Tell me… how’s that working for you? Comfortable? Stable? If you have or are trying this, you quickly discover that this is incredibly difficult as you constantly are focusing on maintaining your balance. Is this how you want to live? Is this what defines who and what you are and do? More important, is this the behavior that characterizes the church at Sardis in Revelation 3:1-6, MSG and defines the future?
“Write this to Sardis, to the Angel of the church. The One holding the Seven Spirits of God in one hand, a firm grip on the Seven Stars with the other, speaks: I see right through your work. You have a reputation for vigor and zest, but you’re dead, stone-dead. “Up on your feet! Take a deep breath! Maybe there’s life in you yet. But I wouldn’t know it by looking at your busywork; nothing of God’s work has been completed. Your condition is desperate. Think of the gift you once had in your hands, the Message you heard with your ears—grasp it again and turn back to God. If you pull the covers back over your head and sleep on, oblivious to God, I’ll return when you least expect it, break into your life like a thief in the night. You still have a few followers of Jesus in Sardis who haven’t ruined themselves wallowing in the muck of the world’s ways. They’ll walk with me on parade! They’ve proved their worth! Conquerors will march in the victory parade, their names indelible in the Book of Life. I’ll lead them up and present them by name to my Father and his Angels. Are your ears awake? Listen. Listen to the Wind Words, the Spirit blowing through the churches.”
Rather scathing… isn’t it? And let’s be honest. If we are seemingly to be standing on one foot and then the other, it probably is because we are trying to live with the world’s standard (carnal) and hoping that God’s (spiritual) isn’t in conflict. We never can succeed to make God’s standards compatible with the world’s – never will work.
“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world.”
(1 John 2:15-16)“They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” (Titus 1:16 )
James 4 is also a warning about trying to live in both ‘camps’. Romans 8:7 tells us:
“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.” (ESV)
All of these scriptures reinforce the reason for renewing our minds. We should never be standing on shifting sand (Matthew 7:24-27) and when we equivocate what we believe and Who we believe then that is a good image of what standing on one foot and then the other. Can you imagine the spectacle you present when you do? Besides… scripture tells us that our yes should be ‘yes’ and our ‘no’, no. (Matthew 5:37)
