Risky Business

We have been looking at our love walk over the past couple months. The whole point of the series was for us to recognise our need of God. We need God in every area of life and we even need God to help us and teach us how to love Him and those around us.

We are living in uncertain times. We have known since more than 2000 years ago that Jesus could come back at any moment. There is a lot happening in our world that points to the fact that we may be living in the season when Jesus Christ will return. We do not know the day or the hour but we know that with each day we live, we are one day closer to Jesus’ return.  

This means that we need to be ready (I hope you went to listen to the series Ready Steady that I shared about last week). We need to live our lives in a way that is worthy of the Name of Jesus. We are called Christians. That means we need to be aiming towards Christlikeness. That means when others fall, we don’t exalt ourselves to the judge’s seat but instead we recognise that they need the very same grace that swooped us up when we were neck deep in sin.

That means we do all we know to do to get our lives right with God.  I am not talking about dead works, I am talking about faith works. Faith without works is dead, James 2:26. We don’t work for righteousness, it was freely given to us. But we work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). This means we act in obedience to God’s word and partner with God so we can bear fruit in our lives. Good fruit, like that described in Galatians 5:22-23. I read recently that we also need to have a healthy fear of offending God through disobedience and an awe and respect for His majesty and holiness. We need to have reverence towards God. We are not on the same level as God. Not even close, He is not our equal.

Now is the perfect time to decide that we do not want to live life any kind of way but we want to live our lives for Jesus. God has empowered us with this amazing ability to change course. To change our minds. To make decisions that not only impact our life here on Earth but our life in eternity. We can choose heaven or hell. That’s a lot of power that we have been given. God has entrusted us with that sacred choice because He knows that deep within us, He has given us the ability to know right from wrong.

That’s not just about salvation, that also applies to our daily walk with God. We get to set the pace for our relationship with God. We get to choose how far we want to go, how fast, how deep… It is all up to us. I think that if I am going to spend eternity with Jesus, it is probably a good idea I work on my relationship with Him now, so things are a little less awkward in heaven!

This also means we need to be real with God. My pastors say, “God is not interested in the catfish you”, be yourself. God loves the real you. We were talking about our love walk with God, part of any love relationship is vulnerability. You have to be willing to risk something. When it comes to love we are risking being hurt. We are risking being rejected. But with Jesus it is not a risk, it is a bargain. We get so much more than we can ever hope to get out of our relationship with Him. He is real. He is genuine, He is sincere in His love for you.

I once read that the degree to which you are willing to be hurt is the degree to which you love. We put up walls to protect ourselves, but God wants us to let those walls fall down. He is not going to come in like a wrecking ball. He is going to wait for you to invite Him into those places you thought He didn’t want to see. After all, we can’t change what we don’t confront (that’s wisdom from my pastor Esther right there). If we really want to change the trajectory of our lives, we need to be willing to invite God into those hidden and dark places. When God is done with that area of your life, you will see yourself bearing fruit from places you thought were barren.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano