Stay Hot For God!
Matthew 24:13 “but he who stands firm to the end will be saved, preserved and protected”
I felt impressed by the Lord to write this weekend’s and to put it out a day early – on Friday.
There was a time when Jesus was teaching his disciples about what things would be like before His return to this earth – shortly before the end of this world as we know it. They asked Him a question that we see in Matthew 24:3 (NLT) “Jesus’ disciples came to Him privately and asked, "When will all this take place? And will there be any sign ahead of time to signal your return and the end of the world?"
One of the signs Jesus told them about was that “Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold. But those who endure to the end will be saved, , preserved and protected. ” Matthew 24:12-13 When Jesus said sin would be rampant – He was referring to every kind of sin – the disregard for earthly laws and the disregard for the instructions, guidelines, and boundaries that His Word gives us to live by. He was talking corruption on large levels, business and personal dealings without integrity, evil speaking about others without regard for how it might hurt them, a freedom to lie and cheat as a part of every day life, about sexual immorality and perversion increasing to such a level that it redefined all sexuality. He was unfaithfulness and disloyalty in relationships. He was talking about the increase of selfishness and greed. He was saying that this increased evil would so surround us, that if we were not careful, it would discourage us to unprecedented levels causing our own love to grow cold. When a person’s love grows cold, everything looks bleak and life doesn’t look worth living. I pray that this has not become the case in any of your lives.
In writing this special weekend message, I felt the direction of the Lord to focus on only one of those areas - sexual immorality. First let me start out by saying Christianity is not prudish nor is God. Sexuality within the boundaries of marriage is not prudish – it’s the proper use of what it was created by God for. Sexual immorality is perversion – it is a misuse of something in a way other than what it was created for.
When something created by God that was created by Him for good, is misused, then it becomes a perversion and instead of having a good result, it produces a curse – the reaction to its misuse. When I was a child, before the days of circuit breakers, I stuck a bobby pin in an electric socket. It blew the socket starting it on fire and was blown backwards. By the grace of God I was hardly hurt, but, I could have been electrocuted. It wasn’t the fault of electricity – a good thing. It was the misuse on my part of that electricity – a bad thing.
We may not like when those negative things happen, but they will with misuse outside of God’s will. A new CDC study estimates that one in four (26 percent) young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States – or 3.2 million teenage girls – is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases. This is just one age group mentioned but the problem abounds throughout the others and around the world. It is epidemic.
The greatest problem that comes from all abounding sin is the feeling that it’s so much bigger than your ability to have an affect in slowing or stopping it. That usually leads to a caving in to it. This is why men and women are becoming slaves to ***, casual sexual relationships, and every kind of sexual experience imaginable – all perversions of Gods’ intension for sex. It was created for a husband and wife to experience for their purpose of enhancing their love and intimacy and for procreation. This is not archaic – this is the purpose of its creation. Misuse outside of that it leads to the dismantling and destruction of lives – sexually from disease, emotionally from hurt and pain, and mentally from the torment and confusion of broken relationships outside the boundaries of God’s will.
There is another form of evil prevalent today that surrounds this evil and every evil being promoted in society. That is the intimidation and bashing -the name calling and slandering of anyone that does not take a more “open and liberal view.” We are called, “ancient,” “backwards,” “out of touch,” and many more vile names that I cannot print. This kind of intimidation has led to many people’s acceptance of homosexuality and every other form of sexual perversion. People have been pushed and intimidated into acceptance of something sinful even when deep in their heart, they knew it was wrong.
The answer to these kinds of problems is to stand up for your personal conviction and not be silent. The answer lies in each and every person examining their own life before God and learning to hate what is evil from their life. We have to learn to hate sin. Psalm 97:10 says, “You who love the Lord, hate evil! He protects the lives of his godly people and rescues them from the power of the wicked. “
Learn to hate sin in your own life. Learn to love God more than your own fleshly desires. In learning to hate sin – that does not mean become judgmental of others or self righteous. We are to love sinners the same way God loved us in our sin and Jesus died for our sins. But it doesn’t mean we have to agree with, or be tolerant of sin in our society. First prayerfully stand against it in your own life. Then humbly, kindly, and prayerfully influence others in God’s love and ways. Then take a stand against evil by resisting it verbally and with action. Write letters, write blogs, write your television stations, your politicians – in other words, take a stand against evil where you can. Your resistance will help you protected and strengthen you from what Jesus said will happen – “the love of many growing cold.” Today’s Fresh Manna is Jesus answer to a living and hot and godly love for people and life. Jesus said, “He who stands firm (in what is right) to the end will be saved, preserved and protected.” Matthew 24:13
In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt