Failing Security or Wrong Security?

There is a tremendous urgency about personal and national security, in our modern world. In virtually every level of politics and business, in almost every household, whether people are preppers or "politically correct", liberals or conservatives, and no matter what religion, there is a common thread of concern about crime, peace, and safety, that needles the heart, mind, and soul of humanity (with few exceptions). In natural terms, those concerns are not surprising, as there is great unrest in this world. That unrest is stirred and milked by the media for every adrenaline-pumping, nanosecond's worth of gossip, advertising, and ratings. Yet, no peace nor safety has been achieved, despite all the hollering, screaming, law-passing, name-calling, prepping, or "political correctness". If we really want to know what is going on, the Bible shows repeated historical instances of these kinds of events and concerns, and points us toward God's evaluation of such situations, and, inevitably, to His solution. But, we seldom look to God's solutions, because it is easier, and human nature, to look away from ourselves and point our fingers in virtually every direction other than at ourselves. Hey, I don't want to have to admit when I'm wrong, either!

The realistic and honest evaluation of most of the problems we face is that, personally, and as a nation, we continue to prove, by our actions, that we only want what we want, and that we want what we think we can get away with. By our actions we tell God that we do NOT want Him to be our leader or our Lord. We, collectively, worship ourselves and push God away, even as God said, in Jeremiah 2, about the Jews' behaviors. God exposes sin and calls all people to repentance in a 'zillion' places throughout the Bible. Our real problems are NOT the fault of OTHER PEOPLE, not the Muslims, not 'blacks', nor 'whites', not the borders of our nation, not the attacks against us, nor all the illegal immigrants or drug cartels. BUT, our own waywardness of heart, mind, and spirit, our sin, is our real downfall. For the most part we cause our own torment because we choose unholy ways and unholy actions. Because of our spiritual infidelity, God likens us to a she-ass in heat snuffing up the wind in search of a ‘hot date’.

Our infidelities against God prove us to be whores for new things, and whores for old things. We are whores for self-esteem, and pride, and self-indulgence. We are whores for money, our families, education, jobs, clothes, cars, TV sets, hobbies, but we show very little, if any, real love or respect to God. We are whores for pleasing ourselves and others, instead of in love with pleasing God. We are whores for new ideas, toys, philosophies, religions, and "political correctness", but, too often, personally and collectively, we are VERY far from the Word and Spirit of God. Ask any Bible believing, Bible preaching pastor across this Nation to show you what I mean. I point you to them because next to the Bible itself (which I invite you to read for yourself) only those pastors and people like them have the guts to tell you the truth about this world and about what God says we need.

Our actions, desires, habits, and politics all prove our sinfulness. Our court system proves our sinfulness. Our prison system proves our sinfulness. Our leaders prove our sinfulness. Our citizens' lack of adherence to the Bible and our Constitution prove how sinful we really are. Our language, music, movies, and media expose, prove, and flaunt our sin. Our public nudity and open love of sexual misconduct prove the coldness of our hearts toward God, for we destroy the modesty that He gave each one of us. Our addiction to the mass media proves our love of sin. Our attire, speech, and public activities prove our sinfulness. Our greed, lust, worry, and road rage all expose us for what is really going on in our hearts, minds, and souls. Our simplest over-indulgent pleasures often prove how sinful we really are. There is only one way to overcome all this:, by turning to Jesus Christ, accepting Him, receiving Him, allowing Him to live in and through us. Genesis, Isaiah, John, & Romans make this VERY clear.

Our dusty Bibles prove our disdain for God and His Counsel. The weak and nearly empty house of God prove our love of self, in opposition to sincere love for God. Our lip service, saying that we love God or His Christ, while we continue to indulge our flesh, is nothing less than hypocrisy and sin. Our love for or tolerance of any sin proves our lack of love for God. For us to forgive those who repent is to be like God, but for us to ignore, encourage, accept, or promote sin is abominable to God. 

As a nation, we seem to have given up on God. We seem to have fallen completely in love with ourselves and with pleasing everyone around us, ...EXCEPT pleasing God. We are so damnably in love with being afraid of offending every other person of any strange or unholy "preference" that we don't care one iota about whether they or we offend God. It is Almighty God, the LORD, the Self-Existent One, the Eternal One, who called Israel a nation of whores and whoredoms for practicing the very same thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, just as we practice those things, today. He called them out for the those very behaviors that are nothing less than idolatry. Idolatry, biblically speaking, is putting anything or anyone in front of our need to be one-on-one with God all the time, moment by moment worship, if you will, i.e. how we spend our lives, the time that God gives to us.

Worship is focusing and addressing our time, effort, money, praises, thoughts, emotions, and allegiance toward something or someone in particular. Biblically speaking, the concept of worship derives from worth, to find value in something or someone. So you can see why God gets upset with humanity when we place more worth on worldly stuff than Him. We prove that discrepancy whenever we spend more time, emotion, energy, and money on worldly stuff than we focus on Him, His people, and His ways of doing things.

God has preserved the Jewish people, worldwide, and the nation of Israel. He has set them as an example of HIS loving promises and care, AND His warnings about our sinful tendencies, particularly our inclination to abandon Him and His ways. Our spiritual whoredom is hateful toward God. According to God's Word, there are very few souls worldwide who care much for God and His ways. Worldly evidence shows that most people are paddling their canoes toward Hell as fast as possible, away from God & His Word, away from His Christ, even though Jesus Christ is their only hope of salvation. Even among those who nominally call themselves Christian, there are few who live as if they believe much of the Word of God, few who put into practice the things that would demonstrate their professed belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. There are some who love Him, as He says, in Truth, yet even as Jesus said, "...strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

 

It is not religion nor religious practices that can save people from eternal destruction, but our own personal decision to exercise faith in the finished redemptive work of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, God with us, who came to set us free from our bondage to sin and self. Personally and collectively, we MUST stop looking for scapegoats, stop blaming everyone and everything around us for our difficulties. We MUST turn away from our OWN sin and return to God who made us, through His Christ, as the Bible says. We MUST repent, or else perish for our failure to do so. God already gave us His Word, the Bible, as the road map and plan for what to do. It is up to us to choose whether to continue down our present self-destructive path or to repent of our sin and choose God’s Christ and His Ways.