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It is becoming increasingly difficult to be able to separate
the real from the fake. The fake, or the
imposter if you will, seems like the real thing until you begin to scratch
beneath the surface. There
products, or people in the case we are talking, that look almost exactly like the
authentic except for the details. I
remember walking through the streets of the 11th largest city of the
world and seeing products that stole the brand name of very popular items but
changed one letter in an effort to get away with it. Obviously just by looking at the product you
could see its inferiority to the real deal.
Let me apply this to the spiritual realm. There are many people who are convinced
they are Christians and right with God but their lives do not bear the authentic
marks of a Christ follower. Now, before
you get upset and stop reading, I know that a person’s spiritual life is
intensely personal. I know that people
who struggled with certain habits before they became a Christian may still
struggle with those habits after receiving Christ as their Lord. What I am talking about are people who claim
that they belong to Jesus but their lives give no evidence of being converted.
Again, let me be careful how I say this but I believe that
parents are partly to blame.
Parents try and raise their children to follow the faith. They take little Johnny or Suzy to church and
Sunday school and pray that what is taught will become real to them. A child may be convinced that yes Jesus is
the Lord and that he/she does need to ask Jesus into their hearts. Sometimes, however, that confession of faith
that is genuine as a child is doubted and even rebelled against as a teenager
or adult. But parents in trying to
reassure themselves that they have done a good job as parents try and cling to
that profession of faith their child made instead of praying that there now
grown up child, experience true conversion and true Christian living as an
adult.
The other thing that happens in our world is that people
settle for second best instead of having the real thing. They settle for the appearance of true faith
instead of having real faith. After all,
real faith is much too demanding for 2008, isn’t it? Real faith means that I would have to change
the way I live, and who wants to do that?
Having the appearance of true faith is much more comfortable, it is much
more accommodating.
We live in a world that prefers greys to black and white
issues. And this thinking has
infiltrated the minds of some Christians.
Churches will accept people into membership who have never had a genuine
conversion experience and give no evidence of a growing commitment to Jesus
Christ. As a result the church has been
weakened; true faith has been substituted by trying to be popular in a culture
that is increasingly pagan.
Over the next few weeks we are going to develop a series of
messages based on the New Testament Epistle of First John. If they ever were a book that we would like
to erase from the Bible it is this one.
John’s theme is authentic living in dark times. He talks about what a real Christian is like,
how he/she lives in the world, how he/she relates to God, other Christians, and
how that person deals with sin.
I want to challenge you to read 1 John several times
until you start to understand authentic faith in dark times.
God bless you,
Pastor Bill
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