Things to disturb you and unsettle your minds.

 

Saturday, July 8, 2023


Psalms 20; 21

1 Samuel 25:2-23

Acts 15:22-35


Things to disturb you and unsettle your minds.


Christianity is not a difficult religion to understand. The basics are just that – basic. It is so simple we could sum up our faith in a single sentence, and indeed many have found such single sentences in scripture. I like 1 John 4:10, “In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” I am sure you have your own.


Falling into love with God means that we then spend a lot of time thinking and reading about Him. This makes sense: why wouldn’t we want to spend the rest of our existence gazing into the eyes of the One who searches us out in the way that Jesus of Nazareth did?


There will always be jealous people and devils who see the loving relationship we have with our God and try to break us apart. Let us spend a moment in mourning and prayer for those who have been snatched away from the Lord by cults and false religions. This is the context in which our apostle and prophet friends were sent back from Jerusalem to Antioch to strengthen and encourage the church there.


In our hunger to fill our understanding with the knowledge of the love of God, let’s remember the wise words of G. K. Chesterton: “the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” When we were first brought to Jesus, whether as a child in Sunday School or as someone older with a life-changing conversion experience, the love of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, is what brought us home, not some piece of novel teaching. It is as Peter told us earlier this week: “We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.”


Should new theological or cultural trends, or any amount of suffering and attack from the enemy come along and disturb and unsettle us, let us always return to the rock of our foundation: Christ on the cross followed by the empty tomb, because He loves us.

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