IN Not Just "for" Him

11/21/06

“He wants us to respond directly to Him and with Him moment by moment, from the heart. There is no Life at all in just ‘doing the right thing’ time and time again, without honest and intentional interaction with a Jesus who is alive. When our decisions and priorities are only out of form or habit or reflex or religious principle, not out of looking to and touching Jesus as a King and friend, our good deeds and even morals are only ‘dead works.’ When we eat from that ‘tree’ of right and wrong, without LIFE, it will kill us, little by little, on the inside. Name the ‘man of God’ from David to Moses to Elijah to Jeremiah or Nehemiah, ponder the details of what we know of their lives, and we will have to acknowledge they were often WAY ‘outside of the box’ of conformity to what ‘everyone knows is the way to do it’ and were even known as ‘troublers of Israel,’ all. Even THE Man, Himself, was rejected utterly during His day in the sun due to His ‘nonconformity’ in some respects. There certainly are no ‘points’ for being ‘different’ for the sake of being different, but those who KNOW GOD and relate to Him as a PERSON moment by moment will find themselves swimming against the tide and often ‘outside the camp’ when the Laodicean religious culture barks its orders. Life IN Jesus, not just FOR Him.” : )