates for arguments sake, I would hope and pray that most would take on these discussions BECAUSE they love people and don't want to see any lost to the lies of the enemy.
If you don't believe in hell but instead, one way or another, everyone gets to heaven, where's the incentive to actually live out the great commission? There's no need to bother myself with telling someone about Jesus if they'll just get to heaven one day following their new age beliefs, or hare krishna or moroni. Those are the doctrines that we have to test because if you follow them to their logical conclusion, they lead people away from the saving knowledge of Jesus and into the open arms of hell. Remember, rat poison is 99% protein... it's the 1% of poison that kills. Heretical teaching wouldn't be so easily accepted if there wasn't a lot of truth mixed in with it. We must keep our guard up.
So while I do continue to pray for the body everywhere, I believe the signs of Christ's imminent return are all around us... including the great falling away. Let us not be deceived but persevere, no matter what type of persecution we must endure.
Geoff
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