Are We Willing & Are We Brave Enough to Ask HIM to Reveal Our Areas of Disobedience?
- Have you ever read a passage of Scripture and become frightened?
- Can it be possible that one who knows the Truth turns away from the Truth that once set them free?
- Are the consequences for disobedience to the LORD costly?
- Child of God, are you and I willing & are we brave enough to Ask HIM to reveal our areas of disobedience to HIM?
Early, while darkness filled the sky, the Spirit of God led me to read about the rise up of false prophets, of those who profess to be followers, but who follow the selfish desires of flesh instead. Before we look at followers of the flesh, let us be reminded how the Bible tells us we are able to do more that we could ever imagine. YES. Yes, we can—but only in God’s might. You see, GOD is sovereign! YES! This is Truth, and we should remember how we serve a Righteous, Holy, and Jealous Father. We know because He tells us so within in His Holy Word.
“You shall fear only the LORD your God; and you shall worship Him and swear by His name.
(Deuteronomy 6: 13-15 NASB)
You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you,
for the LORD your God in the midst of you is a jealous God;
otherwise the anger of the LORD your God will be kindled against you,
and He will wipe you off the face of the earth.”
The Bible tells us how we can do MORE than we could ever imagine, and we are reminded over and over how the LORD’S plans and thoughts are higher than ours (His created ones). We know how the Bible speaks of the followers of Jesus as Overcomers, as those who have been set free, not as those who are to be overcome by the wiles of Satan or by the surrounding world.
Jesus Himself took His disciples away from the crowds and led them up on the mountain to teach them the way they should walk. Jesus said:
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.
(The Gospel of Matthew 7: 13-14 NASB)
For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
- We can choose to live disciplined and dedicated lives, dying daily to our self-centeredness, our self-seeking and selfish ways, choosing to walk “the way [that] is narrow that leads to life, . . . .”
- Or, we can choose to live undisciplined and undedicated lives, living for our own selfishness, pleasures, thinking we are saved, and that’s enough.
Now, our salvation is—Enough to Save Us for all Eternity—Only Because JESUS IS ENOUGH!
However, our redemption does not give us the right to live as we please, knowing that we have been saved from hell’s fiery eternity. Jesus Himself reminds us (His followers) that there are two routes we can trek:
- We can live as children, walking the spiritual pathway, the one that leads us to obey our Father. (OR)
- We can live as children, walking the carnal pathway, the one that leads us to live a wasted life, one that does not keep our Father as central to our beings and glorified in all we say and do.
Each day we arise from our slumber, we have a choice to make, a decision, of who we will follow this day: Jesus or Ourself.
If we who believe know all of this TRUTH, then why would we ever allow our sinful selves to become entangled (again) with the wiles and entrapments of Satan? We should not.
Yet, we, who know Jesus, often do.
The apostle Peter wrote of these entanglements and entrapments, and of the consequences believers will face, “forsaking the right way, . . .”
“Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties,
(The 2nd Letter of Peter 2: 10b-15 NASB)
whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.
But these, like unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong.
They count it as a pleasure to revel in the daytime.
They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin,
enticing unstable souls,
having a heart trained in greed,
accursed children;
forsaking the right way,
they have gone astray,
having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor,
who loved the wages of unrighteousness;”
“Since Jesus” by Ben Fuller speaks of how we are not the same, how we have never been the same “Since Jesus” changed our hearts. Therefore, why would we ever wish to return or to go back to the life from which we have been brought?
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
(The 2nd Letter of Peter 2: 4-10 NASB)
and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter;
and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
(for by what he saw and heard that righteous man,
while living among them,
felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation,
and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment,
and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority.
Daring, self-willed, they do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties,”
- What are the consequences for disobedience to the LORD?
- Is it possible that someone who knows the Truth of God can turn away from following the Truth that once set them free?
Daily, we face entanglements and entrapments. & Daily, we face the decision, the answer to the question: Will we follow Jesus today?
When he was alive, my dad used to say: “Remember who you belong to & where you come from.” Children of the KING of kings, the Bible speaks clearly of the consequences believers will face when we forsake the righteous way, choosing instead to go our own way.
- Are We Willing & Are We Brave Enough to Ask HIM to Reveal Our Areas of Disobedience?
- Are We Willing & Are We Brave Enough to Ask HIM to Show Us Our Areas of Idolatry, Our Adultery—We Have Committed Against HIM?
“For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
(The 2nd Letter of Peter 20-21 NASB)
they are again entangled in them and are overcome,
the last state has become worse for them than the first.
For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness,
than having known it,
to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.”