I was part of a ministry called Renewed Women, and one of my mantras was “Stagnancy is stinky.” Last week my friend and Pastor, where we attend, said, “stagnancy is poisonous.”
The writer of Hebrew denounced stagnancy in immature Christians “for though by this time you should be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need the milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the Word of Righteousness, he is an infant.”
In my reading this morning in Zephaniah, God declares the destruction of the stagnant, “… and I will punish the men who are stagnant in spirit, who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good or evil.’”
What’s the answer?
(Circle back 😉) Hebrews 6, “show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you will not be sluggish, (stagnant) but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
Mistakingly from many in the pulpits and evangelism, Christianity is about going to heaven. Unfortunately, that is not Biblical Christianity. Jesus preached the Kingdom come. He is a King. Even though he came as “The Lamb who takes away the sins of the World,” he was setting up a Kingdom. When we come to Jesus, we become subjects of that Kingdom. It’s not enough to have head knowledge and say yes so you can go to heaven. Believing in Jesus is to accept who he is and what he taught. His teachings were about dying to self, picking up a cross, not loving the system of this World, loving him with all of who we are, forgiveness from us to others, loving enemies, and so much that is contrary to our old nature.
In John 17 and 1 John 5, we can read the definition of “Eternal Life.” Most of us will be disabused that eternal life is not heaven. What? That’s correct. It is not heaven. It knows God and his Son. It is being in Jesus and having him, and if we don’t, we don’t have life. Simply accepting Jesus as a package collection with heaven leads so many to stagnancy and sadly not to a true gospel.
In Zephaniah, God was ready to destroy the stagnant. Are those in Matthew 7, whom Jesus says he doesn’t know the stagnant? Those who believed in Jesus for heaven went on their agenda, not genuinely submitting. They did some spiritual things, went to church, read their bibles here and there, prayed once in a while, and other things. They never encountered the true gospel, so they never grew. The Hebrews writer offers God’s mercy through an examination. As Paul challenged, take the exam to see if you are genuinely in the faith.
Stagnancy will find you wanton. And worse, not indeed a subject of the true King.
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