Christianity Oasis Forum

[logi bear]

Another devotional from my church

Who Has a Hold of You?

Griffin Thomas said, “Whatever can be put right, must be put right, if our fellowship with God is to be renewed. As long as we are unwilling to set right that which is wrong, God will have a controversy with us and there cannot be any spiritual rest or satisfaction of soul.” A relationship can never be destroyed, but fellowship in that relationship can be destroyed. I don’t know about you, but I know for myself, I don’t want God having a controversy with me! I want to do all that I can do to be pleasing in His sight.

So many times we come to a Bible study and we open our Bibles to seek the Lord. We hear something that pricks our heart and instead of dealing with the matter, we kind of stiffen our necks a little bit, turn the channel, zone out, close the Book, and do whatever we have to do to ignore the conviction in order to keep doing whatever it is that we were doing—to please the flesh.

Jeremiah 2:2 says: Go and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem, saying, 'Thus says the LORD: "I remember you, The kindness of your youth, The love of your betrothal, When you went after Me in the wilderness, In a land not sown. “I remember,” the Lord is saying to His people, “how you used to love me.” Maybe the Lord is saying to us, today, that He remembers how we loved Him in the beginning. Maybe you’ve wandered from the Lord or you aren’t walking any longer with Jesus.

We so often misperceive what it is to backslide. Maybe you think you’re not backsliding because you aren’t going out to the bars, or committing adultery, or doing drugs or cheating on your taxes. The truth of the matter is that if you are not progressing with the Lord, then in a sense, you are in a backslidden state. A neutral state is a backslidden state. There is no neutral. You are either moving further away from the Lord or you are moving closer to the Lord. You can’t just kick it into neutral until the rapture of the church. Either the world has a hold of you, or Jesus Christ has a hold of you.

Jesus said that we are either for Him or against Him. If you know, in the depths of your heart, that you are in a backslidden state, the remedy is in Revelation 2:2-4. He said this to the church of Ephesus and He is saying to us: “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; and you have persevered and have patience, and have labored for My name’s sake and have not become weary. Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.”

Are you not pursuing your first love, Jesus Christ, the way that you once did? The Lord is with us. He keeps us. He is with us wherever we go. He will never leave us or forsake us. He never leaves our side. He is not done with you, the backslider. He has not left you. Satan will make you to think that God has given up on you. It’s not true. That very thing that God started in you, He will be faithful to complete. If you want to rebel and go through a hard time, He will chastise you. He will do what any good dad would do. He will do what He needs to do to get you back on the path He has for you.

In a very serious sense, we kind of hold our own destinies in our hands. Many times, we are the ones that bring about our own trials. If you get yourself into trouble with the law, and don’t find favor with the law as you are given the consequences for your actions, don’t call that the heavy hand of God on your life. We reap what we sow. It may not be that the heavy hand of the Lord is upon you as much as it is that you chose to rebel, backslide, live a life of sin for a time, and the natural law is that we will reap what we sow. So much of our heartache, pain and our failure is self-inflicted. Certainly the Lord is in control of all things and He uses all things to draw us back unto Himself.

Have a soft heart before the Lord. Listen to that still, small voice. Go with the flow of the Spirit of God. The only cure for worldliness is to separate from it. That is the only cure. The Lord is gracious and long suffering. If you are that backslider or if you are a prodigal, and you've been a long time in such a state, His heart is full of grace and mercy. Don’t believe that He is done with you. Be sincere before the Lord. We don’t want our hearts to become hardened. As 1 John says, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Return to your first Love.

[popples]

I read this twice because I didnt want to hear it was for me the first time, thankyou Lord forgiving me this pep talk.