Are we being judged or are we merely reaping what we have sowed?
These are just some thoughts and ramblings going through my mind on what is happening in the world these days. They aren’t fully developed yet, but maybe they’ll give you something to think about.
This morning when I was listening to a message, the speaker went to Revelations 2:5 speaking about their lampstand being removed. That sparked me thinking. Much of these ideas have been growing in me for a time. At some point I’ll have my thoughts together enough to present them logically and precisely to prove my point.
These are days of change and days of humility, times when I am taking a look at the things I have been taught and come to believe and measuring them up to scripture. Actually I’ve been dong this since 1996.
Revelation 2:5 (AMP) – Remember then from what heights you have fallen. Repent (change the inner man to meet God’s will) and do the works you did previously [when first you knew the Lord], or else I will visit you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you change your mind and repent.
A lampstand gives light. To remove their lampstand wasn’t speaking of removing them from being a church (as I always kind of thought) but to remove the light of revelation from them. If you don’t walk in the light and knowledge you have, it will be taken from you.
This happened to the entire church world after the 3rd or 4th centuries. We became in the most part a religion without power and without the true knowledge of God.
Though in every age and time, God has had those who knew Him and some of His ways, true knowledge began to return after the Bible came into print and normal people could read it. The Lord has been working with us throughout the years to bring us back to truth. More revelation has been given to every generation. We think we know it all in these days, but I’m sure we are still extremely ignorant – and reaping the results off it.
Wherever we walk outside of truth, we reap results. God’s love is a separate issue from us reaping what we sow. God loves us, but He lets us walk in our own ways and reap the results. It isn’t direct judgment, but it is the judgment of our own ways coming upon us.
Does God want evil things to happen? Of course not! That is why He sent Jesus to save us. He wants us to learn His ways and walk in them so that we can live in the blessing not the curse.
There is some protection in just knowing God as a basic Christian. But still, if you don’t know that healing is provided and fight to walk in it, you will probably get sick like the rest of the world – and He will let you – even though part of the price of the blood of Christ that was spilled was your healing and health.
God works with mankind from where we are as best as He can. But He can’t work against Himself. So if we are against Him or live contrary to His ways, we will reap the results of this, whether we are Christians or not.
Are we forgiven? Yes, completely. Is God mad at us? Not at all. He is not holding sin against the world. He has fully dealt with sin. He has made provision for us to be in Christ. Does God love the world? Yes, so much that He gave His own son.
But we only prosper to the degree that our souls prosper. We only walk in the blessings of God to the degree that our lives are lined up with His principles.
Though God’s love is unchangeable, and He is not holding sin against the world, if we live contrary to His ways, we will reap evil from our own ways.
Loving someone means acceptance of THEM but doesn’t necessary include acceptance of everything about them. Anything not of God, anything not according to His Word in our lives, is an enemy of God, and it has to go for us to be fully blessed.
There is a difference between God loving you and accepting all the things in your life. God loves you completely, but there are things in your life, and in the life of our society that He hates. He hates evil. He hates sin. Why? Because sin and evil hurt and kill us. Because sin is of the devil sent to steal, kill and destroy us. Sin always brings death. Jesus loves you so much He wants to remove the things in your life as well as your thinking that are hurting and destroying you.
God is not mocked, whatever a man sows he will reap. This law is in effect even towards Christians. See Galatians 6:8-9. That is why we need to get to know His Word and apply it.
Hosea 4:5-6 – And you shall stumble in the daytime, and the prophet also shall stumble with you in the night; and I will destroy your mother [the priestly nation]. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you that you shall be no priest to Me; seeing you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
People are walking in darkness and don’t even know it. We as a society are reaping the results of our own beliefs and actions contrary to the ways God set things up. Are all of the bad things happening the judgment of God? Maybe not directly but probably indirectly.
Most of the judgment that comes to us is not a direct judgment from God but a built-in reaping of sin.
People are destroyed for lack of knowledge. When they reject knowledge and forget the law of God, then the door is opened for every kind of evil.
People blame all of the evil happening on all kinds of things not realizing that the further we get from God and His principles, the worse things will get. Even the physical earth reacts to sin. See Isaiah 24:3-6. That is why our prayer can heal our land. Natural disasters become much more prevalent when the people of the land have forgotten or rejected the knowledge of God and walk in their own ways and thoughts.
One of the worst things is that even the church world has gotten away from the truths of God’s word. Much of the light in us is darkness.
Matthew 6:22-23 – The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!
If your “light” is really darkness, you will be walking in the darkness and know not at what you stumble. You are reaping the results of your own actions and don’t even know it. In fact, because of the extreme Calvinistic teaching that became part of the church’s belief systems, people blame God and some mysterious purpose He has rather than looking to themselves when things go wrong.
How do we get away from the evil? Walk in the light. It would pay EVERYONE who calls themselves a Christian to begin to read the Word of God with an open heart to receive what is there and reject anything in their previous teachings that doesn’t measure up.
The Word repent means to change and go a different way. God isn’t looking for us to cry over our personal sins as much as He is looking for us to change our direction. He desires us to seek truth, to seek true knowledge, to walk in His ways and think His thoughts. Only then can we prosper. Read Isaiah 55:6-13 as one thought.
Isaiah 44:18-20 – They do not know, nor do they understand, for He has smeared over their eyes so that they cannot see and their hearts so that they cannot comprehend. No one recalls, nor is there knowledge or understanding to say, “I have burned half of it in the fire and also have baked bread over its coals. I roast meat and eat it. Then I make the rest of it into an abomination, I fall down before a block of wood!” He feeds on ashes; a deceived heart has turned him aside. And he cannot deliver himself, nor say, “Is there not a lie in my right hand?
When people turn from God’s truth and God’s true wisdom, they become blinded, and when their day of calamity comes, He won’t be able to help them. Read Proverbs 1:20-33.
Romans 1:28-32 – And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Galatians 6:7-8 (AMP) – Do not be deceived and deluded and misled; God will not allow Himself to be sneered at (scorned, disdained, or mocked by mere pretensions or professions, or by His precepts being set aside.) [He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude God.] For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap.
People living the fruit of their own ways are living lives like Jesus described those who came to Him, bewildered, harassed, distressed, dejected and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
What are His feelings about the state of mankind? Certainly not condemnation – but at the same time, certainly not acceptance of their lifestyles. He is moved with compassion. Jesus went about teaching, proclaiming truth and curing all kinds of disease and every weakness and infirmity (things that got into people’s lives as they lived contrary to God’s Creation and how He set things up to be..
What is the answer today for mankind?
Pray for laborers to TEACH (a teacher teaches them not only what to do but how to do it) people (not necessarily only pray for them), proclaim truth to them (what they don’t know they can’t do) and to heal ALL people.
And only to the degree that they know and apply the truth can people walk in freedom. (John 8:31-32)