I suppose it could be said of many people, "I don't go to church much anymore." I wonder why? Old age with infirmity and ill health will certainly slow one down but I am thinking more now of the many who simply have quit attending church services not having any reason for doing so. Their health is fine. They have just quit going.
I know of one who said she rarely goes anymore who went
on and said, "But I am as close to God as ever." How does she know that? How can she know it? Did God tell her; did he whisper it in her
ear? Did she read it in scripture? Or, did her emotions and they alone tell her
this? To ask is to answer.
Many people's faith does not rest on the ground of God's
word but on their emotions, on what their feelings (they call it their heart)
tells them. Their conscience does not
bother them because their heart tells them all is well. However, the faith of the Bible rests on
God's word and that alone. "So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." (Rom. 10:17 NKJV)
Every person's prayer to God ought to be Father let me
see myself as you see me. Let me look
through your eyes, which is in this case his word, so that I might see myself
as I am and not as I think I am. Let me
cease measuring myself by my standard of measurement and accept with purity of
heart whatever your word tells me about myself be it good or bad.
If God gives me a command and I habitually ignore it
how can I say I love God and it’s okay with my soul? "And let us
consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the
assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some...for if we sin
willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer
remains a sacrifice for sins." (Heb. 10:24-25
NKJV—the reader would do well to read on through verse 31) This passage is destructive of the idea that
one can ignore church services and still be close to God. "For this is the love of God,
that we keep His commandments." (1 John 5:3
NKJV)
Some may say, "That is just your
interpretation." That is pretty
much the standard line that is being used today against any doctrine of the
Bible that does not satisfy the one who wishes to ignore what it teaches. It doesn't matter if a teaching is so clear a
third grader could not misunderstand it if it does not satisfy the longing of
the one who wishes to discard it. It is
"just your interpretation." We
have become a dishonest people. We are
dishonest with the scriptures, with God, and even with ourselves.
Many others have reached the point, and many more are
headed that way, where they no longer make any claim to faith in Christianity
and look with scorn on anything from the Bible.
While they still claim love as their own it will be love as they alone
define it and they are not about to the let the book of God define it for
them. It will be defined by what they
feel in their hearts. But, here is the
problem:
"The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings." (Jer. 17:9-10 NKJV)
We will be judged by our ways and doings when put up
against the word of God, not by our deceitful hearts.
“The word I have spoken will judge him in the last
day.” (Jesus speaking, John 12:48 NKJV)
We are going to be judged by the word of God, not by
our inward feelings or emotions.
"But everyone who hears these sayings of mine, and does not do them,
will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain
descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it
fell. And great was its fall." (Matt. 7:26-27 NKJV)
"Not everyone who says to me,
'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my
father in heaven." (Matt. 7:21 NKJV)
"He became the author of
eternal salvation to all who obey him." (Heb.
5:9 NKJV)
But, then, as stated earlier, in our society today
“that is just your interpretation.”
The Bible does not teach we can be saved by perfect
commandment keeping, we are saved by grace, but neither does it teach we are
free to ignore God's commands and tell ourselves fantasy stories about how it
is well with our soul.
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