James 1:22-23
Be doers of the word, and not hearers only. Otherwise, you are deceiving yourselves. For anyone who hears the word but does not carry it out is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror, and after observing himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like...
Well, hi there! I'm pleased you made your way back here. I've already hit the ground running. If you didn't read my first post of the year Planks,
I encourage you to read it.
I don't want to lose you.
I don't plan to offend you as much as I did last post, but I'm still in the vein.
Consider this my unapologetic reminder.
Ha!
So I left off pretty much exposing the X-ray image of the church and its compromised composition.
I must make it clear as it pertains to part of my stance from last week; that rebellion is rebellion.
No matter how you flip the coin.
You can flip it, smack it, rub it down, with all of your cuteness,
it's still going to be rebellion.
The only thing is, however it's packaged and wherever it's coming from,
will determine the environment's response.
Let the sun set on this, rebellion is a symptom not a disease.
Now, since WE the people make up the church, if the church is suffering from an affliction, that means WE the people are the problem! We the people are causing the disease within the body of God's bride. Either purposely or absent-mindedly.
The church is full of germs from the world aspiring to be sanctified for a good work, endorsed by God.
Unfortunately, only a small cluster of these germs are actually graduating from their aspirations to be sanctified, to properly participating in the applications of sanctification.
All while the popular majority sits content with looking the part.
I'm in the mood to tell a true story! You want to hear it?
This part of the post is where you may feel some heat rise up in your chest.
It's not going to be heartburn.
It will be my trusted companion, Holy Spirit, activating.
Once upon a time there was a man who fell in lust with another man's wife.
He was no ordinary man. He was a man after God's own heart and chosen to be king to replace a faulty one.
He was used to being favored and blessed by God. He had everything he wanted; except for this beautiful damsel he'd seen from her window, bathing.
But the damsel belonged to one of his soldiers.
What did this man do? He slept with the soldier's wife. She got pregnant.
He conspired to have the soldier killed.
He invited the soldier out. Got the soldier drunk. And had the soldier placed on the frontlines of the battlefield to be slaughtered by the opposing army.
Who was the man? David, from the Bible.
Who was the woman? Bathsheba, from the Bible.
Who was the soldier? Uriah, from the Bible.
Doesn't this sound like something from Tyler Perry's the Haves and Have Nots?
David was out here bogus. Breaking sacred oaths and snuffing out flames of God, a level of outright hypocrisy and disobedience that reached Him, immediately.
Do you not for one second believe David deserved to be confronted by God?
That he did not need some form of accountability?
I would highly believe so.
Keep reading. It's about to go down!
Welp, the Bible recorded in 2 Samuel 12, that Bathsheba mourned for her husband for a while. Once she stopped mourning, David scooped her up and moved her in with him.
She eventually had his lust child and the Bible added, God was DISPLEASED.
God sent Prophet Nathan to David and he told him, (I'm paraphrasing for color),
"There was a rich man and a poor man. The rich man had a whole bunch of sheep and cattle. The poor man had nothing but a baby lamb that he took care of and loved as his own. A visitor came to the rich man and instead of using one of his sheep to prepare a meal for the visitor, the rich man took the poor man's lamb and prepared the meal."
David was enraged and responded, "Who is this man? Homie has to die! On God, he needs to pay four times for what he did!"
Guess what Prophet Nathan said?
"THOU ART THE MAN!!! God said I delivered you from Saul. I made you king. I gave you everything and if it was not enough for you, I would have given you more! But you killed Uriah and took his wife! I'm bringing calamity on your house in broad daylight so everybody can see it!"
This would be the precursor to the ORIGINAL ON THE RUN TOUR.
(Sorry Jay Z and Beyonce, David did it first.)
But flip to the book of Psalms whenever you find some time and you'll get the WHOLE soundtrack.
Question: What do you do, when you find out that God sees you as a villain in His kingdom?
When you are announced as the hellraiser in your own life?
What do you do when you've been introduced to a crisis and the culprit of the crisis is, YOU!
What do you do when God says, "Thou art the man!"?
Here's why when you give your life to God you can't take His grace for granted and you must with every fiber of your being become a doer of the word and not just a hearer only. Because if you choose to abuse His grace and deviate from His precepts written out in His word, you will be one of those believers suffering from selective amnesia and a borderline personality disorder in the flesh, and an identity crisis in your spirit.
And then you will run your purposely discombobulated self into the WRATH of God!
Hearers of the word only, have a distinct affinity for rejecting accountability, creating scarecrows out of their personal insecurities by putting other people's heads on them and calling them haters, being the author of their own confusion and directors of their own storms thus refusing to accept assistance due to their false humility and pride. Oh and my favorite, sticking roses in their crap by making hellified excuses for them. Yet pinching their noses and scoffing at those who choose to let their worship exhaust the stench coming from the crap of their lives and not arrogant combativeness.
