Proverbs 31 OBS I am Loved: Week 3 - No longer in Fear but LOVED

When Wendy Blight was teaching us in this study about our new bodies that will be raised at the coming of the Lord, I thought about how scary I used to think the second coming was.

I used to think about how awful it was going to be:  Not knowing if you made it until the last minute because God was going to pull out his notepad and convict you of that time you laughed too hard in church or missed a worship service.

This was all a result of the horrible teaching we received on the subject in legalism. 

When I read about the glorified bodies in the study and in scripture, I thought: "How exciting! We will be raised to be like Jesus.  We will be immortal glorified beings like Jesus Christ"

I am SO glad to know about God's Grace and how much he loves us.  God loves us so much that he is going to make us like Christ one day.  That's awesome!  I'm so glad to know this God.  Even if you mess up really bad, he forgives us and we're still candidates for salvation, sanctification, and glorification.

That is how much he loves us.

He gives us lives that we certainly don't deserve because he loves us.

Lukewarm Churchgoers are not Christians

This statement convicts me every time I read it.

I have read stats that say that only 25% of churchgoers read their Bibles on a regular basis outside of church.

No wonder we have the most Biblically illiterate and ignorant generation ruining the American Church.

The evangelical movement in this country is getting a lot of flak and rightly so.

They spend more time preaching politics and trying to gain favor with politicians than speaking about Jesus.

Many in the evangelical movement have had enough and are either abandoning the institutional church or leaving Christianity altogether.  

When I saw this quote from Wendy, I thought:  "What if believers actually got into the word and started praying daily?"  Surely they would see that promoting Donald Trump as some moral Godly example and arguing about politics is not the most productive use of their time and turning people off to Christ.

If we focused MORE on God's love and how He loves us and freed us, then maybe we wouldn't be so caught up in the drama of this world.

At this point, nobody is connecting Evangelical Christianity with love.  It's so mean spirited, hypocritical, and focused on gaining favor with politicians, and expanding their brand/popularity.

Enough with the Thoughts and Prayers

Last week when we had yet another school shooting, many of us said we had enough of thoughts and prayers.  We weren't disparaging or discounting prayer but we were saying that faith without actions is useless.

Being followers of Jesus is supposed to be about LOVE and LOVE is about doing. 

We say that we love our kids so just giving them thoughts and prayers when they are being gunned down in school is not enough.  

We need to be SOLVING the problems so that our kids will experience our LOVE and also that they will see our  FAITH IN ACTION.

Take it from someone who grew up in a church of lukewarm churchgoers...Seeing Faith In Action vs Lukewarm Churchgoing radically shifted my view of God.  I saw God being Glorified when I heard testimonies from people who put their faith where there mouth was.

If we're going to talk about Christianity being the religion of LOVE, then we need to be about DOING and enough talking.