Good weekend to you my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
This is a significant weekend in America. Saturday evening is something called “Halloween”. All across our country things of the dark kingdom will be dabbled with as silly games by many unsuspecting people, thinking they are simply having childish fun, but please be very careful my friends… there is great spiritual danger in ‘dabbling with darkness’.
I believe it’s safe to say the demonic world will be very active this weekend, especially taking advantage of people who play with Halloween movies or ‘haunted houses’ or frightening costumes.
Then, did you know within only hours, Sunday, November 1st, is regarded in many parts of the world as “All Saints Day”? A day historically set aside especially to honor those who have been martyred for their Christian faith down through the centuries!! Do you see the dramatic contrast spiritually between this Saturday & Sunday? And finally, sometime late Saturday night ‘Daylight Savings Time’ ends, thus we turn our clocks back one hour and adjust to sunset an hour earlier.
How appropriate that in our journey with the apostle Paul we have come this weekend to this statement which he wrote to the Christians in wild, decadent Corinth, in the mid first century: “As God’s co-workers we urge you NOT to receive God’s Grace in vain!” (2 Cor. 6:1) Oh my, we need to pause to consider what Paul meant as he challenges us to consider that a person might ‘receive God’s Grace in vain!’?
We know that Paul wrote four letters to the Corinthians, two of which have been lost over the centuries; and Paul visited Corinth several times, on one occasion even spending 18 months in that city, proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus. (Acts 18:11) Yet the stronghold of darkness was so intense for many Corinthians that while they turned to and trusted the Gospel of Jesus, they also struggled, finding themselves drawn back into the darkness by its powerful strongholds in their lives.
Have you ever seen a person who claims to be a Christian struggling greatly with former dark strongholds in their life? Have you battled with the pull of darkness which once had a stronghold in your life?
In a few days we’re going to come to Paul’s 10th chapter and then we’ll look more closely at this powerful statement which Paul wrote: “Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, our spiritual weapons have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 10:3-5) Do you understand this statement, and does it describe how YOU battle with the dark kingdom?
Paul continued in chapter 6, calling the Corinthians to look at their struggle from God’s perspective: “For He says: ‘In the time of My favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” (2 Cor. 6:2) Paul was quoting the ancient Jewish prophet Isaiah through whom God had made that promise to His people. (Is. 49:8) Now in Corinth, they had experienced God’s favor and salvation through the Gospel of Jesus, yet they were drifting spiritually and so Paul challenged them: “I tell you, NOW is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.”
Paul is calling them out, in Corinth, and you and me wherever we are today! Has God delivered on His promise by rescuing us from our sin bondage? Then why do we find ourselves adrift spiritually, even returning to those things of darkness which once had such strongholds in our lives?
When we do that, we’re treating God’s grace and even the crucifixion atonement death of Jesus as something meaningless. All who do that are declaring, with their drift, that Jesus’ died in vain and God’s offer of forgiveness and salvation is in vain, worthless! That’s what Paul was confronting. Do we need to hear Paul’s challenge afresh and anew today?
In the verses which follow in 2 Corinthians 6 Paul describes the painful challenges he personally faced, the heavy price he paid to bring the Gospel to Corinth. Yet some of those he loved, and he had taught God’s truth were turning away, dabbling in the darkness once again. So, Paul declared: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14)
Oh my, that is a lightning bolt to the heart, isn’t it? It’s true, there is no common ground between wickedness and holiness nor between light and darkness. Yet so often we find ourselves in the gray zone of seeking compromise, even moral or ethical compromise. Have you learned how very dangerous all this is my friends?
This weekend of Halloween and All Saints Day, will you join me in accepting the challenge to look very closely at every aspect of our lives to see where we might be drifting, or compromising, or even receiving God’s grace in vain?!
The ‘lessons learned’ notes will be very helpful for reflection, and an old country worship song will draw you to Jesus, and I’ll be here Monday ready to continue with you in this very important Scripture.
Today’s Scripture: 2 Corinthians 6:1-14.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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