Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 11:7-9
Change can be a good thing. On the other hand, Change can be a bad thing. I remember once in my former church we had a loose change ($) drive entitled "Change for Change." The proceeds were to help put in a new sidewalk that was more than desperately needed. This type of change was obviously good for the church as it improved the whole looks of the building. In life, all people, believers and non-believers alike are going through change of some sort. This change is obviously taking place on the physical side. Everyone gets older, feels the disastrous change of the economy, sees people live and die, experiences triumphs and failures. The list goes on. Then of course there is the spiritual side of change. Change for a believer is the increasing knowledge and practice of the presence of Christ in our lives, or, it can be a declining state of a drifting believer who is sadly away from God's best. This type of change is extremely sad both to God and to the believer, but there is a worse sort of change and that is the change occurring everyday in the unbeliever.
Typically believer's have viewed unbeliever's correctly as folks fixed in a state of condemnation and without any other hope but Christ. Again, quite correct. However even in their condemned state, an unbeliever changes. The problem with this change is that he or she as unbelievers change in the downward sense all the while they thinking they are rising higher and higher in life.
This is not intended to be a critical review of an unbeliever's life. If we as Christians do just that we are in danger of boasting upon ourselves. Rather here are just some observations to understanding your lost friends, your lost mom or dad, your lost co-worker or employer, or anyone you may know who is not trusting in Christ. The point below each statement emphasizes how we should pray for them and be ready to help them if and when they desire to know about Christ. CHANGES FOR THE WORSE IN A PERSON'S LIFE
The more successful the less interested. Success is a good thing. Success can give a man or woman great prestige and great self assurance. The kind of virtues success brings are not bad in themselves, but when they are pushed to an extreme in the believer's life or inflated in an unbeliever's life as this case is, the less and less dependence on Christ seems necessary. Give a person more of the worldly pleasures, more of the friends patronizing them, more buying power so that nearly nothing is out of their grasp, and their view of God is replaced. After all, why do we need God? "I provide all my needs, according to my riches and glories in my success." Dependence on God is something already foreign to mankind, but when he or she is called to bow and surrender all their self made lifestyles the salt is applied to the wound. They say to themselves that God is not important and that He must be a myth. When a person witnesses to a successful lost person the typical inward reaction inside that person is why should I be cumbered and be servient when I am the master? One of my favorite preachers, the late Dr. D. James Kennedy, once said, "their are only two religions in the world, the religion of Christ and the religion of "I." While I tell you Christianity is not a religion, what he is saying is that a man or woman will either be servient to the Master or try to be the Master because anything less would be distasteful. For the Christian, our greatest time of dependence on God should not necessarily be in the times of hurt and want, but in the times of plenty, for therein lies the greatest temptation to wander from the fold of God.
PRAYER POINT: Pray that the Holy Spirit would trouble the minds of the successful to see that it is God who gives success and strength and life to build success.
The more problems the deeper the addiction. How many times have pastors and counsellors seen people who thought the end of their problems could be had at the end of a bottle, a narcotic, an affair, a gamble, or any other vice. The spiritually blind go to bars, casinos, pornographic sites, etc to solve their problems because sadly its the best they can do and the best the world has to offer. How the heart of God breaks for people who think one more drink, one more night in the wrong bed, one more futile attempt to win it all will end in triumph. They know they are destroying themselves, but it seems easier to sink further into sin than to seek the Savior. Mankind will try it all because deep inside their is an aversion to Christ. The more burdens, the more torn apart life just piles on more need to escape reality. Jesus Christ doesn't offer an escape from reality, but a pardon from sin and an escape from the next reality of eternal condemnation. The deeper the addiction the deafer the ear towards God, but not to say it is hopeless for countless people will tell you it is never too late to turn to Christ for help.
PRAYER POINT: Pray that God will frustrate them in their addiction to show them that there is no hope in them. Pray that God will bring a hunger inside for true hope found in Him.
The more philosophy the greater the deception. Sometimes men and women aren't caught up in addictions or worldly success. Sometimes the problem lies solely in listening to the wrong helper. The world is full of well meaning counsellors. However, if these counsellors are not Christians adhering as well to Biblical truth, then they too are the blind leading the blind. Everything they counsel people to do are at best a bandaid to a gushing cut. Most philosophy of the worldly sort is bad because it bases its reasoning on humanism and what seems logical to man's mind. The whole problem is the logic of man. A flawed mind cannot be cured by flawed thoughts and ideas no more than more poison can cure a person who has been poisoned. So many people flock to counsellors who make them feel good about themselves, this is the temporary fix. God's Word does not make us feel good about ourselves, rather it makes us feel our need for His good on our sinful state. That's a whole lot better. Yet Satan knows that if he can distract us by seemingly reasonable well meaning philosophers, our attention won't be where it needs to be. A person may not read after the philosophies of the "greats" but may simply listen to a "wise" friend or some weird opinionated person on radio or TV. All in all its the same problem, substituting God for lesser things.
PRAYER POINT: Pray that the Lord will open the eyes and ears of a person's understanding, seeing that the ideas and philosophies of the world really have no answer and thus gives no assurance or hope. Pray that person will have the desire to search beyond the world and desire God reveal Himself to them.
The more self assured the greater future shock. How awful and terrible a time it will be when at the Great White Throne a man or woman will babble their last excuse in a futile attempt to justify themselves before the Holy God. I have always thought the most terrifying reality would be to think you are alright with God and go into death believing that you'll be in comfort from woes, only to wake up in hell's fire and damnation. I recall two self assured rulers in the Bible who thought they had it made, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Pharaoh of Egypt during the Israelite exodus (possibly Ramses II). God showed both these men in their greatest moment of self assurance, just how powerless they were. Nebuchadnezzar became as a beast, out of his mind and eating like an animal. Pharaoh watched as his army were drowned by an "unexplainable" wall of standing water at the Red Sea. God has a way of sobering up both saint and sinner alike. God has no delight in planting us in the mud, but sometimes the only way for us to recognize Him is for the person to be brought low. A humbling experience has showed me lots of things. Humbling experiences are the killer to pride and haughtiness (self assurety). God hates haughtiness. King Herod the Great died from being self assured. Sennacherib lost an entire army of thousands due to self assurance. People in the 1930s jumped out of windows because their surety fell with the stock market. The RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic due to self assurance of her construction. General Robert E. Lee lost the Civil War for the Confederacy as his self assurance darkened his judgement on the third day of Gettysburg. The list goes endlessly on. All this to say, man cannot live and be self assured apart from God. The consequences are grave, the eternity unimaginable. The deeper the surety of anything but God, the harder it is to reach a lost person. Yet there is always hope.
PRAYER POINT: Pray that God will lovingly bring that someone to the point of despair and frustration as all that which they trust in crumbles around them. The trophies of Christ are those that put away the ashes of self.
To conclude
This has not been a posting on how much better a believer is, but how much unfortunate one is who decides not to believe for something or someone else. As Christians, we need to pray for and get involved in a life that is enduring losing change. Let's just simply pray now,
Lord, thank you for enlightening my heart to Your Truth. What I have in You is not self deserved but graciously given. Lord we know of lost people around us. We do not lord over them, but pray for them and help us God to understand the great blindness they are under. May You be with us and bring opportunities to throw out the lifeline to someone needing it today. In Jesus Name. Amen.
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