January 27, 2012
Flip-Flop
Whether it’s in the family, at work or in the community it can be
maddening when people do a flip-flop and go 90 degrees in a different
direction. Certainly as we gather information or see things from a different
angle we have the right to change our mind. However we need go no farther than
the political landscape to see candidates jumping from one platform to another
with little or no thought to their previous commitment. Sadly the church is not
immune to this scenario. I’m thinking about the person who confesses Jesus as
his Lord and Savior, makes the good confession and then flip-flops. “It would have been better for them not to
have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn
their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.” (2 Peter
2:21 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I suspect the reasons people flip-flop on their confession and commitment to the Lord are far more varied than those for which politicians flip around on different platforms. But there is really an important question to answer before any reasons are considered. The seed never took root on the hard path. Amongst the rocks and in the weeds it did. But it withered in both places because in neither place was there a condition Jesus called, “...root in themselves...” So regardless of how many are the different, scary things chasing us away from the Lord or how many are the delightful things attracting us away, or even whether we were chased away rather than attracted away, common to all of these there is this strange thing of root in the self.
-----It is odd, don’t you think, that Jesus would mention root in the self as being important? I always thought we were supposed to be rooted in Him? Ah, yes! Another dangerous curve in the road requiring us to pay close attention to the sense in which the Bible expresses something. If we are going to be rooted in Him, it is to receive something from Him. (Careful with that “It’s not about you” thinking!) Most generally speaking, this is life eternal. A bit more specifically, it is some wisdom and strength and stuff for toughing it out in this mud wrestle. Well, I mean quite personally it is attitudes of kindness and gentleness and patience and peacefulness and all sorts of goodness like wiping the mud from your neighbors’ eyes and kissing them on the cheek just to watch them smile. These kind of things flow from the vine through our roots, obviously seeking a destination.
-----We are not nothing. Indeed, we are a lot. We are massive. We are these stirring, sometimes boiling caldrons of emotions, feelings, ideas, thoughts, inclinations, drives, ambitions, habits, memories, hauntings...and continue your own list. Inside we are so complex that it takes God’s Word itself to divide soul from spirit and discern the intentions of the heart. All this is soil. The seeds’ destination.
-----Now I don’t want anybody to think I’m making Jesus out to be just another psychologist. But you’ve got to admit, being the One who made us, This Guy knows psychology! In His little blurt, “...they have no root in themselves...” He has metaphorically stated the relationship between our momentary consciousness and the great sub-conscious world stirring below. The seed is received consciously (for the most part;) it would be comical to say otherwise. But the more the subconscious has been trained by the conscious to incline towards what is good and right and true, the more the subconscious has been plowed, disked, and harrowed into good soil. And the conscious ability to train and stir and prepare the soils of the sub-conscious are done through roots. So when the self comes home with this seed called the Gospel and says it shall grow, then it shall grow, because of roots. But of course, we speak of Holy Spirit fruit: self-control. Weed burning, that is, and rock picking.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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