by David Brenneman
“Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Stop doing evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor, Obtain justice for the orphan, Plead for the widow’s case." Isaiah 1:16-17 NASB
It's not too difficult to lead a double life. The problem is admitting that a double life exists.
We are told in the Bible of living one way, in obedience to Jesus Christ. We are told to deny ourselves, take up our own cross and to follow Him.
Yet many believers are living for themselves, albeit in denial, throughout their days on this Earth.
I do and have done this. It's easy to see it in others. In the vernacular of the day, it's far more than distracted driving. It's distracted living.
We are both seduced and taught from an early age to embrace wrong ideas and wrong activities into our lives.
We don't see the scope of the problem because we've been at it for so long.
Read in the New Testament about putting off the old self and putting on the new.
Read again Jesus's words about denying yourself. Taking up your own cross.
Look at your life. Are you doing this or are you holding onto what you have? Realize what the Scriptures say. You cannot serve two masters.
Indeed it will mean a radical life change. Coming to Christ is supposed to be that anyway. We are to be living such a life that it causes unbelieving people to see God in us and maybe ask how they too could be saved.
If you're living a life that both embraces the world and no distinction is evident, how are you showing a lost world the way to find Jesus?
If you look around at your hobbies, at what you do in your leisure time, at your home, your collections, your possessions. Do these things say "Jesus is my Savior. I live for Him."?
Do you know more about these things than you do your Bible? That one hurt. I hopefully never outgrow that conviction. I realized a long time ago that the Bible was God's love letter to me. Would it be right to stand before Jesus and confess that I had never read it? That I never studied it?
Lived it?
It always always bothers me to see Christians take their passion and zeal that is paramount to worship and place it on things of this world rather than only with Jesus Christ. They get far more excited about sports than they ever show about the things of God. In truth they show who they love. Again, ouch, but it's the truth!
We look to the letters that John was told to write and distribute in the book of Revelation.
One letter was an open rebuke. The Church in that city had forgotten their first love, Jesus Christ.
Do you remember your coming to Christ? Can you look at your life and say that your love of Jesus is growing stronger or that you've misplaced that love and put it on people or things of this world? People? Yes. Didn't Jesus say that if we loved Mother, Father, Sister or Brother more than Him we weren't worthy of Him?
We read Jesus's answer to a man about the greatest commandment. His answer: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and spirit. The second being love your neighbor as yourself.
All doesn't in the least bit imply anything less than all. Not the week's leftovers. Not squeezing in a few minutes here and there. Not clock watching until the service is over so that you can be a couch potato for hours watching a couple of groups of men throw a football, or a baseball or basketball etc.
The Church at large has been weakened because they have passively given away ground to the world.
I have been convicted long ago, and moving certainly has refreshed that conviction. What parts of my life still need to go that aren't glorifying God? Am I living a life that is a reflection of the light of Jesus Christ?
Let's bring Discipleship into the 21st Century. Jesus living with this world physically in the here and now. He calls you out to come follow Him. What would you honestly be attempting to bring with you? Anything? Nothing?
We are to be lights in our world. Showing people Jesus. Introducing them to our Savior. We are to becoming more like Christ through the teachings of the Bible. We are to be in prayer. Be studying our Bible. Be thinking on things above not on the things of this world. Bearing one another's burdens. Loving Jesus with all our being. To do all this means denying self.
I have a feeling that regardless of how much purging that I did to move here, that God's not done with that aspect of my life.
When people see you.
When people hear you.
When people view you.
Do they see someone who's living for Jesus or do they see, hear, perceive something else?
Do people see your love for God or ?
Is your life a double life? Have you forgotten your first love? Are the things of your life more important than your growing in respect to your salvation in Christ Jesus? Is your light of Jesus Christ being hidden?
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