Notes from youth this week:
The Fear of the Lord
Proverbs 1:7 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
The church today has lost the fear of God.
Acts 4:32-5:11 Ananias and his wife had no fear of the Lord, and as a result, the were destroyed by their sin. Their gift was not to glorify God, but only to boast in themselves and to make others think they were spiritual and righteous. Sin will always find you out, and hidden sin will utterly destroy your walk with God. If we lived with the fear of God that the early church had, we would not struggle with sin the way we do. The church today has become numb to the fact that God is holy and that his Holy Spirit is grieved by the sin of the church. America has developed this silly concept of God that says, “I just need to pray this little prayer, give my heart to Jesus, and I am going to heaven,” but we don’t know what it means to give our hearts to Jesus! When a person gives their heart to Jesus, it means that they are trusting God with their lives and that they are turning away from the things that grieve the heart of God. The bible says “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God” (eph 4:30). How do you grieve the Holy Spirit? By saying that we repent of our sin and then turning right back to it! By calling ourselves “Christians” and living like the world! By declaring that we know God, yet living like we don’t care about the sacrifice he made!
Galatians 6:7-8 “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” We mock God when we say that we know him yet we continue to sow to our flesh and continue to live in habitual sin. Jesus told the prostitute when she was brought before him, that her sins were forgiven, and to “go and sin no more.” He didn’t say, “Your sins are forgiven, now go and try to be good.” He expected that the brief encounter that the woman had with him would radically change her life, and that her lifestyle would never be the same!! Her faith saved her, but her life would demonstrate that faith from that point on. We are saved by our faith, but our lives should reflect that faith or our faith DOESN’T REALLY EXSIST.
Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
The truth is that many people who say they know God, have never truly had an encounter with Jesus Christ. If we live life saying we know him, yet we never really repent and give our lives to him, we will find out on that day that we have deceived ourselves! We want to see a move of God, we need to repent from our sin and turn our lives over to the one who died for us. We need to develop a healthy fear of the Lord, one that leads to repentance and freedom from sin! The reason the church does not have any power is that the church is not free! Acts chapter 6 says that many signs and wonders were done by the disciples, and that the people would bring the sick on cots or mats near the disciples so that Peter’s shadow might fall on them so they could be healed!! Do you think Peter was struggling with hidden sin??? I dont think so!! Peter was walking in the power of the Holy Spirit because he had encountered Jesus and he had been set free from sin!! Most christians are still bound by some sort of sin, and we need, right now, to repent and turn away from it! We need to run to the cross, and to lay down the things that are holding us back from the call of God on our lives. We need to lay them down, and we need to leave them there. The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. The bible says that the power of sin on our lives is broken when we give our lifes to Christ, so why are we still bound by it!! Some of us right now need to repent and to ask God to forgive us for not walking in the freedom that is given to us by Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit!!
Recently, my beautiful wife and I found out that we are expecting a baby boy in June! We have been married for almost three years now, and it has quite honestly been 3 of the best years of my life. Expecting our first child, my son, has really made me think about a few things. My one desire is that our child grows up in a household that loves Jesus. One that lives to serve Him and to see others come to know Him. When I think about our child, I can’t help but think about Joshua’s statement, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” The Bible says that if you “train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) Parents today have to be willing to teach their children about what it means to live a Godly lifestyle. I think that most parents, regardless of what their faith is, wish for their children to grow up knowing what is right and what is wrong. Too often, however, parents teach their kids with words, but their actions show that they believe differently than what they are teaching. Our actions, are what leave an impression on our children, much more so than our words. When a parent tells their child to act one way, but then lives the opposite, they confuse the child. I have watched the way kids look up to their parents. Young boys look at their dads as their heros, and they try to imitate what they do.
