Acedia

So,  I am reading in this book ……. A book that is taking me over two months to read.  (Only because I am reading two to three pages a night.)  “Are you a fan or follower” very good book.  Sunday night I am reading and come across a statement that a man prayed one time.  It said, “God, I thank you that tonight I haven’t seen anything I want more than you.”  Can I say that I am not there today ….. Have not been there in a while.  That is okay, because I am getting back to that point.  The word says if you will draw near to Him He will draw near to you.  That is a promise.  Do you believe that?

I find it very “God” timing that what I read Sunday night has everything to do with what I wrote Sunday morning.  What a jolt!  We have all heard of the seven deadly sins.  This list was comprised by the early church leaders.  There is not an actual list in the bible.  One of the sins that I want to touch on is sloth.  We all think of sloth as being lazy, but I found something very interesting, something I did not know.  The term sloth was taken from the Greek word Acedia  “ἀκηδία” which means “describes a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world. It can lead to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life. Its spiritual overtones make it related to but distinct from depression”

A better way to describe it would be spiritual apathy.  This is where you get to the point where you know God loves you and that he sent His son to die on the cross for you but yet you just shrug your shoulders.

The Passion has gone 

Jeremiah 2:2 “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem:

“This is what the Lord says:

“‘I remember the devotion of your youth,
how as a bride you loved me
and followed me through the wilderness,
through a land not sown.

Then It came an absolute word from the Lord to me.  It said “Your Honeymoon with the Lord should never be over”  It cut me like a knife.

So what do you do?  What do I do?  Revelation 2:4-5 ⁴ “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!^{[a] 5} Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches.

Enough said!

Kevin

Matthew 7:20   Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.

My heart has not been in a great place for some time.  I have been very busy (Buried Under Satan’s Yoke) It has been all I can do to spend time in the word because I have too,   not because I want to.  So what happens is my attitude changes and my fruit becomes sour and my dog returns back to her old behavior and is afraid again.  Every day this week when I would come home she would be on her bed terrified.  I wouldn’t say a word to her.  I would then get her to go outside, while outside I would check her bed and there would be a big a pee stain just like the old days.  I really hate admitting this but I have a problem and I don’t like it.   My way is not working,  I didn’t think I was doing it my way, but every time I get like this it is because I am jealous, angry, self-centered to name a few which means I am doing it my way.  I will leave you with a question for yourself and Oswald Chambers’s devo that also rattled my cage this morning. 

How is your fruit tasting today?

Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou have paid the uttermost farthing. Matthew 5:26.

“There is no heaven with a little of hell in it.” God is determined to make you pure and holy and right; he will not allow you to escape for one moment from the scrutiny of the Holy Spirit. He urged you to come to judgment right away when He convicted you, but you did not; the inevitable process began to work and now you are in prison, and you will only get out when you have paid the uttermost farthing. ‘Is this a God of mercy, and of love?’ you say. Seen from God’s side, it is a glorious ministry of love. God is going to bring you out pure and spotless and undefiled; but He wants you to recognize the disposition you were showing—the disposition of your right to yourself. The moment you are willing that God should alter your disposition, His re-creating forces will begin to work. The moment you realize God’s purpose, which is to get you rightly related to Himself and then to your fellow men, He will tax the last limit of the universe to help you take the right road. Decide it now—‘Yes, Lord, I will write that letter to-night’; ‘I will be reconciled to that man now.’

These messages of Jesus Christ are for the will and the conscience, not for the head. If you dispute the Sermon on the Mount with your head, you will blunt the appeal to your heart.

‘I wonder why I don’t go on with God!’ Are you paying your debts from God’s standpoint? Do now what you will have to do some day. Every moral call has an ‘ought’ behind it.

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