Luke Warm Christians

Sept 20th Devotional

As promised earlier, here is what God revealed to me on sunday morning at Church.
I will just write out everything I wrote down in my journal that morning. Here it is..

So...I am sitting here in a church and I was excited to come because we checked this out online and it sounded chill and laid back and welcoming.
Here we are, we were well welcomed, and got coffee and now Iam listening to the sermon.
It's about baptism.  The pastor isn't all the engaging and on top of that He is preaching about baptism. Now my first thought was "Ok...I've been baptized and I am sure I will pretty much agree with everything he says. This going to be so pointless, we are going to sit here, not meet anyone, and I'm not even going to get anything out of this sermon."
WRONG! That's terrible thinking! I'm blesed to be in the house of the Lord and need to lower my expectations and instead to just open my heart to what the Lord has for me.
(So after writing all of this and attempting to listen to the pastor, I still had a hard time focusing until he read out of Luke 11:38. So here is the rest of my journal entry.)
Luke 11:38
The Jews were astonished that Jesus didn't perform the ceremonial hand-washing required by their traddition. (this isn't the literal verse, just what I quickly had gathered from it as it was read to us).
It goes on talking about CHrist's response. He calls them fools because they are so focused on the outside of the cup but forget that the inside is filthy.
Christ just amazes me because He was SO wise! He was also a rebel. He came, spoke truth in love, but also broke so many rules from the Jewish traddition and it appalled so many people, but Christ always had a great reason for breaking certain rules.
He was a rebel with a cause, a purpose, and a goal.
He wanted His followers to think about what they were doing, and WHY they were doing it.
CHrist calls us to follow the Law but before doing so, it's important to understand exactly why you are following a certain rule. This brings me to the wuestion "WHy do I believe what I believe?"
Do i aimlessly go though life doing everything I do just "because the Bible says I should?" Or do I seek, search, implore the Father to share His wisdom to me through the power of the Holy Spirit?"
Christ calls us to live the way He did, I believe that also means we are called to be rebels. Not rebels who just cause chaos and break rules to fulfill that innate human desire to do evil and go against the crowd, but to be rebels who are still under the influence of God, who guides us and leads us to where He wants us to be in life.

For example, yesterday on my way to a bookstore, TIffany and I saw a bumper on a car that said "I like your CHrist, but I hate you CHristians, for you are nothing like your Christ." That makes me stop and think. "Who is this bumper sticker/message for? Is it for the blind "Christian" who misinterprets the Holy Word of Truth and Love and goes around preaching to hate the homosexuals, ones who are pro-abortion, and ones that "they" judge as "unworthy of life" because they aren't good enough. Is that bumper sticker for these Christians?? Or is it even for me, who seeks Christ and His teachings and longs to be like Him but fails day after day??

I believe that if as a Christian body were truly what we call ourselves "followers of Christ," we would be more careful about the way we live, act, speak, and think. Instead of just hearing "what the word" says through a third party (usually a pastor, book, classes, chapel, or even each other), we should be seeking the Word for ourselves. Get in there. Don't let other people do the struggling for you. Do the struggling yourselves! Do the searching, do the questionning, try to understand, and let's not forget that we can do all of that with the Holy Spirit right along our sides to answer some (not all) difficult questions. Get in  there and do the dirty work on a one on one basis with God!
I looove when Christ talks to the Pharisees and says "what sorrows awaits you, you religious teachers who give unbearable commands, and don't lift a finger to ease their burdens!"
Is that who the bumper sticker is addressed to. THe hypocrites? WHo preach but don't live as they speak?
This is why Christ came to the world. To teach but also love and accpet the weak, the poor, the unworthy, the weary.
I was reading in Max Lucado about Christ's grace when He granted forgiveness to the thief on the cross. Max goes on and says:
"there is one grinning ex-con walking the golden streets of Heaven who knows grace better than 10000 theolodgians."
What is Law, without grace? Impossible.

The pharisees felt insulted but Christ was just speaking truth. He came to this earth to restore our broken relationship with God. he became that gap that could bridge us back to God without  us having to follow all the "unbearable religious demands" by ourselves but accepting that yes, we are unworthy and as much as we try, we will fail. but we have the SON of God who didn't just lift a finger to ease our burden when we try to follow God's demands, but He lifted His entire body, and sacrificed all He was for us!
Christ was very clear about how he felt about religious leaders who preached yet didn't help out those they were preaching to.

In Matthew 23:3, He tells us to practice and obey what the Pharisees PREACH, but to not follow their EXAMPLE because they don't even practice what they preach. ONCE AGAIN, he says "They crush people with unbearable demands, and never lift their finger to ease the burden."
In Chapter 11:25, Jesus talks to God and says, "Oh Father, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wiser and clever and for revealing them to the CHildlike."
Children are alway asking questions, trying to understand how things work, and why they work a certain way.have you ever asked a child to do something and gotten the response."Why?" and you answer "Cus I said so!!" without really explaining it to the Child, who just does it still without understanding. Yeah..I'm sure we all have. As frustrating as it is for us to receive such a response, our Father in Heave,n who is more patient than we could ever be, wants us to be like children and ask questions, and seek HIm , and try to understand His commands for us, even though most times they don't make sense. And He promises to answer our questions according to His will.

He's given us three extremely useful tools to understand His demands:
He gave us His son so we can understand His grace and mercy through our journey.
He gave us His word, which is filled with  all the knowledge, wisdom, and truth we could ever seek.
And He gave us His Holy Spirit to become one with Him and understand/receive His person, truth, love, patience, wisdom, kindness, joy, knowledge, gentleness, perseverance, and faithfulness.
I don't know about you, but I don't mind being hated and persecuted because I follow Christ. What i DO mind, is being hated for giving the wrong representation of Christ's teaching as His follower. That means I'm doing something wrong, and it needs to be fixed!
WHy is it that nonbelievers sometimes know more about what  Christians should look or act like than we do sometimes?
I don't want to be characterized as a "false prophet," as Christ calls them. in Matthew 24:13.
"What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you shut the door of the Kingdom of Heaven in people's faces. You won't go in yourselves, and you don't let others in either."

I encourage us to be rebels for CHrist. To truly seek the old AND new testament so that we may fully understand what we believe and why we believe it. Instead of blindly following what we are taught or what we hear left and right about what our relationship with God should be like.
This way we can fall even more in love with the one who created us and all become more like His son. WE can also be prepared when confronted by questions, or accusations such as "I hate you Christians  because you are nothing like the Christ you claim to follow."
Needless to say....I didn't really pay much attention to the actual sermon, on baptism but because I asked God to open my ears and heart, He provided me with a mini sermon of His own just by reading Luke 11:38.