Extract from our Weekly Bulletin

September 04, 2016

Looking at the book of James, we find a warning: “Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient, Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” James 3:7-8

Notice that James tells us to be patient.

The Greek word really means resist and don’t loose your heart. So therefore James says: “Establish your hearts.” In other words, “Place your hearts in divine order, and maintain that state.” Otherwise we find ourselves under the judgment of his glory. The apostle Paul like the apostle Peter instructs us on how to establish our hearts.

“As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.” Colossians 2:6,7.

When the submission to the lordship of Christ stabilizes us, then we are capable of maintaining what has been taught to us in the Scriptures, by the Spirit. Peter reaffirms this by saying “For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth.” 1Peter 1:12

Peter says, “I will not be negligent to remind you always.” He knew the importance of being established in the present truth. He knew by personal experience just how easy it was to slip from the truth. Being the disciple that received the revelation of who Jesus was, a few months after he refused to acknowledge he knew the Master he refused to acknowledge he knew the Messiah; he knew what it meant to drift from the path of the truth. It’s not enough to seek the knowledge of God. To continue in him, we must live in him.

Too often we live separated from what God did in the past and we miss out on experiencing him in the present. We cite the Scriptures and deliver a good sermon, but we still lack the hunger for his ways.

We need to return to the teachable nature of the first love.

When we found ourselves with him for the first time, we would read our Bibles and listened to sermons with great expectations, anxious that our Lord, the object of our love, would be revealed in a greater dimension. But very quickly we began to slide into this type of attitude: “Let’s see if this minister has anything of value?” The hidden motive of our attitude here is to avoid the truth of the preaching, justifying our apathy with “I know this” or “I’ve heard all this before.”

Another symptom of this attitude is to listen or read and only extracting what we want, instead of experiencing the ways of God and searching for a more profound revelation in His heart. We are warned: “Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away.” Hebrews 2:1.

Many are drifting away in our own churches because they aren’t anchored in the knowledge of God. They have lost all desire of searching the knowledge of God. The apostles and prophets foresaw this drift and diligently exhorted us to remain firm so we could have joy until the end. Its scary to consider what would happen when the hearts aren’t in order. Many will loose the blessing of the glory while many will fall under judgment.

Extracted from the book “The Fear of God”
Written by John Bevere pp: 128-130

God Bless You
Ps. Marisa Varjabedian