What’s with your mediocrity? Jesus died for me

I am so confident in my relationship with God now, I know I can talk to him about anything, trust him with everything and turn to him for anything.  It took some time to get there but it’s about living with God now and delighting in his presence as well as having a sure and certain knowledge that one day I will be with him in eternity.

One thing I was reading about today was people who have a semi faith, almost like a get out of jail free card.  So they believe in God to save them from the penalty of sin but don’t have a relationship with him in the here and now.  I found that to be really depressing, why wouldn’t you want to have it all now?  Why would you not spend time with God wanting to serve him and get to know him, to enjoy his gifts now?

So I was looking about this in the Bible and found a number of verses which sort of point to this happening:

• Matthew 7:16-17 – You can detect them by the way they act, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit
• Isaiah 29:13 – The Lord says: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.
• Titus 1:16 – They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.
• 2 Timothy 4:3-4 – For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
• 1 John 2:15-17 -Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
• Matthew 16:24 – Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
• Mark 1:15 – and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”

 ON THE EDGE

Standing on the edge looking in, are you lukewarm? What’s with your mediocrity?  Jesus died for me and he died for you so is it not hypocrisy to say you’re in love with him when you stand on the periphery with no urgency to commit to him?  You honour God with your lips yet it seems you live with a heart of stone that goes it alone from Monday to Saturday, you claim to know him but deny him in word and deed, I see your Facebook page, I see your Twitter feed…

You see here’s the thing, we need to turn away from our love of the world and I’m worried you think it’s only about being saved for eternity, you don’t want to pay the penalty of your sin but you think it’s Ok to be headstrong, ignore God’s word and follow the rules of the world, but you couldn’t be more wrong, it’s about cashing in now, saved from sin and basking in God’s love, knowing God as your friend, spending time with him, letting him change you for the better and being transformed by his splendour.