You also be ready… —Luke
12:40
“If we are going to be ready
for Jesus Christ, we have to stop being religious. In other words, we must stop
using religion as if it were some kind of a lofty lifestyle— we must be
spiritually real. If you are avoiding the call of the religious thinking of
today’s world, and instead are “looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2), setting
your heart on what He wants, and thinking His thoughts, you will be considered
impractical and a daydreamer.” CHAMBERS
What does it mean to be “religious”? It means that a person is following a way of
life that has the appearance of living in the “Way”, but is actually following
a modified version of Christianity. It
is estimated that there are 6.7 billion people in the world of which an
estimated 2.1 billion (or 1/3 of the world's population) identifies themselves
as Christian. Just because a person has a label does not mean that they are
genuine. After I returned from Vietnam,
I enrolled at a local junior college. One day, I say a guy at school wearing an
Army field jacket. On the right sleeve
was a patch (in the Army, if you have been in combat you wear the patch of the
unit you served with on your right sleeve) for MAC-V (Military Assistance
Command – Vietnam). I had served with
MAC-V in the Mekong Delta, Advisory Team 68. So I walked up to him and asked
him what “team” he has served with. I
thought I was meeting someone who had served as I had. He looked at me, confused. So I asked again, pointing to the patch on
his sleeve. He said “Oh, I bought this
jacket at the Salvation Army thrift store , man.” I
wanted to tell him to take the patch off of his sleeve because he was misrepresenting
himself, but I just walked off shaking my head.
(Matthew 7:21-23) “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall
enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many
will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name,
cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never
knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
If you were from another
country and the only thing you knew about the United States was what you read
on our currency, you would think that people in this country followed and
trusted God. I mean, it is written right on our currency. Judging from the speed at which our country is
moving away from God and Biblical values, my guess is that one day, any mention
of God will be removed from our currency.
But I digress. There is only one
way to the Father – that is by faith in Jesus (John 14:6). There are many
people sitting in church, who bought their faith “at the Salvation Army thrift store”. What they wear on their sleeve is not
theirs. There was a time when I wondered
why a Pastor always talked about the way to Salvation in a church that was “on-fire”
for the Lord. But on reflection, I
realized that many people in that church may be religious, but they might not
be Christians. Salvation comes through
the hearing of the Gospel and something supernatural. The yielding of our hearts to the Holy
Spirit. Don’t take it for granted that
everyone around you is heaven-bound. ELGIN
Charley Elgin
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