Our God is a devouring fire. (Hebrews 12:30)When we come to God, he consumes us. If we are not consumed by God, we are not really in God.
People see a relationship with God as one in which he figures prominently. He is important to us and we make time to do stuff for him. Six days a week, we are in the world, we give him a large part of the seventh. We call ourselves Christians and most of the time look like it.
But that is not what God wants. He wants to devour us.
In the Old Testament, one of the things God told his people that they had done wrong was embracing other gods along with him. They would worship the other gods that the pagan cultures around them had, but they would also worship God. They even went so far as to make God chief god.
God said that in many ways, that – lumping him into a group of equals – was worse than denying him.
If he is truly God, he has no equals. He alone is God. And if he is truly God, there can be no equals in our lives.
Jesus said, in Matthew 12:30-31: Anyone who isn’t with me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me. So I tell you, every sin and blasphemy can be forgiven—except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which will never be forgiven.
He said that if you are not helping, you are hurting. If you are not devoured by the power and word of God, you are only half-eaten.
And it is that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit – the refusal to give God your life – that will condemn you. It is that dying without God that will cause you to be lost.
The church in Laodicea in the book of Revelation had this problem. They thought that by just hanging around in the church building a few times a week would make them holy. But instead Jesus said, But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth! (Revelation 3:16)
It would be like your wife deciding that she needed more husbands. You could be the chief husband and she would still love you, but there needed to be more variety. You told her in the wedding vows that it was he and no one else. She consumes your life.
The same with God. In fact, it is no wonder that he uses the marriage idea so much, the idea of loyalty and commitment to each other.
What would happen in your life if you were consumed by God. If everything you did or thought was captive to him, that he was all you were and thought about?
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.