Written by His Grace,
Kevin K. O’Connor
Feb. 4th 2003
Main Thought: To express
the Father’s intense hatred for a form of relationship with Him without a Love
relationship with His Son.
The form of Godliness
Having a form of godliness, but denying the power
thereof: from such turn away. (Whole Chapter: In
context: )
Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that
thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: (Whole
Chapter: In
context: )
Oh how we
like to take our rest within our works! Especially when they’re works of
righteousness. It’s seems that the only problem with revelation is that we tend
to put our rest in the revelation and not in the revelator. God’s ways are not
our ways and yet, we think that we can be godly if we act out what we read in
His Word without knowing His Son.
The Jews
that were given the Precious 10 Commandments thought this and ended up making
the law their god and totally missed the message from the Father’s heart which
was that we are not holy and cannot be holy apart from knowing Christ our
redeemer;
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
(Whole Chapter: In
context:
The revelation of the law was to show us
that we needed a Savior, we were hopeless within our own efforts to be holy.
And yet the Jews and many people today have totally missed the message sent
from the Father’s heart and so many of our eyes focus on our works and not
Christ, oh how this hurts and angers the Father’s heart.
Is it any
wonder than how God could say the following;
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold
nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. (Whole
Chapter: In
context: )
This is the same church
mentioned in verse Rev 3:17 above where they thought that they were rich and
increased with goods and in need of nothing. The form of Godliness totally
numbs us to the depravity of our hearts. The appearance of Godliness makes us
feel holy, because we look like God’s kids. There are so many religions in this
world filled with much vigor and energy in their beliefs but that is not what
glorifies God. It seems that the more of ourselves we can see in what we’re
doing, the more pleasure we obtain from doing it. And yet, it’s really just the
opposite type of attitude that truly touches the heart of God like where the
beloved John the Baptist said;
He must become greater; I must become less. (Whole Chapter: In
context: )
But, it
seems that putting on the form of Godliness instead of the Heart of His Son is
so much more comfortable and does so much for our proud nature. This way we
don’t find ourselves having to lay our pride down. But no, we’d rather do
things and take pride in our works. Even prayer, that which is supposed to draw
hearts near to His, we will twist it around and try to make it a performance of
our righteousness (which by the way is as filthy rags to God; Isaiah 64:6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and
all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we
all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.
(Whole Chapter: Isaiah 64 In context: Isaiah 64:5-7)instead of that for which it was
intended, to draw our hearts near to His;
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and
thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee
openly. (Whole Chapter: In
context: )
And another good verse
that depicts God’s feeling on prayer is; Luke18:9-14 9 And he spake this parable unto
certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised
others: 10 Two men went up into the
temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with
himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners,
unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. 12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of
all that I possess.13 And the publican,
standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote
upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.14 I tell you, this man went down to his house
justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth
himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself
shall be exalted.
Is it any
wonder that this type of lie angers the Father’s heart? This lie appears so
righteous and appeals to many others to join in because the pride of man is
made fat within this walk, the walk of the form without the Heart. It’s no
wonder that at the judgment there will be many that appear to be His and He
will say be gone from me, I’ve never known you. Oh, may
God help us from making our works for Him only a place that feeds our pride and
not our hearts. We need to realize that all things are already His, but, the
one thing He has allowed to be ours is our pride. Those who have learned how to
lay it down that they may know Him will live with Him for ever but those who
have learned to make their works for Him their God will not.
God is Free
within the boundaries of Holiness and Love and yet we love to quote words from
His Holy Precious Word to prove our proud points or latch our hearts around the
law and not Christ. We love those things that we can see and hear and take
pride in that we’re doing – who cares! God sure doesn’t! We look around at the
fervor of our work and our words and say “aren’t we Godly, we keep the Sabbath,
we don’t drink or cuss, we’ve been baptized, and the list goes on and on. No
wonder God said that He felt like vomiting these type of souls out of His
mouth. They only produce an outward appearance of Godliness and are totally
void of the love of Christ.
Because God
has put within each soul an awareness of our eternal existence, we know we need
to be Holy but then we come across these lies of relationship with Him and soon
find ourselves within ruts of works and not love. It’s kind of like fool’s gold.
All the outward appearance may be there, but it’s just not gold. That must be
why God says that He’d rather us be hot or cold rather than lukewarm. He
desires the world to either choose Him or not, but not to be taken in with the
falsehood of relationship with Him when it’s just a relationship of our works.
That is a total lie from hell itself. Being lukewarm though feels so
comfortable, it gives us just enough heat that we don’t feel cold and yet not
too much to actually kill the germs that exist. Living for our works does
exactly the same thing! It gives us an appearance of godliness to take the edge
off of our conviction to know Him, and yet it stops short of surrendering our
pride that we may know Him.
We hear His
Word and because we think “I can do this” go off and try to live as His child.
But we don’t realize that we need to learn how to listen to His voice even
after we think we know what His will is. The apostles who walked with Christ,
who performed miracles with Him and saw Him raise the dead and saw Christ
Himself raise from the dead were probably eager to go out and speak what they
had heard and experienced but Christ knew they needed something more. They
needed the infilling of the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? It means yielding
what we think we know to the Holy Spirit’s direction and guidance; Romans 8:13&14 13For if you live
according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to
death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who
are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. So, here they were all full of knowledge and
experience and ready to evangelize the world and what does Christ say? On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them
this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father
promised, which you have heard me speak about. (Whole Chapter: In
context: )
Wait! Oh how
we hate waiting because we’re not the one doing the driving and how we love
being in the driver’s seat concerning our life. There are many people today who
have listened all of their lives to the Word of God and walked in paths of good
works but have not yielded their hearts to the guidance and direction of God’s
Holy Spirit, the third Person in the Trinity. The Father says, surrender your
sins to Christ Who has borne them for you, The Son says, surrender your will to
the Holy Spirit that He may guide you, And the Spirit says, Love the Lord your
God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength unto the Glory of the
Father in Christ the Son! Let’s get hung on Loving Him and not the foul stench
of “our good works” which sickens Him.
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