You have plenty of goods stored up for many years; relax, eat, drink, celebrate! But God said to him, You fool…
The Battle
We all are battling with the filth and downright idol worship portrayed on the television we are PAYING for to get the scarcely provided family viewing we wanted. Our family has tried SkyAngel © (twice), but each time it was ~30% begging, 30% total heresy and the rest family viewing that was at least 10 years old, or older. We were NOT impressed. We have tried accumulating VCR tapes, and then VCR tape players went obsolete (and are now quite expensive). While collecting DVDs seemed a good choice, they also soon will become useless, with online storage being the next big move. And you have to PAY for the service while also, once again, agreeing to the flooding of your family with even MORE vile filth and idolatry. I just can’t bring myself to go there any more. In this present age of gadgets and internet it has become a race to see how much money these entertainment providers can draw out of you every month (I just got an email from my cable company offering “HD auto tune” to come back to the level I was, after I just cut back our services). Enough is enough. But why do I feel this way now?
(You know, God does this to me often. I go to write what I think He wanted me to say, and, as I write, He shows me what the real message was all along. I was merely going to encourage us all to use Christian media, and then this whole article came out. So, as you read this, know I am hearing with you!)
So, well, we have a Wii-U ©, my sibling bought my sons a while back, we can just watch shows filtered through that, but since we had to cut back the cable programming because it was so worthless, with the lousy choices provided, and also being SO expensive, we just could NOT justify the expense any more; So why bother? I mean, what is happening? Why am I so suddenly caring about all of this? Maybe, just maybe, the Spirit of God is trying to tell me, trying to tell us all, something important. After all, I am a writer and people like me are often who God uses to ping His people.
I think so… and here is why I say so…
MANY of my friends have also been saying this to me, as of late, AND I have been hearing the same Witness myself:
Our time is short, Jesus is coming soon; Live that way every day.
Questions
Everyone in life asks questions we all ask, but one of the most important questions is, “What are we here for?” The world asks this question to, “consume it upon their lusts”, but Christians ask this question from a desire to know how to bring God glory.
So, what is YOUR answer to, “What are we here for?”
Are we here to feed our souls, protect our flesh, feed our families and the poor, protect the innocent and visit the widows; attend to the orphans? Are we here to protest abortion, elect Godly officials, fight evil on every front? I mean, that sounds pretty good, right, but is that it? Or are we, as some do claim, to live a quiet life, stay out of trouble and thank God every day for how good you’ve got it, sharing what you have if you can spare it? I mean, that kind of life sounds like a life I would like! And, when you think about it, that IS what the world’s media says, as well, sort of. They say, “You’re worth it!”, “Go for it!”, and “Why not?” But is all this advertisement we hear, and read, e v e r y single d a y really telling us the truth, or is this media being used to hide something from us, is designed to LIE to us, in order to keep us all calm, quiet, complacent, D-E-A-D?
“Shhh, all is well!”, says our flesh, as the world yells, “Buy more stuff! It will help the economy!”, but you know that isn’t quite right, is it?
You know what that does remind me of? The words, “relax, eat, drink, celebrate!” Now WHERE have I read those words before?
Oh yeah…
Luke 12:13-21 (NET)
The Parable of the Rich Landowner
Then someone from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But Jesus said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator between you two?” Then he said to them, “Watch out and guard yourself from all types of greed, because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” He then told them a parable: “The land of a certain rich man produced an abundant crop, so he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to myself, “You have plenty of goods stored up for many years; relax, eat, drink, celebrate!”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded back from you, but who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ So it is with the one who stores up riches for himself, but is not rich toward God.”
So, am I, “rich toward God”? Is God speaking here?
The Spirit has been talking to me lately, much more than normal, and He has been getting pretty PERSISTENT about it. When I get to hear the Voice of God it is often like someone yelling to me from a long way off, like a voice of someone shouting from “the wilderness”, saying, “Prepare the way for Jesus, make His road ready!”
Okay, I got goose pimples just then.
Moments
It’s moments like this when I can hear faint singing, like a crowd of Angels WAAAAY off in the distance. Out there, where they are, they are VERY loud, but all I can seem to hear is a faint whisper of singing like from a great distance. When God speaks, in his Still Small Voice, all the world falls away and that seemingly quiet voice, previously, is ALL I hear; His Words RESOUND then. Sometimes I can almost see Him, then, a l m o s t. One FINE Day I will see YHWH. And I live my sometimes moment-by-moment-every-second-is-an-eternity-to-grasp Life, holding my breath, in anticipation, like a sudden gasp, in looking forward to that Day I see Jesus face to face, and I get to sit in Abba’s Lap.
