The vital question in the life of any believer is one that requires an answer; whether or not they love the Lord. Only the individual can answer this question; no man can do it for another. Yet so much hinges on the truthfulness of the answer, for it is a matter of fact whether or not it is so and only Christ and the believer know the answer.
Jesus said; “if a man loves Me he will keep My word” (John 14:23) showing that there is an organic unity between love and obedience and we see that demonstrated most clearly in the life of Christ upon this earth. If we lived in a world where every wind blew towards heaven and every man was a friend of God it would be easy enough to love God. Unfortunately, we live in a world where love for God has to compete with the love of those things provided by the devil; the lusts of the flesh, the pleasures of this life, the deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this world. So it all boils down to the question; “What really matters after all”?
Today, conversion to Christ has become an end in itself, a destination, whereas it really is only the beginning of a journey. In modern evangelical preaching, all is made to depend upon the initial act of believing; in the eagerness to make converts and bring recruits into the Church membership, we allow them to believe, and encourage them to believe, that they can deal with their responsibility towards God by one act, that of believing in Him. In this reading of scripture, belief in Christ is the ticket to glory and the rest of life is a matter of living as you wish while waiting for the bus marked “Heaven” to come along.
This is a grotesque parody of the truth. Any reading of the Book of Acts shows that belief, to the early Church, was the first step on a spiritual journey that led to all sorts of difficulties and sufferings; it was an attitude of heart and mind that inspired the believer and enabled him to take up his cross and follow wherever Christ led.
These are the things that the Bible tells us are important signposts in the life of a true believer; to trust Christ completely; to love God and our fellow man; to carry our cross daily and hourly; to be ambassadors of Christ among men; to grow in grace and in the deeper knowledge of God. These we can only do as we abide in Him.
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