MEMBERS ONLY

By Rick Mathes

Matthew 7:21 ” Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.

All I want to do is go about the Father’s business and not know it. A good way to start is to do a great work and let others take the credit for it. What a joy it is to pile up treasure in glory. I learned this from Paul when he wrote the prison epistles.

Here Paul was in a literal hole in the ground prison; hot, humid, filthy and vermin infested writing Philippians, the “joyful” epistle. He looked out and saw all the cities he threw the match of the Word at explode in a fourth of July of converts and prospering churches. He did and gave them the credit and they abandoned him to this deplorable condition of being a captive for the Lord. Yet he said, “Rejoice, again I say rejoice!” What a saint of Christ to model ourselves after. Paul-like for me is much more within range than Christ-like.

Believe in Christ in spite of having not seen Him. This will cause you to love Him and it will convict you of sin so that you repent. One look at Him and you will not be able to do otherwise. Like metal to a magnet, you will be attracted to and absorbed by the power of God the Holy Spirit.

Living a holy life requires that you be wholly His. A surrendered to his loving arms invites also other to do so because if you love Him to love His equally. WE love one another because He first loved us. We would not know what love and holiness are apart from His revealing Himself through the Word and the lives of unbelievers.

So let me ask you, “Does your church know the real you?” I’ll bet they do and they just haven’t been critical because they need your membership and tithing. You can bet the world knows you if you are not His. They embrace relativism and abhor any absolute accept the statement; “They are no absolutes” which negates itself. A tragic comedy of errors that even you may have believed. We lie so much about our lives we begin to live out an illusion. But I guarantee you, Jesus knows you and you are not going to get anything past Him. Pretend that you are hand-cuffed to Him like the criminal you are and watch how quickly your life and living change!