Good Morning Friends,
“I know your deeds; you have a reputation for
being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to
die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. Remember,
therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do
not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I
will come to you.” (Revelation 3:1-3)
The letter of Jesus to the church at Sardis
was blunt and straightforward and didn’t have much in it that was positive. Don’t
you think Jesus could have softened the message a little bit to make it more palatable
to the church? Jesus doesn’t sound very merciful or full of compassion in this letter.
Or did He?
Let me ask you this – if someone is in grave
danger and you soften or sugar-coat the warning, who does that hurt? It hurts
the one who is moving headlong toward the danger that is ahead. What they need –
the compassionate thing that you can give them – is a blunt and straightforward
warning in the hope that they will listen and change the course on which they
are headed. And that is exactly what Jesus did for the church at Sardis. Those
Christians were in grave danger. They were about to be visited with judgment
that would devastate them. They desperately needed to change course. Jesus WAS
merciful in His message because He gave them what they really needed – even if
it wasn’t easy for them to hear.
Certainly God doesn’t call us to be as blunt
as this letter is with everyone you see with some kind of problem. Not every
warning that Jesus gave was as direct and harsh as this one. But there are times
when just this kind bluntness is needed – when someone is heading toward a
cliff and they don’t realize it.
The question is – are we sensitive enough to
God to know when we need to speak to someone we care about with the kind of
direct confrontation that Jesus used here? Are we bold enough to say what
people really need hear – or do we care more about what people will think about
us than we do about the danger that lies ahead for them?
I’m glad there have been a few times in my
life when someone confronted me with such directness. What they did was a grace
from God.
His, by Grace,
Steve
No comments:
Post a Comment