Wednesday, February
25, 2015, 1:15 p.m. – The Lord Jesus put in mind the song “Seek Ye First.” Speak, Lord, your words
to my heart. I read Luke 18:1-8
(NASB).
Now
He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and
not to lose heart, saying, “In a certain city there was a judge who did not
fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept
coming to him, saying, ‘Give me legal protection from my opponent.’ For a while
he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, ‘Even though I do not fear
God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal
protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.’” And the
Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about
justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over
them? I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However,
when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
The Opposition
The woman, I believe, represents the church here on the
earth. The opponent of the church is Satan who disguises himself as an angel of
light, and who has many human representatives who do his work for him on this
earth. His servants are false christs, false apostles, and false teachers of
the word of God. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing who pretend to be true
shepherds of the flock.
They can be political figures, i.e. government leaders,
and/or religious figures, i.e. leaders in the church. They promise the people
peace, safety, security, hope, and/or equality and justice. And, yet their
words cannot be trusted. They fill the people’s minds with false promises. They
tell them many lies, hoping the people will believe their lies and thus will be
deceived into trusting them. Their speech is as smooth as butter, and many of
them are gifted orators with eloquent and persuasive (silver) tongues. They
twist the truth to their advantage and cleverly insert lies into truth in order
to make their lies acceptable.
They try to get us to buy into humanistic philosophy above
the teachings of scripture and they try to get us to doubt God’s word. They
also try to get us to bow to human authority over the authority of God in our
lives. If their smooth and persuasive tongues do not work against us, then they
will try to beat us down with lies against us and will convince others that we
are the enemy because we hold to God’s truths. They will call us intolerant, bigoted,
disunifiers, and haters, and they will convince many not to listen to us. They
will convince many Christians to reject the truth of the gospel of Jesus
Christ, and thus they will follow after these lies of humans, instead, because
it is what sounds pleasing to their itching ears.
Call On Jesus
When we come up against the enemy of our souls, even in
human form, via his human representatives, we need to call upon our Lord to
rescue us. Yet, Jesus has not promised us that we will have immediate relief
from trouble and hardship. In fact, he promises us that we will be hated and
persecuted for righteousness’ sake and for the sake of his name, and that many
of his servants will even be killed for their testimonies for Jesus Christ.
Yet, we should remain persistent in calling upon him, and we should not give up
or lose heart, for one day he will rescue us physically from our oppressors. He
will suddenly come again one day to take us to be with him and to judge the
earth and the people of this earth.
In the meanwhile, he does rescue us emotionally, mentally
and spiritually. He has given us the armor of God (See Eph. 6:10-20) with which
to fight off Satan’s evil attacks against us. We must answer his accusations
and lies with the truth of God’s word and with the truth of what we know about
God. We must call upon Jesus, and trust in his love, mercy, grace and
sovereignty over our lives. He fills us with his peace. Sometimes we may even
need to pray for God to surround us with his angels when Satan is fighting
particularly hard against us. In all persecutions, hardships, difficulties and
troubles we need to turn to Jesus and not to broken cisterns which do not hold
water. He will give us all we need to endure to the end.
Will He Find Faith?
Very early in the morning today the Lord Jesus gave me a
picture of the spiritual condition of a vast majority of today’s church here in
America, and it is on the decline. It is as Paul described in his letter to the
Ephesian church. A vast majority of believers in Jesus (or professing
Christians) are spiritually immature, “tossed here and there by waves and
carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness
in deceitful scheming.” Their commitments to Jesus Christ are continually
changing in position, away from God and toward greater faith in humans. Their
foundation for their faith is not Jesus Christ but is human-based philosophy
loosely based in Christ and scripture.
This human philosophy focuses much on self-pleasure and on
making people feel good. They spend much time, money and energy on
entertainment and in making the world feel “at home” in their church meetings.
Thus, they dilute the gospel of Jesus Christ to make it more appealing and
acceptable to the world. They avoid anything they consider “negative,” such as
the subjects of sin, repentance, obedience, judgment and hell, and they try to
keep things upbeat and positive (pleasing to itching ears). Instead of leading
their people to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with people, they teach them
to just go around blessing people via good deeds, but to avoid subjects which
might offend people. Many of these believers, thus, focus much of their
conversations around having fun, joking, laughing, etc.
Many of them preach a gospel which is only half the gospel.
Most of them do preach that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that he was
resurrected from the dead, that he ascended to heaven, that he sent the Holy
Spirit to indwell his followers, and that we are saved by God’s grace through
faith in Jesus Christ. Yet, they don’t teach that the word of God teaches us
that faith in Jesus involves turning away from our lifestyles of sin, being
transformed in heart and mind of the Spirit of God, and being given new lives
in Christ, “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (See Ro.
6-8; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 4:17-24; 1 Pet. 2:24-25; & 1 Jn. 1-5).
They don’t teach that God’s grace teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and
worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives and that
Jesus Christ died so we would no longer live for ourselves but for him who gave
himself up for us (See 2 Co. 5:15; Tit. 2:11-14). So, the church is on a
spiritual decline.
I believe God intends to judge his adulterous, idolatrous,
wayward and lukewarm church (See Rev. 2-3), not in the sense of the judgment of
hellfire, but in the sense of divine discipline and correction for the purpose
to bring them to their knees in humility and repentance so that he can revive
and restore them before he does come to take his bride to be with him. At that
time I believe many of these human-based churches will be brought down and that
many will repent in humility and the church will be revived, and I believe that
will be a huge answer to prayer, because one of our greatest concerns presently
is the spiritual decline of the church and that so many who profess the name of
Christ are living no differently from the people of the world.
Yet, one day he will also destroy our persecutors and we
will be set free and will no longer be the hated and rejected but will we will
reign with Jesus in his millennial kingdom. Amen! In fact, those who are killed
for their faith in Christ are already rescued and set free from persecution and
are no longer suffering rejection and mistreatment. So, while we are still on
this earth, we must seek Jesus and his kingdom first and we must continue to
pray for the salvation of souls, the revival of the church, and the
encouragement of his persecuted saints, as well as to call on him to rescue us
from our persecutors. He will fulfill all he has promised. He will never leave
us or forsake us. So, trust him and keep praying, and never give up! Trust in
his word and in all his many promises to us and rest in his love.
Seek Ye First /
Music: Karen Lafferty
Scriptures: Matthew 6:33; 7:7; 4:4
Seek ye first the
kingdom of God
And His righteousness;
And all these things
shall be added unto you.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!
Ask, and it shall be
given unto you;
Seek, and you shall
find.
Knock, and it shall be
opened unto you.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!
Man shall not live by
bread alone,
But by every word
That proceeds out from
the mouth of God.
Hallelu, Hallelujah!
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