Committing to Conform

More and more I find myself wondering about the church at large. We conform ourselves to the world and not to the Bible. Why does this happen?

When one sees folks who consider themselves Christians gossiping, indulging in sexual sin, speaking negatively, living unholy lives, being judgmental of other Christians, trusting in their own righteousness... it just worries a person.

Many Christians are very easygoing toward their sins. That's understandable; we're told that God is loving and accepts us. We are told to seek righteousness...yet to beware of trusting in that righteousness because our righteousness is as filthy rags. We are told to not judge and yet to judge enough so we don't get contaminated by the world or cast our pearls before swine. We are told to live in the world but not let the world live in us. But what has happened?

We don't read our Bibles enough. Or we read just what the minister tells us to read that weak. If we read our Bibles we don't force ourselves to conform to the Bible but we try to make the Bible conform to us.

I don't think we realize that the One whom we talk to is holy, holy, holy. Hey, when God gave Isaiah the vision of the cherubim around the throne, the angels weren't saying "Kind, kind, kind!" They weren't saying "love, love, love." They were saying "Holy, holy, holy!" This is what God wanted his people to know...that He is holy. The one we serve accepts us in Christ but He is holy, holy, holy.

So then, let us read the Bible and when it comes to salvation we must strive for the fullness of Christ's salvation in our lives. Full physical healing, full emotional healing, full attitudinal healing. Let us not only accept what the world tells us to accept. Let us reach for the high calling. Let us not live the way the world does and bring the Bible down to what we "want" to do but to what God has told us in His word that He wants to do. No lying, no sexual immorality, no judgmentality, no gossip (especially under the guise of so-called intercession), no accepting of human prognoses of illnesses, no backsliding. It may be we may attain.
-C