As I read about the children of Israel and their continued acts of disobedience, lack of respect for God, idolatry, wickedness, stubbornness and blatant sin, it causes me to be shocked and almost horrified at their actions.
But then, the LORD taps me on the shoulder and whispers to my heart, "How are you any different?"
Indeed....how am I different? How are any of us different? We may not have taken such extreme actions and our sin may not have been so continual and blatant, but we are still just as guilty as the Israelites.
Do we neglect His Word? Do we study the bible with indifference? Do we neglect His teaching? Do we refuse to hear or even to listen? Don't we act just like they did? We leave behind the commandments of the LORD and erect false gods for ourselves. We do evil. We provoke our God to anger.
Just like Israel, we've lost our land and disobeyed its law. We've angered the LORD and it seems we have not learned our lesson. We have compromised ourselves to the world.
What does compromise do? It continues to grow out of control and fester. Then evil begins to triumph over a weakened people.
"A little leaven, leavens the whole lump of dough." (1Corinthians 5:6)
A little sin corrupts the body just the same as a lot of sin. Any sin in our lives is totally unacceptable. We have allowed the sin of the world to infiltrate our churches, our fellowship, our lives and our minds. It quietly grows and pollutes all areas of our life until it eventually takes over.
We have turned our churches into social clubs instead of a place to worship. We invent programs to draw the world in instead of just teaching the Word and pushing the world out! We have compromised our belief system.
We need to be about engaging in true praise and worship. We've turned our focus to entertainment instead of pure, unadulterated worship of the One True and Living God. Just like the children of Israel we have disregarded the God of redemption and conformed ourselves to be a godless nation.
We practice wickedness in secret. We practice idolatry daily in the name of materialism and entertainment. We repeatedly neglect God's warnings. We have forsaken our LORD and Savior.
It's time.... It's time for us to turn our eyes back to God. It's time for us to seek His face. Seek to follow His ways. Seek to be obedient. It's time to confess, repent and begin a new walk, looking like Christ.
When You said, "Seek My face," my heart said to You,
"Your face, LORD, I will seek. (Psalm 27:8)
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