Okay.  I’m going to do a little war hoopin here.  But you likely haven’t heard this for a while, so you might think I’m being kind of mean.  But on the other side of “takin it right” is all the peace and stability you can handle.

From the day of God’s blessing to Abraham until today, Israel has been in a state of war.  Whatever tiny moments of peace they found in that time, were short lived.  And the ensuing battles became worse and worse.  (I’m including the Holocaust in this.)

In the meantime God sent his only Son, and the battle did nothing more than get really personal.

Today’s church knows virtually nothing about this as a whole.  And this ignorance has given rise to a great influx of Tares. 

Well if you’re willing to listen, there’s a fix for this.  If not, may the will of the Living God be done in the advent of the end.

Look at what Jesus said here.  He came to take away the “National” concept (not that it was ever God’s intention).  But he distinctly replaced it with a personal burden. 

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10) 

I have found this to be blazingly true!  If you love the Lord you will be hated.  And this to the extent that I will push the envelope a little farther:  if you are not hated you might want to do a little pocket check to see if you love the Lord.

See how the war was intended to come home.  But he hasn’t left any one as an orphan.  Not only has he sent the Holy Spirit to help and to guide every individual,  but the law of Moses remains among us as strong as it ever was.  What was spoken in Moses’s day is not removed from anyone. 

Not that we should be legalistic in our approach to God, but the fire of his words ought to live in every one of his people as a great raging holy fire.

One small portion of that entire law is one of the greatest encouragements to man ever to be spoken.  It may ring out rather often from the pulpit.  But it is rarely taken home.  If it was obeyed, we would see an entirely different church.

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6)

Since the war has become a personal issue, by a straightforward challenge from the Living God’s Holy Son, each individual has become his own house. 

Binding God’s laws on your hands does not necessarily mean a bracelet, but that everything our hands find to do should have the marks of our God on it.  Obedience leaves a distinct holy mark.

And if we have the words of the Living God in us, our entire perception will be as if we wore a little case between our eyes which is filled with holy and good words.

As many as we can rally to understand these things, to that extent the church is transformed. 

And I will add this:  If you start to speak with every member of your church as if these things were alive and true, with all expectation that they agreed with you, the tares would not think it a gentle place to live any longer.  The Christian social club would have to disband.  And O the war would come home!

By His Grace