Greetings,

       Sometimes, perhaps often, in life, people are faced with the inconsistencies between what they claim to believe and the way they actually live.  We claim that we don’t want anyone to die without knowing Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior but then are not all that passionate about trying to reach those people.  Question: If you’re really concerned about lost people, when’s the last time you talked to someone about Jesus?  Though we want our life to be different from the world and even believe that God wants our life to be different from the world, we find that we often compare ourselves to other people rather than to Christ.  It’s certainly easier that way for us to justify the things we do, even though we know they’re wrong.  We say that prayer is critical but how often do we pray?  And really, what do we pray for?  Do we pray for our will or God’s will to be done?  If we truly belonged to Christ we would do as Jesus tells us to do as He says, “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” but when worry comes to us it seems as natural as breathing.  If we truly believed in Christ and claimed the promises of “all” Scripture, we should surrender our lives to Him completely. 

       In place, though, of that complete surrender, we give Him only parts of our lives and then take them back when He doesn’t do what we wanted Him to.  We call ourselves Christians but sometimes, and this hurts to recognize such, but we live like atheist.  We live in silent denial.  The more honest we become in our self-examination of ourselves, the more we realize that we have a lot of Christian growing up to do and as we grow we then crave the intimacy with God the Scriptures tell us we should desire.  When we get to the point of desiring more and more and more intimacy with our Lord our cry will then become, “Whatever it takes to know Him, whatever it takes to live like I truly love Him, whatever it takes to love eternity more than this world, even if I have to fight and scrape and crawl away from the lure of the world and my atheistic attitude into a genuine, crucified life of faith and radical obedience, I’ll do it.”

       How do you live your life each day?  Is your daily living consistent with what you say you believe and proclaim?  Are you in silent denial of the ways of Christ and of how He wants you to live?  I pray that we would not fall into such a life style but would have one that would continually seek intimacy with God.

       Hope to see you Sunday for another great day of worship.

Dr. Richard