Anyway, (give me a moment to wipe the tears from eyes…) I think, just maybe, something awful, some terrible trial, is about to happen to all the world, and the Holy Spirit is working to prepare His *Witnesses for what is coming, because SO many of us are saying the same thing.
So, as with all such matters, where we have such momentous questions as, “Why are we here?”, we go to the Bible. And what does the Bible say; What does God say, in His Written Words, about how we should live?
-
2 Peter 3:11 (NET)
Since all these things are to melt away in this manner, what sort of people must we be, conducting our lives in holiness and godliness,
…
Now, RIGHT at the moment I wrote these lines above my little son crashed to the floor, and no one was in the room with him. I tell you I was being DELIBERATELY stopped from writing and experiencing the moment I was having with God as I wrote about Him. RIGHT when I had written about God’s Loving Presence and Peace for the Believer I was interrupted with angry child crying and a great raucous noise. It is QUITE LIKELY that, as you try to read this article, as you try to understand what is being said in it, you will be interrupted…
Stay calm and read on.
…
Our Struggles
THIS is what Christians, all Christians, struggle with. This living; this battle; this, “to live is Christ” life. We all exist in this death-of-self struggle to not LOSE IT with this world, when our very lives are an almost unbearable groaning for the physical Presence of Jesus. We all feel it and It is nearly too much…
And this very life of struggle, this is existence is what we are called to by Jesus Himself…
Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18
So, when 
we anaesthetize our burning hearts with yet another movie, yet another flight of fantasy, game, whim, possession. While media viewing is a problem in MANY ways (see this article), there is something FAR more insidious going on. When we provide yet another feeding for this corrupt, stinking flesh, we are running…
We are running from what YHWH desires for us.
Who You Really Are
God HIMSELF longs for a heart of adventure in you. He longs to thrill your soul with a Standing for Him, in the sea of idolatry. Your Daddy wants you to dive into this tossed world and rescue the sinking, wailing souls, you hearty rescue-swimmer-for-God. Are you really saying you would rather sing hymns cloistered behind your sanctuaries? Seriously? Where is that Daring-Do Heart that was ready to LEAP out of the plane and descend upon this world for Jesus, when you were first saved? Why are you now so TIMID?
God would have you REMEMBER who you are.
Hebrews 12:1-2 (NET) Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the Pioneer and Perfecter of our faith..
God, through the Apostle Paul, in his writing to the Hebrews, reminds them, and us, to not give up trusting in God, in either struggling with sins that drag us down to uselessness, or with the courage to Stand for the Faith, declaring God’s Mercy to a lost and Dying world, as so many have done before us. To see the salvation God had made available in Jesus, the Messiah and King, is to not give up on being His Testimony on this Earth to ALL the nations, in our wilful and courageous declaration that JESUS ALONE is God and JESUS ALONE is able to rescue from Hell, and Death.
GO, or Never Go!
Press on, then, and go FIND a reason to Stand for Jesus. Because, I tell you the truth, if you cannot testify about Jesus NOW, in this present environment of little pressure to remain silent behind your Church walls, then you will NOT speak when a single word from you for Jesus will mean your death.
YOU WILL NOT.
Addendum
So, if you are looking for the best choice we have found in Christian movies, we gladly recommend www.ChristianCinema.com. But remember, we are called by YHWH Himself to live a life worthy of standing for in front of Jesus. LIVE with such thinking on your mind e v e r y day, as the Believers in the Bible did, and you will do well. If you declare Jesus unwaveringly in this life, as you know you DESIRE TO, you will then be able to stand before Christ Himself, with tears of Joy that you brought Him Glory and lived a life HE CAN BE PROUD OF before His father! Now isn’t THAT a life worth living?
“What am I here for?” FOR JESUS, isn’t THAT the answer?
MARANATHA!
Remember who you are by remembering who you WERE…
Listen to “Remember Who You Were”, by Victor Tavitian, from the “Thy Kingdom Come” series at Sola Church, Sydney Australia
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?m=t&s=1129141244141
Patrick J Burwell
OnlyJesusSaves.com Ministries
* I find it VERY irritating that even typing “Witnesses” conjures up in my mind the thought, and uncomfortable memory, of the cult called “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” They are NOT God’s Witnesses, they are a LIE. WE ARE GOD’S WITNESSES, go and live like it.
© – Wii-U and SkyAngel are copyrighted brand names. I merely used them to explain what devices we have at home
TVKids.jpeg – used from article http://www.henrymakow.com/opiate-of-the-masses-televis.html
