On Earth as it is in Heaven
As I was reading through an article that Jon Bloom (from Bethlehem Baptist Church, MN) posted on the suffering/persecution of Christians around the world he said something that really struck me:
"But American Christians live in the most prosperous nation in world history and the one in which it costs the least to be a Christian. This environment can be deadly to faith. It allows false faith to masquerade as real very easily."
Does it make you feel a bit uneasy? I know it got me thinking. I wonder how I would stand in those situations? I hope to believe that I would let His strength support me (it's our choice to use that strength after all) but there is very little of me that would even consider wanting to be tested like that. I've learned that it's the fires that refine us, but defining a "good week" as being one that didn't include a beating because I profess His name is not one furnace I readily want to jump into.
However, reading last night (The Lazarus Life) I came across this passage and it somehow seems to fit my train of thought:
However I wonder if my brothers and sisters who go to sleep at night with bruises on their bodies understand more of that love then I do here. I don't want bruises, I don't want to feel pain (or even see it), but I do want that relationship.
May I use my blessings, freedom, and protection that I have here to advance His Kingdom ... on earth, as it is in Heaven.
His
~Matthew ><>
"But American Christians live in the most prosperous nation in world history and the one in which it costs the least to be a Christian. This environment can be deadly to faith. It allows false faith to masquerade as real very easily."
Does it make you feel a bit uneasy? I know it got me thinking. I wonder how I would stand in those situations? I hope to believe that I would let His strength support me (it's our choice to use that strength after all) but there is very little of me that would even consider wanting to be tested like that. I've learned that it's the fires that refine us, but defining a "good week" as being one that didn't include a beating because I profess His name is not one furnace I readily want to jump into.
However, reading last night (The Lazarus Life) I came across this passage and it somehow seems to fit my train of thought:
"[that you] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." (Ephesians 3:18-19 ESV)There are a couple ways of looking at that passage, but for me, God's love for us is beyond our comprehension; it "surpasses our knowledge" of what we know. It is so beyond understanding that we can only accept It, or reject It.
However I wonder if my brothers and sisters who go to sleep at night with bruises on their bodies understand more of that love then I do here. I don't want bruises, I don't want to feel pain (or even see it), but I do want that relationship.
May I use my blessings, freedom, and protection that I have here to advance His Kingdom ... on earth, as it is in Heaven.
His
~Matthew ><>
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