We all have heard about God, gone to church at some point, heard somebody give us the plan of salvation, been baptized, served at church, gone to missions trips, prayed for someone, etc. We have all been there in some way or another. So had Job. But there was something he was unaware of. There were things that he had no clue about when it came to knowing God. To truly experiencing Him. Knowing him. Knowing himself. And this is the biggest #1 thing affecting the believers today I believe. We have not been exposed, brought into, shown, revealed the true need of our hearts.
We have been given a very easy, cheap gospel that makes us think and believe that once we come to Jesus everything is alright.
That is where most disappointments come from.
Where our doubts and anger come from.
Our pointing fingers and blaming God
Our indignation and frustrations
Our tantrums
Our hopelessness
Our fears
That’s where most our energy is spent, trying to live up to what we think should be, in our own strength, feeling ashamed when we fail, defeated, thinking why is it that I’m failing. I must try harder. Do more. Give more. Pray more. And then we fail again. Those things Jesus wants to free us from don’t go away. We pray. We beg. WE cry. We fast. We. We. WE.
But is is not like that. These things are designed to bring us guilt, shame and make us hide, cause we don’t want people to know how miserably we are failing. We don’t want them to know we get angry, we yell, curse, watch pornography, over eat, gossip, abuse others, bully others, drink, smoke, get high, etc.
So we put up a facade, a front. And we act like everything is ok. But we know it is not.
That is what James is trying to say. It is what he refers to when he calls us an adulterous generation.
We have been sold the gospel that says “come to Jesus and everything will be alright”.
Will it? How?
Jesus’ blood cleanses us, purifies us and frees us from the power of sin, and it buys us back, forgives us and nullifies the verdict against us. We are no longer enemies of God. Our sin are no longer counted against us. There’s no road block between us and God. We are free to come into his presence. He has made us righteous with the righteousness of his son Jesus. We have been adopted. No longer slaves. No longer alienated.
AMEN!!!
But we have a story that needs to be redeemed. Baggage we are carrying with us. Bad habits, a lifetime of wrong choices and struggles and pain and wounds and sins that need to be looked at and worked at to get rid of them!