Quick #Sidebar: God's true judgement has not come yet. His true judgement has its own day that no one on this earth is ready for nor knows the day nor the hour of its approaching.
But His wrath. His wrath, oh dear, that's a much different entity.
In Ezekial 25:17, God disclosed this through the prophet for the people,
"I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them.”
God get's angry! This is what I need you to understand and His anger shouldn't be confused with His judgement. His judgement comes with a final verdict. His wrath comes with a firey warning.
His wrath is to bring notice or attention to some behavior that can possibly interfere with your verdict during Judgement Day.
I pray this makes sense.
Moving right along, non-doers of the word will most certainly be religious to some degree if not an extreme degree and have a bloated sense of self in comparison to those who don't share their similar problems. While simultaneously appealing to those who do.
Sounds like a person near you?
You know what? Scratch that! Let's not pull a Blues Clues, investigating the perimeters to find somebody else to fit the bill! Let's go back to the mirror and check ourselves!
Just in case for one second we may have forgotten what we look like.
A people who are rather willing to die to self daily are a people who will be introduced regularly to bearing their cross. Bearing your cross comes with a sincere acknowledgment and honest assessment of the reflection you're casting in the world.
Your reflection should resemble Jesus more and more everyday.
How can you be a witness of Christ if you don't even look like Christ?
Preposterous!
It's safe then to conclude that the digression of a reflection that resembles Christ is a disturbing marked trend that self has not been crucified.
Because it's easy to be a hypocrite when the cross you should be bearing is bloodless.
James 1:25-26
But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.
We can't keep blaming our obvious ungodly deformed dispositions on the nuances of being "gifted." And we surely can't keep using our positions of authority or proposed postures in Christ as an excuse to bypass the cross we must die to everyday.
This is affecting the health and vitality of the church!
We must instead be purposeful hearers of the word and active doers of the word.
This involves not solely relying on our pastor's sermons and christian memes.
Some of these sermons are watered down Enfamil anyway and some of these Christian memes are unbiblical opinions contributing to spiritual dysmorphia in the body of Christ.
You have to take the word, inspect the word, digest the word, then live the word.
In that order!
You are being challenged in this hour, to take a hard look at yourself and find the parts of you that need to die today.
The death of some part of you today, can very well promote the health of God's bride tomorrow.
Well, hi there! I'm pleased you made your way back here. I've already hit the ground running. If you didn't read my first post of the year Planks,
I encourage you to read it.
I don't want to lose you.
I don't plan to offend you as much as I did last post, but I'm still in the vein.
Consider this my unapologetic reminder.
Ha!
So I left off pretty much exposing the X-ray image of the church and its compromised composition.
I must make it clear as it pertains to part of my stance from last week; that rebellion is rebellion.
No matter how you flip the coin.
You can flip it, smack it, rub it down, with all of your cuteness,
it's still going to be rebellion.
The only thing is, however it's packaged and wherever it's coming from,
will determine the environment's response.
Let the sun set on this, rebellion is a symptom not a disease.
Now, since WE the people make up the church, if the church is suffering from an affliction, that means WE the people are the problem! We the people are causing the disease within the body of God's bride. Either purposely or absent-mindedly.
The church is full of germs from the world aspiring to be sanctified for a good work, endorsed by God.
Unfortunately, only a small cluster of these germs are actually graduating from their aspirations to be sanctified, to properly participating in the applications of sanctification.
All while the popular majority sits content with looking the part.
I'm in the mood to tell a true story! You want to hear it?
This part of the post is where you may feel some heat rise up in your chest.
It's not going to be heartburn.
It will be my trusted companion, Holy Spirit, activating.
Once upon a time there was a man who fell in lust with another man's wife.
He was no ordinary man. He was a man after God's own heart and chosen to be king to replace a faulty one.
He was used to being favored and blessed by God. He had everything he wanted; except for this beautiful damsel he'd seen from her window, bathing.
But the damsel belonged to one of his soldiers.
What did this man do? He slept with the soldier's wife. She got pregnant.
He conspired to have the soldier killed.
He invited the soldier out. Got the soldier drunk. And had the soldier placed on the frontlines of the battlefield to be slaughtered by the opposing army.
Who was the man? David, from the Bible.
Who was the woman? Bathsheba, from the Bible.
Who was the soldier? Uriah, from the Bible.
Doesn't this sound like something from Tyler Perry's the Haves and Have Nots?
Lately, I've become extremely fascinated with the etymology of biblical names. In other words, their origins and historical meanings. I found out that the name Bathsheba means, "Daughter of the oath." and Uriah means, "Yahweh is my light." or "Flame of God."
Please catch this! David was out here bogus. Breaking sacred oaths and snuffing out flames of God, a level of outright hypocrisy and disobedience that reached Him, immediately.
