Brothers and sisters,
Happy Monday! “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!” (Psalm 118:24, NIV). Remember that we have to choose joy. We can rejoice in the day the Lord has given us no matter how difficult the circumstances. Focus on His presence with you and His love for you. Focus on the truth that as a believer He is working in your life to conform you to the image of His Son, to make you in your character like Jesus.
Yesterday we learned to seek to avoid hypocrisy. We learned that hypocrisy was more than just having inconsistencies from time to time in our lives. Even though believers are redeemed, we are still weak human beings and we will fail to follow the Lord as we should from time to time. We often forget that we not only need Jesus to save us from our sin generally, but we need Him every day to save us from our sin and ourselves. We need a Savior every single day! We also need each other! We need to be transparent with each other when we are being inconsistent so we can help each other be more consistent in following Jesus. Therefore, hypocrisy, in its rawest form, is acting like we believe something but never truly practicing what we say we believe. Hypocrisy is acting like we don’t have inconsistencies. It is acting like we have it together and hiding our struggles from others. We are to avoid hypocrisy because Jesus told us everything hidden will ultimately be revealed. We avoid hypocrisy because we must care more about God’s opinion of us than people’s opinions of us. We avoid hypocrisy because it leads to self-righteousness which causes us to think we do not need Jesus to rescue us from sin. We don’t want to act like we are followers of Jesus. We want to truly know Jesus and follow Him!
Love being your pastor!
Bob