The Empty Shell Of What Was

 

 

Do you have access to the news?

Are you aware America is facing some troubles?

When those responsible see problems coming, they sound the alarm to warn people. If we hear the alarm but ignore it, the consequences are ours. If we take action when the alarm sounds, the consequences are ours. Either way, we face our consequences. 

If we don’t choose hard work, quick charity and parsimonious living…and if we refuse to recognize and perform our civic duty…and if we ignore the consequence of licentious living, then the current of our culture will sweep us from the confounding morass of our political incompetence into a sea of profligate living and social upheaval.

If we don't choose the Way of Christ, we'll become a shell of our former selves.

Wake up.

The alarm is ringing across America.

Whatever we do, we’ll all face the consequences of our choosing.

Ezekiel 33:3-6  -  If the watchman sees war coming and blows the trumpet, warning the people, then if anyone hears the sound of the trumpet and ignores it and war comes and takes him off, it's his own fault. He heard the alarm, he ignored it—it's his own fault. If he had listened, he would have saved his life.  But if the watchman sees war coming and doesn't blow the trumpet, warning the people, and war comes and takes anyone off, I'll hold the watchman responsible for the bloodshed of any unwarned sinner.

Comments

[Tim]

A Horseshoe Crab. I had the shell of one when I was a kid. It looked so cool, but was so incredibly fragile. Kind of like me sometimes. Thinking I may look cool, but in reality I end up just a fragile representation of myself.

[Mark McClean]

I would respectfully add that alarm bells have been sounding for decades.

"Let the good times roll" is now a fully entrenched mentality in the American culture. "Good times" is sold as an "entitlement", a birthright protected by the American Constitution.

It is not. Only the pursuit of "good times" is.

What's worse is "good times" is now imperative to our economic survival. America has subtly divested itself from a culture that "produces" to a culture that "consumes". Production continues to be outsourced in favor of "lower prices" that Americans might continue to consume more feverishly marketed "stuff".

America is by far the fattest hog at the economic trough of cultural materialism. Our once powerful muscles that produced the majority of armament used by the Allies to save the world from Fascism in the 1940's are flabby shells of their former self.

The inevitable cry of, "How did we get here?" will come. When it does I will remember what you have preached to us individually from the pulpit for years.

"If we point our feet in a one direction we can't hope to end up 180 degrees in the opposite direction."

The same dynamic of collective power that is true for the body of Christ is true for the society the body of Christ finds itself attempting to connect with. Consequences accrue to individual actions and collectively form a societal current greater the sum of its parts.

I think it was a few years ago you said you felt our church was going to be "sifted". At the time I thought, "Holy crap, here we go." But it is in the sifting that Followers of Christ become Disciples of Christ.

I want my own life to be a life that urgently yearns for, and consistently maintains, the disposition to "overcome". To be "willing" see the storm clearly approaching, yet confront our fear and walk deliberately into the face of that storm, for the sake of those who do not or will not, is the way of Christ.

I am currently reading the book of Job in conjunction with the book "Baffled to Fight Better" by Oswald Chambers. It is enlightening to say the least.

I'm not sure how many of us would “ask” for spiritual sifting. Job certainly didn’t. But I believe spiritual sifting produces a bountiful harvest of spiritual fruit we may consume with a clear conscious and to the glory of our God.