Do you not for one second believe David deserved to be confronted by God?
That he did not need some form of accountability?
I would highly believe so.
Keep reading. It's about to go down!
Welp, the Bible recorded in 2 Samuel 12, that Bathsheba mourned for her husband for a while. Once she stopped mourning, David scooped her up and moved her in with him.
She eventually had his lust child and the Bible added, God was DISPLEASED.
God sent Prophet Nathan to David and he told him, (I'm paraphrasing for color),
"There was a rich man and a poor man. The rich man had a whole bunch of sheep and cattle. The poor man had nothing but a baby lamb that he took care of and loved as his own. A visitor came to the rich man and instead of using one of his sheep to prepare a meal for the visitor, the rich man took the poor man's lamb and prepared the meal."
David was enraged and responded, "Who is this man? Homie has to die! On God, he needs to pay four times for what he did!"
Guess what Prophet Nathan said?
"THOU ART THE MAN!!! God said I delivered you from Saul. I made you king. I gave you everything and if it was not enough for you, I would have given you more! But you killed Uriah and took his wife! I'm bringing calamity on your house in broad daylight so everybody can see it!"
This would be the precursor to the ORIGINAL ON THE RUN TOUR.
(Sorry Jay Z and Beyonce, David did it first.)
But flip to the book of Psalms whenever you find some time and you'll get the WHOLE soundtrack.
Question: What do you do, when you find out that God sees you as a villain in His kingdom?
When you are announced as the hellraiser in your own life?
What do you do when you've been introduced to a crisis and the culprit of the crisis is, YOU!
What do you do when God says, "Thou art the man!"?
Here's why when you give your life to God you can't take His grace for granted and you must with every fiber of your being become a doer of the word and not just a hearer only. Because if you choose to abuse His grace and deviate from His precepts written out in His word, you will be one of those believers suffering from selective amnesia and a borderline personality disorder in the flesh, and an identity crisis in your spirit.
And then you will run your purposely discombobulated self into the WRATH of God!
Hearers of the word only, have a distinct affinity for rejecting accountability, creating scarecrows out of their personal insecurities by putting other people's heads on them and calling them haters, being the author of their own confusion and directors of their own storms thus refusing to accept assistance due to their false humility and pride. Oh and my favorite, sticking roses in their crap by making hellified excuses for them. Yet pinching their noses and scoffing at those who choose to let their worship exhaust the stench coming from the crap of their lives and not arrogant combativeness.
Quick #Sidebar: God's true judgement has not come yet. His true judgement has its own day that no one on this earth is ready for nor knows the day nor the hour of its approaching.
But His wrath. His wrath, oh dear, that's a much different entity.
In Ezekial 25:17, God disclosed this through the prophet for the people,
"I will execute great vengeance on them with wrathful rebukes. Then they will know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them.”
God get's angry! This is what I need you to understand and His anger shouldn't be confused with His judgement. His judgement comes with a final verdict. His wrath comes with a firey warning.
His wrath is to bring notice or attention to some behavior that can possibly interfere with your verdict during Judgement Day.
I pray this makes sense.
Moving right along, non-doers of the word will most certainly be religious to some degree if not an extreme degree and have a bloated sense of self in comparison to those who don't share their similar problems. While simultaneously appealing to those who do.
Sounds like a person near you?
You know what? Scratch that! Let's not pull a Blues Clues, investigating the perimeters to find somebody else to fit the bill! Let's go back to the mirror and check ourselves!
Just in case for one second we may have forgotten what we look like.
A people who are rather willing to die to self daily are a people who will be introduced regularly to bearing their cross. Bearing your cross comes with a sincere acknowledgment and honest assessment of the reflection you're casting in the world.
Your reflection should resemble Jesus more and more everyday.
How can you be a witness of Christ if you don't even look like Christ?
Preposterous!
It's safe then to conclude that the digression of a reflection that resembles Christ is a disturbing marked trend that self has not been crucified.
Because it's easy to be a hypocrite when the cross you should be bearing is bloodless.
James 1:25-26
But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do. Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.
We can't keep blaming our obvious ungodly deformed dispositions on the nuances of being "gifted." And we surely can't keep using our positions of authority or proposed postures in Christ as an excuse to bypass the cross we must die to everyday.
This is affecting the health and vitality of the church!
We must instead be purposeful hearers of the word and active doers of the word.
This involves not solely relying on our pastor's sermons and christian memes.
Some of these sermons are watered down Enfamil anyway and some of these Christian memes are unbiblical opinions contributing to spiritual dysmorphia in the body of Christ.
You have to take the word, inspect the word, digest the word, then live the word.
In that order!
You are being challenged in this hour, to take a hard look at yourself and find the parts of you that need to die today.
The death of some part of you today, can very well promote the health of God's bride tomorrow.
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