“You harm yourself when you love anything more than God. How does this work? If you love your children more than you love God, you will essentially rest your need for significance and security in them. You will need too much for them to succeed, be happy, and love you. That will either drive them away or crush them under the weight of your expectations, because they will be the ultimate source of your happiness, and no human being can measure up to that. If instead you love your spouse or romantic partner more than God, the same things occur. If you love your work and career more than God, you will necessarily also love them more than your family, your community, and your own health, and so that will lead to physical and relational breakdown”…..”If you love anything more than God, you harm the object of your love, you harm yourself, you harm the world around you, and you end up deeply dissatisfied and discontent”…..”Here, then, is the message. Don’t love anything less; instead learn to love God more, and you will love other things with far more satisfaction….Then, and only then, does the contentment start to come” (Keller, Making Sense of God, 2016).
What I hear from the Lord is that there is a weed problem, and an infestation, within the Church in America. Weeds do what? They grow strong, with deep roots, they grow up quickly, they can be even quite attractive at times and they ”choke” out the good seed which is growing next to it. Eventually the weeds begin to cover and block all the nutrients from the sun and the seed and what came from it begin to wither.
I am convinced, at least in part, no, actually a major part of this infestation problem is due to being deceived. Many Christian’s are currently being deceived. Not threatened to be deceived, but are actually walking in deception. The reason is they have bought into the false idea that love and satisfaction is found through social, political, economical, material, temporal, “must create it yourself”, “happiness is the here and now”, “I must take things into my own hands”, the “material world is the only sure thing” (no, they don’t come out and say it, but they live it), the health, wealth, prosperity life,….which is all stemming from THE WORLD. It is SECULAR-HUMANISM hiding in the soil of hearts and which is competing with the Seed of God’s Word and the Spirit. This has been allowed to take place by non-believers and by believers through education, and brought into homes, through the media and entertainment, and finally, came into the Churches and into our doctrines and Sunday sermon’s, and into popular books, and Bible studies. Though this was a slow process, it began, and continues, through secular psychology, and higher education, and is passed through to the masses by the public school system, and by popular psychology and by media and entertainment everyday!
So, what is the solution? We must be humbled as a nation. We must be forced upon our faces in order to finally recognize our “lack”. But the real question is, what is the solution for the Church? Honesty, authenticity, humility, and asking the hard questions and being willing to face them with courage and WILLING TO ALLOW this post, and any other message which shines the light onto that which is hiding in plain sight and ALLOWING the Holy Spirit to call out what must be UPROOTED, AND TORN DOWN, IN OUR LIVES. AND WHAT MUST BE BUILT UP, AND MUST BE PLANTED, IN OUR LIVES. This process of uprooting weeds which are choking out God’s presence in our lives takes time and space in order to HONESTLY look at our motives and why we are doing what we are doing every day. Where we go, what we buy, where we work, why we work, what we think about, what we watch, what we listen to, what we read etc. Am I being legalistic? NO. I am being honest and truthful regarding the roots which must be plucked up if Christ is to be Lord in our lives. Does He have access to every room in your heart. In your life? Is He allowed His way? Or are you holding back “just in case” He doesn’t come through? All these questions, though hard to face, must be addressed. One thing to ask is “am I too busy, and distracted to even listen to the Holy Spirit’s voice in my day”. Going, going, going, and always having to be busy and be somewhere and involved in this and that, and unable to sit quietly and seek the Lord are all signs we are avoiding something which needs our attention. For when we are seeking satisfaction and searching for love from somewhere other than Christ, who is to be our First Love, we do not only end up disappointed and unsatisfied, but we end up quenching the voice of God, the voice of His love and help, and instruction in our daily lives. And the weeds grow deeper and taller and we are greatly stunted in our growth, or worse, we are swept away through deceit.
The reason for all this is not because we “are not the children of God” but because we “ARE the children of God” and God’s children by definition are “HOLY” they are set-apart and unique. They are Christ’s dwelling place (this does not mean we don’t battle temptation or ever screw up). But as the dwelling place of God we are called and equipped to live lives which are 180 degrees opposite of the world (if you consider this extreme, I assure you it is not. Read 2 Cor. 6:14-18. Light and darkness are opposites) So, we are born of God and we carry Him within us, everywhere we go. And if we are to be salt and light and to evangelize the world then we need to offer the world something other than what the world can give themselves! Therefore, we are to offer that which is of another world… and live accordingly.
Christ is fully willing to do this in your life. All you need to do is “be willing”, that’s it.
Aletheia: Truth in the Darkness 