The Last Days Of The World XIV

 The genuine desire of a man’s heart is made evident in what he does, not what he says. Your actions rather than your words confirm whether you love, value, or cherish someone. Your actions rather than your words will reveal whether your heart yearns for God or the things of this earth.

Many today say they love Jesus with their lips, but their actions betray how little they think of Him, how little they prioritize Him, and how unwilling they are to obey Him. Perhaps it’s because men’s desires revolve around their flesh, their ease, and their momentary comfort that so many are unwilling to allow for the possibility of hardship, persecution, and even martyrdom, even though Jesus warns that we will see all these things.

When the excellence of the knowledge of Christ is your singular goal, everything else becomes as dross. All the things you once pointed to as having attained, achieved, or otherwise conquered will seem as impressive as those plastic trophies you used to get for breaking a pre-cut board at the local rec center because a guy with a beer gut and a graying ponytail who watched too many Bruce Lee movies was trying to get your parents to pony up the thirty bucks a month it would cost for him to teach you how to be a lethal weapon.

We’ve fallen for the nonsense that Jesus does cartwheels and exhausts His supply of confetti poppers just because you decided to show up once a year or allowed yourself to be dragged to church by your mom or your spouse for some special service or another. He’s so flattered by your presence that He’ll take you any way He can get you and overlook the divided loyalties, duplicitous heart, and absence of faithfulness to Him and His word. That whole thing about denying yourself, picking up your cross, and following Him is for everyone else. It’s for the lowly peons. For those without fame or a following. You’re special. You get an exemption. Come right in, we’ve got a seat on the first row reserved just for you.

The angels in heaven rejoice over one sinner who repents, not over one sinner who remains a sinner and just warms a pew.

People who were broken used to desire to be fixed. They acknowledged their brokenness. They came before God in humble repentance and surrendered themselves to His will. Nowadays, broken people want to stay broken but have someone tell them that they’re fixed. They want to remain in the mud but have everyone around them pretend as though they are nevertheless resplendent, fully attired in white, and ready to meet the bridegroom. Essentially, they want to be lied to and are willing to be absurdly generous toward anyone willing to do it.

We all come to Jesus as we are, dirty, hopeless, broken, wounded, bleeding, and dead in sin, but we cannot leave His presence as we came or resist Him when He attempts to wash us clean and make us whole. We must be born again; it is a fundamental absolute of the Gospel, yet those words are rarely spoken by people with platforms and megaphones. There will always be more sinners than saints, so catering to them makes more financial sense. It’s a numbers game, and insisting upon righteousness and holiness unto the Lord doesn’t make the numbers pencil.

At some point, they realized that a narrow way with few finding it didn’t make for a great business model. You can’t build billion-dollar ministries with the few the Word says will find the narrow way, so rather than be content with a smaller ministry, they brought in bulldozers and work crews and widened the path. After that, it was easy to convince people that they’d found it. Touch your television screen, and presto-changeo; you’re saved, sanctified, and on your way to the pearly gates with a ticket in hand. What about no longer being conformed to the world or being transformed by the renewing of your mind? If you get around to it all fine and dandy, but first, before you forget, pick up your telephone and dial that number on your screen to make the biggest love offering you can.

But if I’m already saved, why would I get around to not being conformed to the world or being transformed by the renewing of my mind? What if my new mind doesn’t enjoy the things the old me enjoyed? What if not conforming to the world will mean that those of the world will hate me and reject me? I mean, I’m saved anyway; why rock the boat?

Discount Jesus will tell you that knowing Him will cost you nothing. The Jesus of the Bible insists that knowing Him, following Him, and obeying Him will cost you everything. What those peddling discount Jesus don’t tell anyone is that their Jesus is a construct of their own vain imaginings, without the power to save, restore, or reconcile unto God. A fake Jesus will not sustain anyone through the storms of this life. You can think the gold coin you got at the zoo for a dollar is real gold until you try to cash it in and realize it has no inherent value. Many cling to an unbiblical Jesus only to realize they’ve been clinging to an illusion when they need him most.

How will such individuals react when they realize that the easy path they were promised by the wolves and the deceivers was illusory and held no substance or permanence?

Philippians 3:7-11, “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also counted all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

If you are here, and by here, I mean in this frame of mind, if this is your outlook and mindset, you will not be troubled by the things that are about to come upon the earth. If you’re not here, get here because time is short, and by not being able to count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, we reveal ourselves to be unworthy of Him.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.