Complacency

But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.  For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.  For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
II Peter 2:5-9

For some odd reason we have come to the place of just accepting our faith as complete as long as we can feel it whether it produces change or not.  Many came to their faith early in their lives and have walked through life with eternal assurance but daily insecurities, fear, anger, and general personal chaos.  The tragedy of most Christian lives is that they are filled with incomplete promise.  God has given so very much to us; much more than most Christians have realized in their daily experience.

There are good reasons to mature in our faith and discover the abundant and purposeful life God has designed for us.  Immature and spiritually empty Christians will never lead America back to God.  Passive discipleship will not create the witness needed for change in America.  Christians must both display the fruit of their salvation and defend the absolute truths of God.  Compromise of values and collapsing of morals may help Christians be accepted by men but such will never help men get accepted by God.

What is lacking in America today is not more laws but better character.  The value of a name is not defined by material possessions or political or social position, but character.  All the money in the world can’t buy trust in a handshake.  People of character shape their lives to the absolute truths of God, not the relative opinions of men. The world today (and many Christians with them) rationalize their actions and demand TOLERANCE.  They firmly believe that, no matter how warped your conscience is, wrong is relative.  It’s only wrong if it’s wrong to you. 

Many times we are not willing to surrender completely everything to God.  We don’t want to stop doing our favorite “sinful” things that bring division in our lives, that cause a canyon between our hearts and our Savior, who is the only one who can give us what we truly want and seek.  We grasp within our clenched fists the things we are not willing to let go of.  There comes a time, hopefully sooner than later, that we realize how tired and truly unfulfilled we are.  The things we hang on to are not worth what we give up to keep them and they will keep us from reaching our full potential in Christ. 

Christ called us to this life of godliness by His own glory and goodness. Christ attracts people enslaved by sin by His own moral excellence and the total impact of His glorious Person. Christ has given to me the capacity to rise above myself and my sin.  He has blessed me with the wisdom and power of His Holy Spirit to sanctify me IN and not just AFTER my earthly experience.  When we do not yield to it, but we are walking in the Holy Spirt, the power of sin is destroyed and Christ is Lord.  It is a real deliverance; we have the mastery over ourselves in this respect; we are set free from sin.

Let go of whatever it is you are clinging to, which really has a stronger hold on you than you do on it.  Let Christ’s strength take over and deliver you today, right now.

Scripture to Claim:
Work out your salvation with fear and trembling: For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.  Phil. 2:12-13