DISCLAIMER FOR UNBELIEVERS

It has been my intention from the very start of this blog to reach out to born-again believers, not unbelievers or people who identify as Christian but are not born-again. This is not an evangelizing blog. If you’re not born-again and you’re reading this, please be advised that it’s not written for you. I wouldn’t go so far as to say you’re not welcome here, but I will warn you that you won’t find anything of interest here and it will likely offend you. At the very least, it will not make much sense to you, as it’s not written in your tongue.

BLOG FOR BELIEVERS

My sole intention here is to reach out to other born-again believers. More specifically, I started this blog to be a virtual “safe space” for born-again believers, a place we can feel at home in the vast wasteland of the internet. In the early days of the Church, believers would find safe spaces in the homes of other believers, but those places were few and far between (because believers were few and far between), and outside their walls danger lurked everywhere. The same is true in the Church today regarding the fewness of true believers, but instead of street addresses, we have web addresses to take refuge. Even so, danger still surrounds us.

The world is not our friend. You can’t fully trust people who are not born-again because they don’t believe they’re answerable to God. Dealing with people who don’t consider themselves answerable to God means you’re always dealing with some degree of risk. Cultural norms and the laws of the land only extend so far in reining in people’s desires to do as they please. If this weren’t true, we wouldn’t need cultural norms and laws.

Paul advised us to be at peace with everyone as much as is possible, which means that even in our risky dealings with people of the world (all dealings with people of the world are risky) we should be kind. This can be challenging, yet Jesus was kind even to Judas Iscariot, both during his ministry years and at his arrest. Jesus knew from the outset who and what Judas was, but he treated him the same as he treated all the other disciples. This is the model we should follow in our dealings with the world. We should be kind but never compromise who we are and what we believe just to “keep the peace”. Kindness is not weakness.

If people are offended by who and what we are, the problem is with them, not us.

Jesus said that if we make it Home, we’ll be like the angels in Heaven. My understanding of heavenly angels is that God sends them on missions to protect, rescue, warn, advise, and inform people, whether believers or not. He also uses his heavenly angels to deliver some of his punishing rewards. In a sense, our time here on Earth is a form of training to prepare us to take our place among God’s angels in Heaven and to go on the same missions they do. Being kind to the unkind, especially under challenging circumstances, is a major part of that training, which is why Jesus taught us to love our enemies.

We live and move among God’s enemies. If they’re God’s enemies, they’re our enemies. Most if not all of our in-person dealings are with unbelievers. This makes the world an incredibly hostile place for us. We tend to forget how spiritually hostile the world is because we’ve adapted to it over time and so don’t always notice it. God also works hard to keep us from focusing on the omnipresent dangers around us and to protect us from them. Without God’s diversion and protection strategy, we wouldn’t last a minute.

I write this today as a reminder of how we’re separate from the world. We’re not physically separate; we’re spiritually separate. We’re spiritually marked as God’s people, and the spiritual realm acknowledges this distinction. It then plays out in our interactions with the world. Jesus said that for his namesake we would be hated without cause, and so we are. We get under people’s skin simply for existing. And the minute we speak up in defence of God and Jesus, the hellhounds are released. I’ve seen it time and time again. Their barks are startling and their growls can be menacing, but they can’t bite us, the hellhounds, not on God’s watch: Not until it’s our time.

I’m now entering the 10^th year of keeping this blog. Whether I’ll be keeping it for another 10 is up to God, but if I have a say in the matter, I’d rather go Home. Like Jesus, I want to get done whatever needs to get done and get outta here. I know what Heaven is; God’s shown me “sneak-peeks” of what he has waiting for me, and I’m getting more and more impatient to be there.

The world can only grow worse and worse even as we need to grow better and better. For whatever time we have left here, we need to rise above the decay and degeneracy and continue to grow what God has planted in us. We must never stop tending what God has planted. We must never say: “Well, I’ve done my part. I’ve done enough” and slide into complacency.

We are God’s Church: every born-again believer is in God’s Church and is God’s Church. There is only one Church and has only ever been one Church – the one Jesus established nearly 2000 years ago. There are no denominations within God’s Church. There’s just us. We should be humbled by this knowledge. We should never boast that we’re born-again believers or crow that we’re children of God. We should never be proud that we’re God’s Church. We should be humbled and grateful and honored and full of the fear of the Lord, like Jesus was, and oh, so careful to remain in God’s Church, because it’s not a given that we’ll remain here, any more than Heaven is a given.

We work out our salvation with fear and trembling, as Paul warned us; we don’t work it out with boasting and cockiness. We don’t work it out with complacency and compromise. We don’t work it out with demands on God to do this or to do that: We work out our salvation with fear and trembling and with gratitude for everything God does, whether we understand it or not, whether we see its benefits or not. Every day and in every circumstance, we submit ourselves humbly and entirely to God and let him take it from there.