Stewardship

   When we step out in faith, the devil has a habit or a tactic of pushing back.  Many have experienced this and have adapted by crafting a spiritual walk that minimizes opposition or resistance.  In other words, they have found a way to avoid pushback. Much like the experiment in which the students control the physical position of the teacher in the room by nodding and smiling and attending only at prescribed times.  The teacher is not even aware that he or she is being controlled by the students in theses experiments. The teacher in these cases is actuallty being taught by the students instead of the other way around.  We are liable to hear warnings like these: "don’t go overboard", "don’t be a fanatic", "don’t be so on fire it’s dangerous. You're playing with fire!" (But a fanatic is often someone who, by definition, only loves Jesus more than the critic.) "Don't be aflame for Jesus, just smolder a little, it’s safer."  But remember what was said about Aslan the lion in “Narnia Tales”, he’s good but he’s not safe. The Lion of Judah then is not necessarily safe, but He is good.  That lion in Judah or Narnia represents Jesus. "Dont’ love him too much,"  the critics say, "love him just enough."  Glow as a coal maybe, but don’t burst into flame. Don’t let anyone breath on you in such a way that you are fanned into a flame for Jesus. And don’t breathe on anyone else in that way," say the voices of caution, "love him just enough."  Enough for what? Enough to be merely lukewarm is the honest reality. Enough to barely function in His family. That’s the formula for lukewarmness. Be cautious, be calculating, be caustic and cleverly careful. All this comes into play when the first love has died, when the sweetness of being in love has turned sour. One doesn’t arrive there all at once, but little by little, ever so slowly and imperceptibly.  Just as the chicken grew so comfortable in the barnyard being fed and doing nothing all day but what he felt like, that when it came time to fly again like he had before with his friend the eagle, he couldn’t get off the ground. He was reduced to flapping and fluttering and unable to fly to the acustomed heights with his friend.  Seen another way, this is King Solomons seduction. He represents the church in the west, gradually seduced from its first love of the Lord by so many foreign wives and their idols, and no prophetic voice to intervene. Whereas David represents the persecuted church in that he was jealously and zealously persecuted by king Saul, and when he became King himself he was shown the dark depth of his sin by a bold prophet’s voice, that of Nathan. who exposed David’s murderous adultery with Bathsheba.
  Oh, to be part of a church that can still repent, to be part of a repenting church, to be a force in that church toward that end, a force for repentance and revival! David repented. His grievous sin was not the bottom line. God help us that it not be ours either here in the USA.